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November Highlights

• Thursday Pilates Club
• Haaland Fling
• From Peter Pan to Pilates
• Gilding the Lily (Allen)

Thursday Pilates club

Pilates is certainly not Pointless for Richard Osman. The best-selling author of The Thursday Murder Club and presenter of Pointless, has told the Independent that he is a Reformer Pilates convert.

“I started doing Pilates this year, which I absolutely love,” said Richard, whose latest book is The Bullet That Missed. “It’s like exercise, but not – you’re laying down. It’s amazing. When you finish it, your muscles are aching. You think, wow, it’s what I’ve always been looking for – something that stretches you a lot, there’s a lot of lying down involved, but also it makes you strong … I’ve never really enjoyed much exercise. I like doing a bit of boxing, but apart from that, this [Pilates] is quite nice.”

Osman says that at six foot seven inches his bones and joints need protecting and now he heartily recommends Pilates, adding, “It’s always harder than you think.” Clearly his Thursday Pilates club isn’t murder and it’s not hard to detect why Pilates is so good for the ace writer.

Haaland Fling

The Times has suggested that Pilates might be the reason for Manchester City striker Erling Haaland’s sensational form this season. Haaland has broken all sorts of Premier League records, scoring 23 goals so far and scoring hat-tricks in three successive home games. After the six-foot-four-inches tall striker scored a brilliantly athletic goal against Borussia Dortmund, where his boot was raised 2.1 metres from the ground, the Times asked several experts how he performed this feat.

Under the heading “Pilates will perfect his leap”, Phil Hayward, the former head of Wolves’ medical department, commented: “My understanding is that Haaland is more into doing routine yoga and Pilates-based exercises, with the aim of strengthening muscles through their full range, giving an athlete excellent ability to control movement at extremes of range. I have some connections with the Norway team and they tell me that Haaland works really hard in terms of flexibility and recovery, and he is always doing additional work in the afternoons and evenings to maximise the extensibility of the muscular system.”

Hayward went on to say that Erling’s high-kicking goal would have required great flexibility in his posterior chain — “the muscles from the heel, up the back line of the leg, into the glutes and the back” — and a strong core. A video of Haaland doing Pilates-style stretches with German model Pamela Reif can be found on YouTube to back up this theory. Indeed, it looks like Haaland will be stretching quite a few defences this season.

From Peter Pan to Pilates

The latest issue of Psychologies reveals how Rachel Hurd-Wood has travelled from Hollywood child star to Pilates teacher. The Streatham-born actor is best known for her role as Wendy Darling in the 2003 film of Peter Pan when she was just 13, the part of Sybil Vane in the 2009 film Dorian Gray and more recently as Rachel Maddox in the TV series Clique. She tells Psychologies how early fame led her to disordered eating habits and then crash courses of high-intensity exercises where, “Exercise was a loathed activity undertaken as self-imposed punishment.”

All that changed when the 32-year-old discovered Pilates. “Fast forward to now and I’m a Pilates teacher who loves being active and helping others feel the same way,” says Rachel. “So what changed? I healed my relationship with food and body image and subsequently found forms of movement I really enjoy.” She now advocates the “intuitive movement” of Pilates and listening to your body rather than, “burning out in a boot-camp frenzy.” Clearly Pilates has worked for Wendy and it might just be the reason Peter Pan is looking good too.

Gilding the Lily

The media has been full of former party animals turning to Pilates. First supermodel Kate Moss, launching her Cosmoss wellness brand, told the Evening Standard: “My happy place was being on a dancefloor, that was my absolute idea of happiness. I still love being on the dance floor, but now I want to wake up feeling fresh. I want to wake up and do Pilates or yoga. I think I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.” She emphasised that she was still a hedonist but that these days her pleasure seeking was mainly in having a healthy body.

Next the Daily Mirror headline read: “Lily Allen shows off seriously toned figure after quitting booze for a healthier lifestyle,” as it reproduced Instagram pictures of singer Lily, 37, performing Pilates exercises in a maroon sports bra and leggings. She now lives in New York with her husband, Stranger Things actor David Harbour. The Mirror added, “Long gone are the days of Lily heavily smoking and drinking as she gained a reputation for enjoying the nightlife,” and printed a picture of Lily celebrating being, “clean and serene for eighteen months.” With Kate and Lily on board Pilates is in danger of becoming the new rock ‘n’ roll.

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The Pilates Central Team