On this week's guest podcast we were joined by Amanda Freeman, the founder of NYC SLT. Amanda founded SLT in 2011 when she realized the New York fitness scene was missing something...a high intensity, low impact workout that made you leave feeling like you just completed a super hard full body workout! This is where her idea of SLT came forward, and she has never looked back!
The beginning of slt
Amanda described herself as always being entrepreneurial. She always had a job, and even started her own wellness company that was centered around fitness and nutrition. On a trip to LA she took a crazy hard pilates class and loved it! Before that, she had only been doing pilates at her local equinox, but didn't realize that there was this other way of looking at pilates, from a high intensity point of view. She loved the results she got from pilates, but was missing that post workout burn, or hard core sweating mid class feeling. This is when she realized that the fitness market was missing something!
Prior to this she worked for a trend forecast company, so she had a bit of insight to wellness trends and felt that if she brought this idea to New York, it would catch on and be a hit! Soon enough, she was right and she was spending 16 hour days working at the studio, even teaching some classes herself! She felt that she had to spend a lot of time educating the wellness market about what the workout was, and how she felt it was a workout that everyone should be doing. She wanted it to be the type of workout that you can do from any age, and continue to feel good doing it in your older age. They had to evolve with the wellness trends and create new and fun ways to workout.
What is slt?
SLT was different to other forms of pilates, because it uses the megaformer instead of the reformer, so you are getting a low impact workout, but it is high intensity. They even launched a "tread" class, which involves both the treadmill and pilates. Carolina called it the "Barrys of pilates." This class is mindful of both aspects, the treadmill and the benefits of pilates. This honestly sounds like a class I would love!
Lastly, they dive into Amanda's wellness nonnegotiables, which involves a lot of skin care! Amanda loves red light therapy, and makes sure she gets in a 5 minute morning skin care routine + at least a 10 minute one at night.
sorting out the mess we call life
Amanda also stressed the importance of how she lives by the idea that you don't need to be amazing at everything and that she is okay with trying more things and not being as good at all of them. She would rather sort through the mess of life then having to put certain things off in life in order to achieve others. She never wanted to put off having a family in order to achieve her goals, so she just decided to do them both and maybe have some moments where she messed up, but would rather allow herself that space then to restrict her life. I found this part so interesting, I feel like we always think we need to be good at one thing, before moving on to the other, or we can't do something unless we accomplish something else in life first. But, if you look at it this way, you can achieve what you want, it might take you longer and you might have more going on in life, but you can still get there with the right mindset and perseverance.
xo
Michaela
If you want to hear more, listen here!! + if you want to watch on YouTube, follow the link below! :)
Comments