I’ve always been into fitness and I’ve been a personal trainer on and off almost forever! In the 90s I qualified in Pilates Mat with the Michael King Pilates method as a way of fulfilling my personal trainer/group fitness CECs for that year.

When I changed jobs, I left my Pilates behind. I was working in water sports and outdoor adventure/education and in my spare time, I was training for and participating in marathons and triathlons.
In 2013 I took up a new post of a private personal trainer in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. My new client was looking for a Pilates instructor but until I arrived I didn’t know that she wasn’t a fan of mat Pilates but she had all the Pilates apparatus! For almost 5 years I worked in my client’s gym equipped with a reformer, cadillac, and ladder barrel which I didn’t know how to use!

In 2018, I started to explore Pilates course options, and I discovered BASI. Saudi Arabia had been going through a lot of reform at the time and women-only gyms were popping up. Previously women didn’t have access to any gyms and exercise was not encouraged amongst females. BASI had teamed up with Stance, a new Pilates studio in Riyadh, and in the autumn of 2018, the first BASI course commenced in Saudi Arabia.

Since the day I commenced the course over 2 years ago I have practiced Pilates regularly and I’m a big fan of the apparatus. After a lot of hard work, I was delighted to receive my BASI certification in March this year at the beginning of the lockdown here in Riyadh. Because I live on-site, my client and I formed what we call our Pilates bubble so we could both continue with our sessions during the difficult time of lockdown when we were confined to the house. My client is so happy that we are now using the apparatus in our personal training sessions. As a result, we are both so much stronger, more flexible and our posture has improved a lot. I enjoy teaching Pilates as much as my client enjoys performing the exercises. When working with my client through Pilates I don’t feel like it’s work as I enjoy it so much.  For us, Pilates is a win/win so thank you Joe, and thank you BASI!

Caroline Cahill from Wicklow, Ireland
based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,