Pilates Teacher interview with Olivia Lerner
Q: Which part of Kent are you based in? A: My studio, New World Pilates, is in Tunbridge Wells.
Q: What was your first experience in Pilates like? A: It was in 1992! My suburban Chicago gym introduced a “new” fitness class called Pilates. In walked a ballerina who WORKED us. I loved it! A short time later I left Chicago, and the Pilates classes I tried elsewhere didn’t engage me. I gave it up.
Twenty years later, I had an epiphany! While living in Rome, I took up Pilates again, studying with Patricia Medros. Patricia is Romana Kryzanowska-trained, and her teaching is mind-absorbing and body-transforming. I loved it!
Guess where Patricia did her training? In suburban Chicago, in the 1990s, at the Pilates Studio of the Midwest⏤Romana’s satellite school to her New York facility. The director, Juanita Lopez, must have trained that ballerina, as she did Patricia. I’ve come full circle.
Q: Who did you undertake your training with and why? A: Patricia Medros of One Pilates Rome. We associate Rome with dolce vita for good reason. Make no mistake, however: behind the studio doors, serious work is going on! I love the culture of discipline, perseverance, scientific understanding, and self-discovery.
Q: What was that first moment when you realized a career in Pilates was for you? A: When I felt the work in my body. I fixed two major injuries, had a crazy amount of energy, and⏤finally in my life⏤I felt grounded. I wanted to share this with others.
Q: Who has particularly inspired or influenced you in your career and why? A: Patricia Medros. She’s the strongest person I know, has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the body, holds herself to high standards in everything, and is a nice person to boot.
Q: What was the last workshop or course you went on? A: Dr. Stuart McGill’s High Performance Training. I’m interested in his work on spine mechanics.
Q: Explain what Pilates means to you in one sentence. A: Pilates is the means to transforming our lives through our bodies.
Q: Which Pilates exercise is your favourite? Any lateral flexion exercise. Side Sit-Ups on the Short Box, Seated Mermaid on the Wunda Chair, Side Bends on the Mat.
Q: Which is your nemesis? A: Footwork on a Gratz Reformer. It doesn’t get any harder⎯silencing the quads and putting the work into the glutes and abs is a herculean endeavour. It gets me sweating within the first 7 seconds! I persevere because the rewards are there in spades.
Q: If there were a term or a word in your Pilates vocabulary that gets used the most, what would that be? A: Axial elongation. I don’t really say this to clients, but it’s a guiding principle.
Q: If you weren’t a Pilates teacher what job would you be doing instead? A: I know what life looks like “on the other side” because I had careers before Pilates. I worked at Citigroup in Chicago, New York, and London. Then I did UN projects in Jerusalem and Kathmandu. Through those years, the highlight of my workweek was hitting the gym. I’m a movement person⎯teaching Pilates is exactly what I want to be doing!
Thank you Olivia Lerner
New World Pilates, Tunbridge Wells www.newworldpilates.co.uk
