After decades of looking after her health and teaching others to do the same, 60-year-old pilates instructor Suzanne Lott reveals the secret to staying in shape at any age and how it's never too late to transform your life...
Sue’s passion for health is undeniable, radiating out of her as she talks about her work. She has been a fitness instructor nearly all her life and now teaches at the Church Crookham community centre. Sue uses her science based understanding of the body to offer a unique practice with a strong focus on health for restorative results. In particular her PilatesPlus classes are proof that with the right tools you can maintain your health at any age or level of fitness.
"All my life I've been interested in health, it's really difficult to say in a nutshell why I started but it was from the intention of wanting to help.”
Her appreciation for her health and commitment to staying in shape is unsurprising once you learn of the adversity she faced early on in her life.
At age just 13 Sue was diagnosed with osteomyelitis, a life-threatening infection in the bone marrow. After six weeks in hospital she was discharged. The last words she was told by the specialist were that she would almost certainly walk with a limp for the rest of her life. Despite this prediction Sue never suffered with one and credits this to her continued active lifestyle.
She began her journey into the world of health and fitness first as a beauty therapist. She had moved to Jersey in the Channel Islands where she worked at the Health Farm before branching out into teaching exercise classes as well. Sue had never pursued fitness professionally until she was more or less thrust into the role a month into working at the Farm. Her boss had seen her working out to the top 40 one Sunday and told a group who inquired about staying there that she was an exercise instructor, leaving her only the weekend to prepare before she taught her very first class. Despite this she took to it quickly and never looked back.
It was from these Jane Fonda inspired exercise classes that her passion for health and fitness grew. Soon she began to make the connections between her therapy work and exercise classes, using her understanding of the body that she learnt from her therapy sessions to inform her approach to teaching. Over the years this physiological based approach became the foundation for her practise.
“It was very useful because I was working with the massage and I was seeing the tightness and the tissues that were so taut and then when I taught, I’d see people’s inability to do certain things.”
The crucial turning point was when a client who she had worked with consistently to reduce and fix her back pain left for a few weeks and when she came back the pain had returned.
“I remember thinking to myself that is ridiculous, there has to be something that can be done that is an ongoing process”
“In those days I had a lot more clients and you only have so many hours in the day, so you think to yourself this can’t possibly be the answer, because you can’t get to everyone, what’s everyone else supposed to do?”
This was when Sue realised the importance of self help.
Her main focus today is to give her clients the tools to improve and maintain their own health. So that in this way, "I can be the icing on the cake, not the cake itself."
As time went on Sue began to develop a corrective way of maintaining a healthy body.
Despite being told at school that she wasn't clever enough to become a physiotherapist Sue went on to read widely and apply what she learnt to her classes. She learnt in detail about how different parts of the body interact and connect, that tension in your jaw can lead to problems in your hips and so on.
The main physiological technique that became the building blocks for Sue's practices was 'myfascial release', which gave new encouragement that age really is just a number when it comes down to keeping your body healthy and aches and pains at bay.
Continuing to self-teach, she found similarities across sports and other activities too. From piano playing to boxing she found common links to do with focus and breathing.
She incorporated these common links into her teaching and were so widely applicable to all forms of sport that she was even asked to train British heavyweight boxing champion Frank Bruno in a one on one session when his trainer said that he needed to improve his rhythm.
"I started to have these threads and I started to pull them together and so I was lucky enough over the years to have people who were open minded enough to be my guinea pigs.”
Sue found that the three key elements in any practise is;
Rhythm
Awareness,
and the breath
Sue believes that the issue nowadays is that fitness is obsessed with power and strength instead of listening to your body and finding a balance. This doesn't mean however, that she doesn't push her classes.
"I like them always to have something they can’t do because that’s the process with anything.”
Sue keeps her lesson plans as flexible as possible so she can adapt to the needs of her class. On average however, she says she tries to rotate between a variety of kit through a five week cycle.
"All the classes are different. I’m always trying to keep it fresh and diverse."
"The large balls work with the awareness, trying to get the tissue to remember how to be resilient. They also teach the body flow as you move them the ball will move smoothly. It encourages the body to remember, that’s what it’s trying to do."
Another technique Sue swears by is ideokinesis. The discipline employs the use of images as a way of improving muscle patterns. Sue explains that this is the only way to counter and override unhealthy patterns created from bad habits. However these images won’t work if you're not familiar with them and so rather than using complex descriptions Sue uses a diverse range of everyday images.
Often, Sue says, if the position or the move isn't clicking in their head for whatever reason just a slightly different explanation will be enough for them to understand.
"It's not about me understanding you, it's about you understanding yourself. And once you understand what I'm saying you can self-correct."
Sue can testify to the transformative results her practise can achieve.
“I’ve had people come up to me in tears and say you’ve changed my life. People who you’ve given honestly such simple things to do.”
But consistency is key to seeing results. “There are some people in the class who do the practise and you see life changing improvements, people who have been stuck with things their whole life.”
The reality is that it's sometimes challenging to get people to apply the practise regularly enough.
“You know that’s a possibility for everybody but it’s so hard to get people to take on board the self-help.”
"It's an uphill struggle." But when applied correctly meaningful and life-altering results can happen.
This prompted Sue to take action and intervene.
"I realised that if she was my client I would have had this conversation with her a long time ago.”
Each day Sue worked with her mother to gradually improve her health and along with it her quality of life and the end result was little short of a miracle.
This was Sue's mother Cynthia Biggs only four years ago, about to abseil down the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth for charity. She did the impressive 300ft descent to celebrate her 80th birthday when only five years earlier she had been housebound.
Now Cynthia usually attends two classes and walks for an hour each day. Gaining her independence back she even returned her stairlift and disabled bus pass believing she no longer needed them and had them on false pretences.
"I haven't done it for her, I can't do it for her, but I have given her lot's of encouragement which has helped motivate her to make changes.”
Sue continued to support her when she had both knees replaced, working to prepare the tissue around the area before the operation.
"If the tissue is hydrated and has good circulation it's going to fare much better than if everything is tight and stiff.”
She recovered so successfully from the surgery that she now has a range of movement in her knees that shouldn't be possible for someone who has undergone those procedures.
Cynthia’s extraordinary recovery back to full health is living proof of the power of Sue's teachings.
“The message I give to them is that, we’re all getting older maybe you can’t keep it in pristine condition but if you look at a beautiful old house or a beautiful old car, they’re old but they are still in good working order and that’s the message I say to people is you can get to the finish line with a quality of life.”
The impact Sue’s teachings has on her clients is clear to see.
“Every Christmas my classes at the Victoria hall and the jubilee hall give me this party and they always send these messages and it is, it’s life changing.”
The take away, Sue insists, is “in the end fitness is important but health is the biggest thing”
"If you just take ten minutes a day, you'll find that your whole day will be just different."
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