An exciting day at Pilates!

After a few months of planning, my Pilates instructor, the senior instructor and I finally got around to photoshoot day! We scrapped the normal regime and just spent the whole hour taking pictures of me in these insane poses. I'm quite sure it was one of the most physically intense hour of my life so far, but it was really fun!

I got to try a few new stunts I had never done before, and one or two of them were from the advanced level, so they were really scary. I'll admit that during the session my body was shaking like a phone on vibrate, my heart was palpitating, and my brain was all fuzzy from doing all those flips and other tricks; I couldn't even think properly enough to pray for like I always had whenever I did aerial stunts in Pilates class—I'm just super thankful that God watched over me and didn't let me slip and fall on my head. 

Although I'm super duper exhausted now, I feel really great and I managed to see my body in a whole new light! I'm extremely happy that my muscles were strong enough to hold me up, and all the 4/5 years of training in Pilates has done me well! Ah, thank God for this :D 

This was the advanced level pose that the senior instructor (the man who's spotting me in the picture) had me do. He was all: "Jennifer, your arms are strong enough right? Try doing this pose." and I declined at first, but even my instructor agreed with him and I just ended up trying it. I still have no idea what that position is called, because I really didn't even have the thought of asking because my mind was so clouded over with fear of falling on my head. Fyi, the senior instructor had no choice but to spot me because my body was swaying back and forth like a pendulum—I'm quite sure that I had an out-of-body experience for like a minute because of that.

Now this one I had no trouble with, and to be honest, this is one of my favorite poses ever because 1. it looks so beautiful, and 2. it's really quite easy to do! Of course, I had an awful head rush after I came down from that position, but it felt so great to do that! I honestly want to do more of these photoshoots because although they were really exhausting, they were so exciting! I can only hope that there will be another one ><

Well, that's about it for now, but you can check out more of these Pilates pictures on Instagram! 

See you in the next post,

Jennifer W.

Trying out some stunts

"All it takes is a second and your whole life can get turned upside down." —Jodi Picoult

Boy, is that right O____O

My two best guy friends Eugene (the one in the black shirt) and Randy (the one in the gray shirt), and I had dance practice yesterday where we decided to be daredevils and attempt a few stunts. Eugene became the main base, because he was the biggest and strongest out of the three of us, while Randy and I became the "flyers" or whatever it is we were supposed to be called.

We were no strangers to stunts, but we tried some seriously crazy, Jackass-worthy stuff yesterday that really scared the wits out of Randy and me. Randy is a b-boy, so it's safe to say that he's become great friends with the floor, if you get what I mean; I am used to being lifted and spun around like a rag doll for dance (and even outside of dance); Eugene has some experience in lifting and executing other stunts. But some of the tricks we did yesterday were really............scary, for a lack of a better word. I got a shoe to the face, Eugene accidentally slammed his knees to the floor, and Randy became even better friends with the floor.

I'll stop talking for now and let you see the videos we recorded yesterday. Warning: please don't try this at home if you've got no experience in stunts or dance or whatever. I don't want to be held accountable if you get injured.

When doing stunts, or simply dancing with a partner/team, it's important to place your full trust in them lest you want to fail, or in my and Randy's case yesterday, fall on our heads. Knowing that Eugene would definitely catch us on time and know when and how to stop immediately if something went wrong gave me some sort of comfort, but I was still quite scared for the most part. Randy even told me that he was scared for me :p but thankfully, nothing too bad happened to us.

I want to try that backflip again because I didn't manage to land properly; I just want to get it right! Oh, please remember to use a mat or any soft, cushion-y material when attempting stunts or tricks—safety first.

Well, I'll see you in the next post!

Love,
Jennifer