Episode #559: Breaking Down Misconceptions-Kristin Anderson Discusses the Art and Science of Pilates

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0:48 It's easy to use. Go to the prospectwizard.com get a free 30 day trial. Talk to my boy Dave Gallon. He will get you all set up and let the leads flow based on the Wizard. Go get him. This is Pete Moore on Halo Talks nyc. I have the pleasure of bringing a Halo alumni academy member and a evangelist in this industry for quite some time. She's probably touched many lives and friends of friends of yours out of the California area where I used to live. So welcome to your first Halo Talks inaugural Halo talks for Kristen Anderson. Good to see you. Thanks again, Pete. It's great to see you too. And I always enjoy talking to you and, and always love hearing what you're doing in the world because you just don't stop.

1:37 And I love it. Yeah, I think there was a song like don't stop till your body rocks get up. So we could do that. We can play that as like an interlude. Just cue my audio guys. Get that Royaltyfree. All right, so look, you've been, you've been one of the, you know, innovators in this industry, obviously like somewhat ahead of the curve on what people want, what people need. Every time you and I talk we kind of say like here, here's what I'm working on. And then like people start talking about it a year later. Like yourself was like, you know, you knew the next, next episode or the next season. So give us an update on your. Wait, I don't need it. But tell people a little bit about what your background is and how, where you're focused.

2:17 Thank you, Pete. My name is Kristen Anderson. I am a high profile Pilates teacher out of Los Angeles for my day job and for the rest of my life. I basically, I see the world in movement study. I grew up as a competitive figure skater. I have basically not stopped moving. I got an accounting degree on purpose so I could have my own businesses and open my own studios and make my own choices. And in the decades that I've been doing that, you are right. I. I'm very good at seeing, like, where the world's going or how people are going to go, because gravity doesn't quit, time doesn't stop, and it affects all of us. And if I don't put myself out there in the world and find community and identity and, you know, and what I believe in, then I don't do well. So this is my space. And you're right, I've had a. I've had a few products that have been very successful. And the. It is hard a little bit to see ahead of the curve because you get frustrated or people don't believe you. However, it gives you the time to not just develop something, but really understand how to integrate it. And so currently, I've just started working on my newest app and my newest concept, which is basically, you don't need to work out for an hour and do all this massive suffering and take out some of your life because you want to be fit or healthier, unless that's what you want. And that's different. But. But what I've really noticed is that some kind of movement, regardless of who you are, will get you some endorphins. One will get you a little unstuck from

3:47 wherever you're stuck, whether it's moving or not, and that actually influences the rest of your life and all these other areas that we're always trying to knock down. Like, for example, from the beginning of time, human beings are like in pursuit of four different things. Whether you want to call it the elements, like air, water, know, earth, fire, or you want to call it freedom of speech, freedom, express, and freedom of, you know, scarcity and religion. We are all trying to obtain these things both independently and as a collective. And what I can often see is where I intersect with that and then where others intersect with that. And it is one of my favorite things to just work with people and to just kind of listen and see what I can see and what I can feel. And it gives me super great joy to help somebody or empower somebody to move better. I mean, I make suggestions and that person has to do it or not, and then they usually pass that on and then I feel better and the world goes around.

4:47 Let me ask you a question on that before you move on. So don't forget your thought. But you impact a lot of people's lives locally through your pilates and through your personal training, what gives you, like, the inertia or, like, desire to say, like, I need to scale this because some people come to us and say, hey, I'm doing this awesome thing locally. And like, you're. You're affecting hundreds of people. Right. And now, like, I want to expand it to thousands. And. And I know, you know, you're like me. Like, I don't really. I'm not doing things because I'm trying to make a certain amount of money. I'm doing things because, like, I feel like the universe is like, telling me to, like, you know, expand this because more people need to hear this or so how do you think. And then you could get back to whatever else you were saying? Well, that. That's okay. Sorry for the interlude here, but I need it. Yeah. And because you're right, that's, you know, to a fault sometimes I really. I'm not there to make money. I'm there because I can see the positive effect it has on people. And at the end of the day, I know if I have a positive effect on somebody else, it will go around and around and around.

5:52 And I really have an I. I really believe in the power of one person. And just like that, almost the butterfly effect of, if I can help you, then you can help someone else. And it's not just my expertise. It's almost the opposite of that. It's like once you. I mean, I can distill it down to some just basic thought or basic movement, and that really inspires somebody. And to give someone the gift of a better day is kind of my purpose. And then if you can do that for somebody that's not like you or it doesn't seem like they're like you, then it spreads on. And we are all the same. We're kind of the same human body, all of us, whether we. However we operate it, it's different. But we all age. And if we don't, it's the alternative.

6:33 We all are affected by our endocrine system, by gravity, by time, by situations in life coming up. And as you know, if you. When you get out of your own way and you help somebody, there's no better feeling. And then you can rest at night because you know that you made a difference in that day. You know, it's interesting, when I was out in California, I. I was watching the sunset and I was thinking to myself, like, 1. How far away is. Is the sun? Okay, to your gravity comment, it turns out it's 95 million miles away. So when you see a ray of light that hit your eyes, it took like, I want to say it's like nine minutes to actually get from the sun to you. And also I was like, how fast are we going? Okay, on this planet? Because everyone's, like, in a rush all the time. And I looked that up and actually the Earth is rotating around the sun at the slow speed of 66, 000 miles an hour.

7:27 Okay. And it's rotating at 1200 miles an hour. So I usually say to people, like, the only thing you really need to focus on to be like, not really upset about whatever's going on in your life is gravity. Okay. Yeah. Because you'd have to own, like a cement business to stay on this thing if there wasn't a gravitational pull to actually keep you here. So on your, on your, on your point of, like, slowing down, understanding where you are, making sure I have a good day and do the right things, I thought that was an interesting, like, set of, like, metrics I was trying to get a hold of because I was like, you ever. You got to know how fast you're going in everything except, like, on the planet. Yeah. And that's a, that's a perfect perspective. And it's like, you know, it's. That is exactly what I'm talking about.

8:09 If you just stop for a second, throw yourself in neutral and look around, you know, it's all right here for us. And there's things we can't control. Gravity is the best example. And it's, it wins every time, you know, basically. So, you know, what are some of the things when you look at your, when you look at your day right now, how do you construct your day to, you know, taking care of yourself, taking care of other people, you know, work related. Obviously, the thousand ideas that you don't write them all down like me and probably have a clipboard of like, oh, that's a great idea. Like I should. That's like a 20, 26 idea. And somehow kind of, you know, put that in your Dropbox. And then do you want to change any of that? Or like, what, you know, where are you? Where you say, like, look, I think I figured this out. You know, let me, let me give you some wisdom.

8:55 You know, it's, that's a, it's a really great question because it's, you know, I keep thinking that I, I want to work less with people one on one, and I want to, like, walk my dog more and I want to get into my personal, like, sports and fitness more. And then I. I'm at the place in my life where I can make those choices, and then I do. And then it's like, oh, but not who I am. This is not how I feed my humanity. And so what I've done is kind of. Kind of chopped up my year in like. Like blocks, almost like quarters. Like, okay, for this amount of time, I'm going to work with clients, you know, for four months or six months, so I can get to someplace with them. And then I always have a bigger picture in mind about what kind of movement study can people take in, will they take in, and, you know, do they want. And then I can take that concept after four months and. And we have technology, and then I can kind of shop it around the world and see if people are receptive or not. And then the other thing I've learned is if a kid or a young person, like somebody under 25, can understand, accept, and then, like, put forth any of my ideas or concepts, then it's fine. And anyone who doesn't accept it has their own stuff in the way. So I've learned to have a balance of, like, you know, being in the middle. Like, I. Younger people, mentors, older people. And then, like, when we were talking, it's community, not being lonely. It's, you know, fighting for, like, what you believe in. Like, you're really about, you know, getting rid of childhood diabetes and obesity, because those things are still around and

10:26 you can't sleep at night when, you know, when it's out there going on. And I have that same thing. It's like, it's just a tiny bit of movement. Makes me feel better, you feel better, and then I still have time to do all my other things, because when I get out of balance, it's not good. And I've got. I've been fortunate enough to learn that about myself. So I stay in balance with a bunch of clients, some kind of sport, some kind of person that I'm mentoring and then being, you know, mentored myself. This is Pete Moore. I want to let you in on a little secret. There's this company called Promotion Vault. And what they do is they give out rewards from retailers that allow you to incentivize your members without having to do zero down and one month free or giving away shakes or giving away T shirts. What you want to do is build a rewards program that lasts, that people value and that doesn't discount your own products and services.

11:20 So here's the deal. There's something called Rewards Vault. The Rewards Vault is going to Allow a member to set up their own profile. They are going to answer questions, you are going to get those answers, going to be able to target those members, and you're going to reward them inside your club, inside your spa, and outside of the club and outside of the spa to get them to become loyal, to get them to pay their monthly dues, and to be rewarded properly for the actions. A lot of companies are cutting back on rewards. You shouldn't be. Promotion vault your answer. Trust me, this is real. The term feed your humanity, by the way, I don't know if that's like, trademark.

12:02 Is that from somewhere else? Did you kind of. Kind of come up with that? Just Googled it real quick. It's like some people donated blood in Bulgaria. Oh. That I know. That I just came up with in that, in this moment, might get a. Cease and desist from the Bulgarians, but besides that, let's use it until we lose it. Yeah, it's all good. It's all good promotion. It's like, hey, then like, okay, maybe we do donate blood. I don't know, but I like that. Yeah. So. So talk about ways that people that are listening to this podcast can interact with you. Well, I have my. My own podcast called the Pilates power hour in 20 minutes, and no one wants to hear me ramble on for 20 minutes. So what that is is basically where Pilates, or movement intersects in someone's life journey and why they discovered her and why not and how come it matters. And so, like, for example, I. I'll do something. I'll look at why Taylor Swift does Pilates because she. Swifty, by the way. I am a Swiftie, and she's a huge Pilates. I am a huge Swiftie, by the way. Huge. So this is why we get along. It's the foundational. It was the best weekend of my life.

13:12 Oh, my God. It's hard to get those tickets. Really? I mean, yeah, no, no, you have. To use a credit card and you have to, like, call and say, like, can I put it this amount on it? That's how you get them. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. I get that. I like that. And for me, I try to use my connections. Like, I. I'm really careful with them, but not, you know, when you got to do it, you got to do it. How did you lever that? A couple times for Swifty concerts. Just once. Okay. It's cool. All right, Go back to the well again. Next. Next. Yeah, yeah. So. So, like, for example, it's. She cites Pilates as why she doesn't fall down on stage. And why she can have balance and longevity along with straight training and cardio. Then you cut over to shout out. To Riley Mitchell, who made me a swifty. Thank you, my goddaughter. So good. See, it's the Youngs. They keep us in line. It's good stuff.

13:56 And then like, you know, even though they did lose this year, the Kansas City Chiefs literally have Pilates as part of their training regimen. Two hours a week. Because studies now show that it, it takes down on upper body injuries, neck injuries, and then like, you know, chest and core injuries. So you have all kinds of people understanding that movement or certain kinds of movement, you don't have to do it forever, but it really does help you, you know, live a better life, a longer life, a safer life. And so that's. And then it's like regular people, like my hair person, she does Pilates because she's like, it's the best return on investment. She's like, I do 20 minutes. Yeah. And it's assistance, resistance, two directions fighting gravity from the inside out.

14:36 She's like, and I stand all day and I don't want to do exercise after that. So it's it. Becky to do applies. I got on my soul cycle kick and like now I got my swifties. I gotta listen to my playlist. Yeah, I got a lot going on here. I might have to do like 12, 12 to 30 minutes of Pilates every day. I have a question for you. So back in 2000, 2010, I was working with a company and they had owned a different, a couple companies. One of them was Power Pilates. And I don't think I fully appreciated the, the power of Pilates at the time. I did some solid core classes. I did some other classes at some boutique studios. And I absolutely felt like from a, you know, life changing your body in the least amount of days and the way you feel was definitely like the best value for me and also like the quickest return on, on time.

15:35 This is like an odd, like, everyone's talking about Pilates now. It's like, applause this plus that. There's a new reformer, there's new that, and that's awesome. My question to you is like, does Pilates kind of have a tipping point because other workouts have like a ten year horizon. Yeah, Pilates has been around for a long time, so it's kind of proven. But I just wonder like, you know, how like there's not going to be like a Pilates next to every, like McDonald's well, here's what I maybe, I don't know, could be a cool combo, combo meal. So there's like constants and fads, right? So we know it's not a fad, it's a constant. And almost all physical therapy is based on it. So basically what you're doing, whether you're doing mat, Pilates or machine Pilates, is you're changing gravity a little bit by repeating the same movements you would functionally, but let's say lying down with assistance and resistance. So your body gets this little bit of air, not air, but a little bit of space in between your joints, ligaments, muscles, just enough for fresh blood to kind of come in and then take away the junk, add some nutrients. And so your kind of getting this re oxygenated moment where you, you don't have gravity but you're also pulling yourself apart almost like being in water. And so what I think is you're going to start to see like school kids and that kind of thing. Instead of having calisthenic based understanding, they're going to have a Pilates based understanding. I mean like just weight training. I love strength training, I love heavy lifting and I do, I lift more because I, I apply the methodology of like pulling and pushing. So I'm setting my muscle series up and then I'm driving through it. And I think that

17:08 be just the adoption of Pilates in, in high level sports and the crucialness of it is, is really where it's at and things that are going to last take a long time to take hold, you know, and that's, and I mean it's been. Around 60 years now or more. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's like what's the date? Let's get the right 54, 1954. I was pretty close. I don't want to fill my audience with, you know, my own statistics unless I make them up myself. You know, then you can be responsible for them. But yeah, that's when it arrived in New York City happenstance that Joseph Pilates found a space next to Martha Graham studio. So it wasn't designed for dancers but it was landed next to dancers. And a dancer type of person is, you know, very cerebral in their physical movements and they're also physical. And Pilates is a lot of connecting things in different series of stuff. So it spoke to the dancers, they spoke to that crowd, didn't get marketed and then those people kind of took it out from there. And then it really popped in the 90s when celebrities started to do it, you know, in, in La and then like, you know, magazines started to show them doing it. And that's. All of a sudden it took off. And that's where we had the Pilates classes or Pilates certifications on every corner. And then the Wall Street Journal did this expose. I'm like, how many hours has your Pilates teachers had? Because people were getting hurt and all that. So I think we've passed the.

18:29 We've passed at least the certification. Understanding that is a little deeper than that. But I think what we're getting into is people kind of putting the word Pilates on like a stick in a band, which is. Can be easily. I mean, I can take make Pilates out of a pencil, but it's because I understand. I dare you, I double dog dare. You to do it. Do it right now. I got a breaking news. I got a breaking news. It was started in the summer of 1914, and it was in Germany right around World War I starting Joseph. Yes. And then it gravitated to the US after that. So I just want all my listeners here to know that we're over 100 years of Joseph Pilates, but probably like 50ish years of Joseph Pilates in the US market. So he. So he was kind of a sickly ish kid. And so he would study the movement of animals and he would try to take acrobatic and this and that. And he noticed that when animals move or like run, they hit the ground and they pull themselves through the motion. So he was really coming from nature as he was developing this. And then he's a nurse in World War I, guys are in traction, like their arms and legs are hanging. And he realizes, oh, my God, when you get up after your arms and legs are healed, you're gonna just fall right down because your core is mush. So he would start to help soldiers move their arms and legs through that traction machine so their core would be ready when they stood up. And then he gets on a boat, he meets his wife Clara Pilates on the way to New York. And here we go. Her last name was Pilates.

19:56 Clarence wasn't in the beginning, but yeah. You know what's funny is every once in a while, I. There's a lot of Kristens where I live. And so I'm like, Kristen Pilot, you know, KP Kristen Pilates. And there's like Kristen Hildebrandt this. Every once in a while you'll get somebody who's like, your last name is Pilates. It's great. That's nice right there. Can't be any. Any better, you know, like, respect than that, you know, or like, no. And it's like. And let them come for me in that same way of like, you know, the. The Bulgarian blood. This is Pete Moore. Here's the last tip for you of the podcast. We are partnered up with a company called higher dose higherdose.com they are the leader in workout recovery products. Infrared technology, LED light masks, neck enhancers, and other products such as PEMF mats and sauna blankets. If you have not gotten on the workout recovery train yet, your time and your stop is now. You got to get these products in there before these workout recovery and spas end up saturating your market.

21:02 Having your members walk out of the club and going into one of their locations for 200 bucks per month, where they're paying 39 to you. Let's become an expert in workout recovery. If we are already an authority in workouts, Higher dose, check it out. There's a wholesale code and we look forward to helping you augment your products and services to meet the demands of your members. And hey, let's get people happy, healthy and sweating. And the recovery should be just as good as the workout. And let's make it clear that Joseph Pilates did not start this with a number two lead pencil. No, he had many chains and machines that were well made and they're still standing today. They're a little kind of like a torture, you know, area to be.

21:52 You know, you go on there, the Cadillac. You know, I remember when we partnered with this group, it was kind of intimidating, you know, to like, go on with those things. And, you know, it was a large machine and it was like one on one. And it wasn't like, we're doing a private or a semi private. It's not really for, like an audience, you know. No. So you can't really get. You can't be like, yo, what's going on there? Let me, like, watch. Like, you don't, like, watch somebody do Pilates at least? No, you don't. And that is actually really true. And I, I've never heard it said like that, but yes. And then people are like, is it. Okay the way I said it or no? Oh, no, it's. It's true. That's actually a perfect. Just feed your humanity. Keep going. Yeah, exactly.

22:33 And I like to say, like, people are like, especially guys like yourself. They're like, oh, is this. Is this a lady exercise? Whatever. And I'm like, it's never turned anybody into a lady. Not any man. Or woman. The first time I did Pilates I was like, the next day I woke up like, damn, yeah, good. I know I can handle this. The second day I could not move like physically. I couldn't get out of my car anyway. Awesome. So you know, as you think about where the industry's going, you know, you've got solid core, that's been really successful. You've got, you know, inside of large clubs. Pilates has been, you know, a great revenue generator, a great way to get members engaged. Where do you see things over the next like five years with basically like maybe like an over overexposure to Pilates? As long as somebody doesn't come out with like $9 pilates, I think we're okay. Yeah, I think what's going to happen is people understand that they don't have to have these long periods of repertoire that they can take these more like bite size or specific size areas of Pilates. Like if you're sport recovery, you're going to do a certain kind of series of pil based movement for sport recovery versus sport preparation or just rehab or all the things that it's used for now but like takes up a lot of time or needs a lot of education. I think especially with AI and technology you're going to be able to, you know, talk to your Pilates bot, let's say, and then just get what you need because it does inform the human body against gravity because it doesn't quit and it always makes people feel good. It helps pull your bones up. It

24:04 gives you about four hours of extra cushion, you know, throughout the day. So I think it's going to become part of how people understand calisthenics or push ups or running or something like that. It's going to become normalized and yes, so we're going to get the, you know, we're going to the bump of things that are a little bit over marketed but I really think that it sticks because people love it. They don't really unless you're really improperly trained. We're kind of over where people are getting hurt from it. And now it's just like a normal word. Yeah, that's great. Well look, we love having you on. Please hit up Kristen if you need anything in and around her domain, which seems pretty vast and global. She'd rather talk to you and help you than walk her dog, you know, but she walks her dog enough so don't worry about taking up some of her time and look forward to seeing you at the next couple events. And you know, appreciate you kind of waving the Halo flag as proudly and as aggressively as you are. So appreciate everything.

24:58 Absolutely. It's. I'm a lifelong believer, and I also look forward to the next Academy. Pete. Awesome. All right. On three. Halo. One, two, three. Halo. Halo. Bam. Sa Sam.