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Jillian spotlighted in...
Cooking Light magazine
January 2004, page 110
Winning Moves:
Five readers win Cooking Light Get Fit Getaways to train with our Good Moves Personal Coaches
by Katherine Cole
It takes motivation and time to get fit — and dedication to stay that way. But many of our readers have found that it's easy to live a fit lifestyle if you're focused. They know it's fun to set personal goals, and truly gratifying to achieve them.
That's what inspired our Good Moves Personal Coach series in 2003. Each issue, a fitness expert offered tips to improve skills and stamina for different active pursuits, ranging from triathlons to tennis to tai chi. Then, last spring, Cooking Light, along with PowerBar Pria, Boca Foods Company, LUNA bar, and Subaru, sponsored the Get Fit Getaway contest and challenged readers to write about their personal training goals. From more than 6,000 entries, we selected five winners. Each was sent to an exciting destination for a one-on-one, three-day training session with the Good Moves Personal Coach of his or her choice.
• • • • •
Form and Focus
The Winner: Batya Klein of Chicago
The Getaway: Personalized Pilates sessions at The Well-Tempered Workout* in West Hollywood, California, with Jillian Hessel.
Top Training Tip: Visualize movements to help you to execute them properly and isolate the right muscles.
After trying a variety of classes at her gym, Batya Klein found one that she loved: Pilates, the exercise regimen developed by Joseph Pilates. Requiring concentration and focus, the stretching, strengthening, and lengthening movements of Pilates appeal to the intellectual side of this Chicago mother of two. "Physically, it's an amazing toner," Klein says. "It works those areas that women have problems with — hips, thighs, upper chest muscles, stomach — your core. That's what I needed after having two kids."
But Klein had only taken mat classes when she jetted to West Hollywood to train with Pilates instructor and former professional ballerina Jillian Hessel. So Hessel started by teaching Klein to use more advanced Pilates equipment, including an antique piece of machinery built by Pilates himself. Outfitted with straps and buckles, it looked like it belonged in a dungeon, but it was an efficient toning tool. "It was this contraption that you could do pretty much any exercise on," Klein recalls. "I called it 'The Torture Chamber!'" But working on the machine was a pleasure.
Both on the machines and the mat, Hessel enabled Klein to make the most of her Pilates sessions back home by making small corrections and offering visualization tips to fine-tune her technique. Two images that helped Klein: imagining wrapping the thigh and glute muscles in a circular motion; and the image of her ribs sliding down and pulling her stomach inward.
"Once you learn the correct positioning, you really work every muscle," Klein says. "It is such a difference." Her next challenge: to enroll in private Pilates classes to take her practice to a new level.
*The studio is now closed; however, Jillian still offers
private and semi-private Pilates training.
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© 2004 Cooking Light magazine
