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Bombshell Bride

Wedding Dress Workout: Basic Pilates Mat Sequence for a Leaner, Stronger You

By Diann Daniel on January 1, 2010

Pilates is an excellent way to sculpt lean muscles, develop good posture, and strengthen your core for your big day. Mika Street, owner of Uptown Pilates in Manhattan, shows you how.

If you’ve ever envied the long, strong physique of a dance, pilates may be the exercise for you. A series of whole-body conditioning exercises, pilates first became especially popular with dances because it strengthens and lengthens muscles without building bulk. In fact, after just one sessions pilates you may feel a major difference in your body, almost as if a girdle has been tightened and strengthened from your inside. That’s because pilates concentrates on your core, on in pilates terms, your powerhouse, which is composed of your abdominal muscles, the pelvic floor, the muscles around the hip joint, and the muscles of your lower back.

Strengthening your core in important, because no matter what your fitness goals, core strength is an important cornerstone to a healthy body. To that end, Bombshell Bride checked in with Mika Street, owner of Uptown Pilates in New York City, for a pilates basic mat sequence that can give you better posture, strengthen and tone your core, and give you longer, leaner and stronger muscles so you can look and feel your best in your wedding dress. The basic mat sequence is also a critical building block for other pilates exercises.

A few notes about proper technique before your begin:

Exercises should be done on a pilates or yoga mat if possible.
Read directions all the way through before beginning.
Breathe fully, inhaling through the nose, and exhaling through the mouth.
Through the exercises, your core muscles should be braced and pulled in.
Take a break or slow down if your neck begins to hurt.
At all times be conscious of your form. In many exercises, your head will be drawn forward to your chest with a space between them about the size of a golf ball.

All of these exercises work your powerhouse. Additional muscles worked are noted at each exercise.

The Hundred

Also works arms (particularly triceps), and inner and outer thighs.

Start with your body long on a mat, legs with a slight external rotation (which you should keep throughout the movement).
Draw your knees into your chest and bring your chin towards your chest (imagining a golf ball between your chin and chest). Lift your hands a few inches off the mat and extend your legs to 45 degrees
Begin pumping the hands up and down, inhaling for five counts and exhaling for five counts. Repeat hand pumping-inhale/exhale cycle 10 times.

The Roll Up

Also lengthens hamstrings and lower back muscles.

Transition from the Hundred: Lower your legs to the mat.
Extend your arms to the ceiling, palms facing towards your feet.
Keep you heels glued together, shoulder blades in and down your back.
Bring your chin to your chest (again imagining a golf ball between chin and chest).
Start to roll up, removing one vertebra at a time from the mat. Reach the fingers to your toes while pulling your lower abdominals into your lower back, creating a c-shaped curve with your body. Make sure that your length is not coming from your shoulders; they should remain actively pulled back into your shoulder girdle.
From the top, roll down again lowering one vertebra at a time until finally your head touches down on the mat. Arms can reach further back as long as your rib cage does not pop up.
Repeat five to eight times.

Simple Leg Circle

Also works inner and outer thighs, hamstrings.

Pull your right leg in for a stretch, then extend to ceiling with the leg turned out.
Make five small circles in a clockwise motion, then change directions and make five small circles in a counterclockwise motion. The biggest part of the circle should be the crossing over the body.
Throughout the motion, your left leg should be active. Feel it pressing into the floor and keep it parallel.
Keep your hips completely stable throughout the motion. If you cannot, then bend your knee or make a smaller circle. Imaging a cup of coffee resting on your abdominals to help stabilize the hips.
Switch legs and repeat five circles each way with your left leg.

Rolling Like a Ball

Also lengthens spine.

Transition from Single Leg Circles: Come up to a seated position, by bending a knee to your chest, and holding on while lifting your body upright.
Hold onto your ankles bringing them into your bottom. Keep the arches of the feet long and the toes off the mat. Knees are slightly apart making a tight ball with your body, nose between the knees.
Inhale and slowly draw your lower abdominal muscles into your lower back to initiate the rolling back.
Exhale and roll back up again maintaining the tight ball shape with your body. Do this with as little assistance from your hands, making sure your shoulders stay relaxed and pulled down your back. Remember to keep the curve in your lower spine, not the upper, throughout the exercise.
Repeat six to eight times.

Single Leg Stretch

Also works arms and legs.

Transition from Rolling Like a Ball: Place your left hand on your right knee and your right hand on your right ankle.
Roll your body onto the mat bringing your right knee with you and left leg extending to 45 degrees. Lift your chin to your chest same way as you did in previous exercises.
Pull the knee into your chest and switch legs. For the left leg bring your right hand onto the knee and the left hand to the ankle.
Use the coffee cup imagery again to keep your torso completely still throughout the motion.
Repeat both sides six to eight times.

Double Leg Stretch

Also works arms and legs.

Transition from Single Leg Stretch: Bring both bent legs into the chest, with heels together and by your bottom, with knees shoulder width apart.
Hold onto your ankles with both hands creating a tight ball.
Extend the arms and legs 45 degrees from the floor, arms going behind your and legs in front.
Circle the arms around and bend your knees simultaneously and again grab your ankles. As you do this you want to make sure your head is towards your chest the same way as previous exercises and that your torso remains completely stable (coffee cup image).
Repeat six to eight times.

Spine Stretch Forward

Also lengthens backs and legs.

Bring both legs in front of you slightly wider than hip width’s apart.
Sit up with a very straight back, arms reaching directly in front of you, shoulder width apart.
Imagine your back against a wall (or sit directly against a wall), drop your chin and then roll one vertebrae at a time off the wall (real or imagined), but keep your lower back pushing back against “the wall.” It also helps to imagine coming up and over a beach ball, but make sure your shoulder blades stay drawn in and down your back.
Roll back up stacking one vertebrae on top of the next, coming up with a long straight spine and lengthened neck.

NY1

NY1

Pilates Helps Build Beach Bodies

June 2, 2009
By: Kafi Drexel

Summertime means people will stop hiding under bundles of clothes, and Pilates can help people tone and firm their bodies all season long. NY1′s Health reporter Kafi Drexel filed the following report.

Thanks to Pilates, there’s no reason to hid from the beach this summer. Mika Street, the owner of Uptown Pilates showed NY1 a few simple exercises.

“People think of Pilates as a core exercise but in fact it works out your entire body,” says Street. “So throughout every season of the year it is an excellent form of exercise, but particularly in summertime because it really tones your body and lengthens the muscles, giving you a beautiful physique.”

Her first suggested exercise is known as the “Roll Down with the Magic Circle.” You start in sitting position with your feet hip-width apart and squeeze a tiny piece of equipment called a “magic circle” between your legs.

You inhale and bring your navel towards your spine and roll your lower back into a mat or the floor until your elbows are straight. Exhale and round the spine back up making sure to squeeze the circle the whole time.

“It’s an exercise anyone can do from really the most beginner Pilates student to a truly advanced one, and the better you get at it the more challenging it becomes,” says Street. “The magic circle really accentuates that.”

The “Roll Up” works on the abs and lower back.

“You really connect your shoulders into your back and roll up from your abdominals and then you reach your fingertips toward your toes,” says Street. “As you do that, you are C-curving, so you are connecting your abdominals into your lower back and your length is coming from your lower spine instead.”

At the same time you are lengthening the back of your legs, from that position you roll back down keeping your body still with the exception of your spine.

In addition to firming up your core, you can’t forget about the lower half. For that she recommends the “Side Kick Series” for lengthening and toning the legs.

“You can use your own resistance, lifting legs up and down, front and back and in mini-circles, making sure the hips don’t roll forward or back,” says Street.

These exercises do not require a lot of equipment and can be taken on the go.

“These exercises, you can take when you go to the beach over the summertime,” says Street. “If you just want a quick workout in the morning before you run off to work, you can do that as well.”

For maximum benefit, you should repeat each sequence about five to eight times in a row before moving on to the next.

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Yoanna House

‘I Lost 50 Pounds in Two Years’

The formerly full-figured winner of America’s Next Top Model talks about weight and willpower

In college, being a size 12 didn’t deter 5’11″ Yoanna House from dreaming of a career in modeling. And though dropping 50 lbs. gave her enough confidence to qualify for America’s Next Top Model (she won the second season’s title), she didn’t get toned enough for some. “My biggest problem with Yoanna,” argued Nigel Barker, one of the show’s judges, “is her body shape.” The trimmed-down 26-year-old admits she has to work harder than some other models to keep the weight off. “They’re like little pencils,” she says. “I’ve developed a different way. My frame is a little stronger.” Now host of the Style Network’s The Look for Less, House explains how she adapted a healthier way of life.

Growing up in Jacksonville, Fla., I was just gulping smoothies and Frappuccinos, I didn’t really know any better or care that I was always overindulging. I was chubby—I wasn’t obese—but I wouldn’t get picked for dodgeball because I was not very athletic.

My grandmother got me hooked on fashion. We’d watch Elsa Klensch [a CNN fashion show] together. I got a subscription to Vogue at age 10. When I was 19, I decided I had to change my body: I met with my friend Ayn Peters, a personal trainer, and we did it privately. I saved my baby-sitting money and said, “Can you help me?” I went from never working out a day in my life to doing it two, three, four, five, six times a week. I like yoga and I did running and cycling—anything I wouldn’t get bored with.

I started eating just unprocessed foods—nothing out of a box or can. I would have salads, which I didn’t really eat before. Instead of ranch dressing I’d have more of a balsalmic vinaigrette, I would tuck away pictures of models I think are healthier looking, like Christy Turlington, to inspire me.

When I saw the change in my body, I felt such confidence. Eventually, though, my weight loss hit a plateau after about a year, and I knew I had to be more disciplined about my eating and workouts. I forced myself to drink a gallon or more of water a day. And I’d pray about it and sit there and dream about it. It took me two years to lose all 50 lbs.

Even though I won America’s Next Top Model, I know I’ll never be thin enough to do couture. I love doing TV and commercial work. It’s almost a relief, not having the pressure to be so skinny. Sill, I’m bound contractually to be within a certain stature. If they notice that your size changes, they’ll talk to you about it.

In my early modelling days, every few months I’d splurge on a sundae at Serendipity’s. I’d sit there with this huge spoon and just eat. I really don’t do that anymore! As a model, your looks are your bread and butter. I miss eating junk food, but I don’t miss the way it made me feel. I’d never go back. I wasn’t comfortable for so long—why would I want to?

How She Does It

Diet: Green salads, fish, no processed foods. I’ve taken raw, organic cooking courses. I I eat something processed my body goes into shock since I haven’t had it in so long.

Exercise: I wake up around 6 a.m.—3:30 or 4 if I have an early call time—and go to Uptown Pilates [near her N.Y.C. apartment]. It gives you long, lean muscles. Before, I couldn’t touch my toes or do a push-up. Now I can stand on my head. I also go to the gym four or five times a week and work out on the machines.

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Union College – Accolades

Mika Street ’01: Embracing the entrepreneurial spirit

Mika Street ’01 left a promising corporate job to stretch her own entrepreneurial power. In March, the Union history major and fitness enthusiast opened Uptown Pilates, a luxury studio on Manhattan’s Upper West Side dedicated to the teachings of Joseph Pilates, the German-born performer and nurse who espoused the mind-body connection.

Like Mika herself, Uptown’s 12 instructors all have the 600-hour Authentic Method™ certification. The studio, at 72nd Street between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues, is full of activity, and the clientele varies from 16-year-old American Ballet Theatre students to health-conscious nonagenarians.

“I absolutely love it,” says Mika, who worked at a global consulting firm before striking out on her own. “I had a good job, but I knew from day one it wasn’t right for me. I definitely credit Union for helping me to keep striving for more in life and to never settle.”

Mika’s business spirit may have a genetic component. Her South African parents met in Israel, where Brian, a developer, owned a boat chartering business. He and Linda, and all-round creative spirit, sailed around the world for three years with young Mika and her older brother, Alon, before coming to the States. Now a developer, Alon has his own business in Washington, D.C.

At Union, Mika took dance, played lacrosse, joined the outing club and enjoyed Professor Stephen M.Berk’s classes. “He really cemented my passion for history,” she said.

Her international roots exerted their pull, too. She spent two terms abroad, one in Israel and one traveling to Japan, New Zealand, Australia. After graduation came the consulting job at Accenture, but she soon left to explore Central America.

Now Mika, 25, feels at home in New York City. And if her new business sounds very centering, it should. Developed in the early 1900s, Pilates uses breathing techniques and repetitive exercises to tone, stretch and balance.

“Pilates is for everybody,” Mika says. “There are more than 700 exercises with variations. It’s trendy, but it’s also been around for a century. The purely Authentic Method™ will be here forever.”

Mika was teaching and envisioning her own studio when the Pilates center where she earned her certification closed. The need for a new space was there—and so was she.

“I do believe opportunities are something you create,” she says. “I knew I wanted to start my own business, and I’d been dabbling in a few things, but the passion wasn’t there. Then it all became clear: the studio really was the most perfect fit.”

The New York Times

Now Let Us All Contemplate Our Own Financial Navels

By ABBY ELLIN
Published: July 21, 2005

Everybody, it seems, is bailing out of the rat race and starting a yoga business to help make a better, more balanced world. Either that, or to capitalize on a trend.

Three years ago, Erica Gragg, now 34, and Melissa Perlman, now 40, abandoned their careers in Manhattan – Ms. Gragg as a public relations executive at Moët & Chandon and Dom Pérignon Champagnes; Ms. Perlman as an importer of furniture and textiles – to set up a yoga retreat in Tulum, Mexico.

Neither woman spoke Spanish, and neither knew much about running a business, but they were fed up with the fast pace of city life. They believed that with their combined management experience and their interest in fitness, they could overcome those hurdles. “Everywhere we looked people were doing yoga,” Ms. Gragg said. “It was a no-brainer. People needed someplace to go to unwind. Why not give them that place?”

Their original plan was to take over an existing beach resort, add some finishing touches, and market occasional “wellness weekends,” offering yoga classes, power walks in the sand, organic food and massages. After the first few weekends booked up quickly, primarily with stressed-out New Yorkers, Ms. Perlman and Ms. Gragg expanded their vision, hiring half a dozen workers, two masseurs and a chef. They did not have instructors, but Ms. Gragg, who is a certified yoga teacher, taught classes and Ms. Perlman led meditation.

They expanded the wellness weekends to last year round, calling the program a Bikini Boot Camp. Within a year, Amansala (it means “peaceful place on the water” in Sanskrit) began turning a profit; celebrities like Cindy Crawford, Jude Law and Sienna Miller have spent a few nights at the “eco-chic” resort.

According to a survey of 4,700 people conducted by Yoga Journal, the number of Americans who practice yoga regularly jumped 34 percent last year, to 7.2 million from 5.6 million in 2003. The magazine also says Americans spent $2.95 billion a year on yoga classes and products like mats, clothing, vacations and books.

While people aged 35 to 54 formed the biggest group of practitioners, Yoga Journal said, the biggest growth is among those aged 18 to 24. The surging interest in yoga reflects a love affair with spas and feeling good from the inside out. According to the International Spa Association, the number of spas in the United States has increased 25 percent since 2002, to 12,100 today, up from 9,632, generating revenue of $11 billion.

Over a different span, the number of spa visits rose 50 percent, to 136 million in 2003 from 91 million in 1999, a spokeswoman said. “That translates to a whole lot of massages,” said Mary Bemis, founder of the Insiders Guide to Spas.

The trend thrills Marie Scalogna, owner of Spa Chicks on the Go, a company based in New York. “Therapists are much more reliable, business-savvy and put-together than the ones from 15 years ago,” she said. “Especially now that massage school is a full two years and about a $20,000 investment – it has really weeded out the freaks of yore.”

Another exercise workout that has been gaining popularity for businesspeople is Pilates, a regimen developed by the German boxer Joseph H. Pilates in the early 20th century. The Pilates Method Alliance, a professional association, reports that the number of Americans who practice the discipline regularly has surged more than sixfold since 1991, to 11 million people from 1.7 million. In that period, the number of instructors increased to 14,000 from 200.

Such an explosion is not without its costs, says the group’s president, Kevin A. Bowen, who worries that people without proper credentials are teaching the workout. Because of that concern, the alliance established the first national-level certification test for the Pilates method in May.

The popularity of Pilates isn’t without its benefits to entrepreneurs, either. Ask Mika Street, a 25-year-old with a degree in history and finance who was languishing in her New York job at a consulting firm.

“I would go to work every day and want to bang my head against the computer,” Ms. Street said. At the end of 2003, she took a leave of absence, went to Costa Rica for four months to study Spanish and then headed to South Florida to be with her parents. She spent a lot of time doing Pilates, and in June 2004, after a 600-hour apprenticeship, was certified as a Pilates instructor. That is when she had an epiphany.

“Why stay in this job when I could be teaching and helping people?” she said.

She was not planning to open her own shop, but then a studio freed up and she grabbed it. This was a little daunting: She had to raise more than $100,000 and live without the security of a regular paycheck as her savings dwindled. On March 28, Uptown Pilates, a studio on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, was born. It has been so successful that Ms. Street calculates she will be able to repay her loans within 14 months instead of the 24 she expected. She also plans to expand the brand.

It isn’t just the little guy who is jumping on the bandwagon. Stephen M. Case, founder of AOL, just sank $500 million into Revolution, an investment company focusing on health and wellness. Among its holdings: Miraval resort and spa in Tucson, which offers yoga and meditation classes, equine therapy and a sexuality program. Then there are George Lichter, 54, and Rob Wrubel, 45, the former chief executives of Ask Jeeves and Ask Jeeves International, currently at the helm of Yoga Works, a national chain of 14 yoga studios that they began acquiring in 2003. So far, their company has brought in $10 million to $30 million a year, Mr. Lichter said.

“The fact of the matter is that the health care system has fallen apart; things are not as available as they once were,” he said from his cellphone in Santa Monica, Calif. “There’s this big realization out there that all of a sudden I have to and can make myself healthier.”

That’s what Shana Meyerson is banking on. Ms. Meyerson, 33, is the founder of Mini-Yogis for Kids, a studio in Los Angeles that she began in 2002. Ms. Meyerson studied pre-law at Cornell and had worked from Microsoft to movie studios. She was in business school at U.C.L.A. when she started doing yoga. Faster than you could say namaste, a Hindu invocation used in yoga ceremonies, she started a company and fled school.

Since then she has made six figures and has two video deals pending. And she has triumphed over all the doubters who urged her to rethink her career shift. “The same people who were laughing me out of business school,” she said, “are now asking for advice.”

Correction: July 28, 2005, Thursday:
An article in Business Day on July 21 about entrepreneurs who have started fitness and health businesses misspelled the surname of the founder of Spa Chicks on the Go. She is Marie Scalogna, not Scalonga.

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