Knebworth Pilates Studio

16/04/2026

Life is busy .....
So take five calm minutes and practice these great exercises from Pilates matwork repertoire …

Breathing
Thoracic rotation
Mermaid
Bridge

15/04/2026

“If you don't make time for your wellness, you'll be forced to make time for your illness.” -Anonymous.

😷Mental and physical health are so intertwined. Have you noticed how a person who is swamped at work or generally dissatisfied tends to be sick frequently?

😫Stress can be a trigger or factor for disease, it can affect the digestive system and mood, and it has negative effects on learning and mental health.

🚒 The global burnout study from 2022 found employee burn out increased by 5% compared to the previous year and 40% of people who left their job that year said it was due to burn out.

14/04/2026

🧪 Have you ever heard the term happy hormones? Hormones that promote positive feelings, including happiness and pleasure!

• 😊Dopamine: Known as the “feel-good” hormone is an important part of your brain’s reward system. It’s associated with pleasurable sensations, along with learning, memory, and more. Unlock it by learning new movements in a Pilates class!

• Serotonin Helps regulate your mood as well as your sleep, appetite, digestion, learning ability, and memory. Breathing is a crucial part of Pilates practice and helps stimulate the production of this hormone.

• 😍 Oxytocin: Often called the “love hormone,” Promotes trust, empathy, and bonding in relationships. Levels generally increase with physical affection but also spending time with friends

• 😩Endorphins: The body’s natural pain reliever, produced in response to stress or discomfort. Levels may also increase when you engage in reward-producing activities such as exercise

13/04/2026

😖Stress Awareness Month takes place annually throughout the whole of April

🛑Stress and poor mental health are one of the biggest public health challenges that we’re facing.

🧠Although there is a tendency to try and divide mental health from physical health they cannot be separated

📚The stress management society have some great information and resource to consider

💡Their tips on how to stress less;
💃🏼Look after your social wellbeing
💆🏼Make time for self care
🤗Express gratitude
😴Get enough sleep
🥙Eat healthy
📝Prioritise and organise

This week we will consider how Pilates can help with managing stress.

11/04/2026

6 week beginners matwork course Starting Thursday 30th April

We are planning a new morning group Thursday’s at 10am here at the studio on Stevenage Road Knebworth

Pilates is excellent for enabling a strong and supple body and developing a mind to body connection.

Use our New to Pilates package £78.50 which includes an initial 45 minute one to one assessment and then 6 group sessions.

The group session will have a maximum of 6 clients in a class to ensure you can perform the basics well.

Email knebworthpilates@hotmail.com or DM for further details

08/04/2026

💻 Desk setup get it right
The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy have come up with some top tips to help with your desk environment.
The average adult spends 65000 hours in a desk chair. Let's do our best to get the set up right!
If you want more information about ergonomic desk set up rospa have a self assessment checklist that could help https://www.rospa.com/media/documents/campaigns-fundraising/campaigns/dse-workstation-checklist.docx

We work tirelessly on the prevention of accidents focussing on home safety, health and safety courses, road safety and workplace health and safety. Through our training courses, membership and consultancy activities RoSPA strives to achieve its vision of life free from serious accidental injury.

08/04/2026

👩‍💻 I work from home and never leave my desk there’s no time.

☕️The work from home culture leaves no time for a chat at the water cooler or popping out to grab a coffee leaving many sitting in poor posture looking at a screen without a break for hours.

📚But we know we are more productive if we take short breaks.

🌅One of the 7 habits of highly effective people is taking regular breaks.

🚫 Research shows you need to take breaks to stay productive so here’s some ideas…

⏰Introduce a culture of finishing meetings at 55 mins past the hour not on the hour, use that time to step away from the desk and move round the house
🚶‍♀️Ensure you block a lunch break and use it to go for a stroll, get away from your desk and move to another room
🪑Use a stand up sit down desk set up where you can - even if this is make shift
🧘‍♂️Block out 5 minutes for some mindfulness - there are many good apps around
💦 Make a coffee and get some water

07/04/2026

👩‍💻During lockdown, people who switched to working from home experienced health and wellbeing impacts, with the most common being feeling less connected to colleagues (67%), taking less exercise (46%), developing musculoskeletal problems (39%) and disturbed sleep (37%).

😫An increase in working from home has led to an increase in common, musculoskeletal back and neck pain for a variety of reasons beyond just our desk setups people are missing out on physical activity that they’d normally get from their commute or routine.

🛋️While you might be able to tolerate a day of working from the sofa or sitting on an uncomfortable kitchen chair, in the long run, these habits can have a negative impact on your body and health.

🤸🏼‍♀️Move more
🏋🏻‍♀️Stretch and strengthen
🪑Change posture
😖 De stress

Hertfordshire

26/03/2026

🗼Pilates helps you develop a foundation specific to your needs.

🧐 Through concentration and a focus on unfamiliar muscles, Pilates helps develop joint stability, long, lean muscles, and better physical control.

⬆️A gradual increase in rhythm and difficulty allows your body to adapt to new challenges, and improves efficiency in movement.

⚡️Regular workouts also help improve your mood by releasing endorphins that reduce stress and increase overall energy.

💥 Joseph Pilates promised that you’ll feel different in 10 sessions, you’ll look different in 20 sessions, and you’ll have a whole new body in 30 sessions.

Hertfordshire

25/03/2026

Just putting it out there…..
🤸🏼‍♀️Staying active is the most important way you can help yourself if you have back pain.

🦴 Keeping the muscles around the spine strong, will provide more support to the bones and joints and take pressure off them. The more you move, the more the back will keep its natural range of movement.

🛏️If you stop being active for a long time, the muscles in your back become weak and you become less fit, and this can make your back pain worse. Not moving can make your back more stiff and painful.

🧪Regular exercise leads to shorter and less frequent episodes of back pain. It also releases chemicals called endorphins, which are the body’s natural painkillers. These improve pain and make you feel happier.

📉 Commonly we see people attend for a few months and their back pain improves, then happy with the results they leave. Unfortunately you have to keep up exercise and movement to maintain strength and flexibility! Consistency really is key to maintenance!

Hertfordshire

24/03/2026

🚶Simple adaptations and additions to our lifestyles can ensure we improve our overall quality of life and performance.

🏋🏼Introduce some form of strength-based training, whether that be with free weights, resistance machines at the gym, using resistance bands at home, going for a swim.

🔙It’s important we load our low backs consistently in a controlled, graduated manner in order to strengthen them.

💪🏻By doing so we strengthen the soft tissues such as muscles and ligaments which help stabilise and support our lumbar spine.

🛑 reduce the risk of injuring the low back and therefore having low back pain.

⬆️Not only will this make you feel better generally, it will improve your ability to perform manual tasks as well as increase your independence.

💪🏻Stay vigilant to overloading the low back with poor lifting technique as this may lead to injury and a subsequent onset of low back pain.

🐍Flexibility is another preventative measure to reduce the chances of getting low back pain.

🤕By increasing the flexibility of your low back through its full range of motion, you are allowing the spine, its’ associated joints and the surrounding soft tissue structures to stretch and increase in pliability.

🧘🏻 A muscle, ligament or joint that has more mobility is less likely to sustain an injury.
It is crucial to implement a degree of specific flexibility training into an exercise program and also allow the low back to move through its normal arch/rounded positions throughout activities of daily living.

23/03/2026

I started attending Pilates a year ago when I became really aware that climbing the stairs had become effortful, getting on and off the floor cumbersome and walking a chore. I’m 42 surely this was not the time to start my deterioration into old age?! My wife suggested Pilates – that was not for the likes of myself. I put it off and eventually decided something had to change so pledged to attend for 6 weeks, then committed to a package. It was no overnight magic cure, I’ve been coming a year but the gains have been huge if I look back to where I was and where I am. Well worth an hour a week for my body to move like it should!