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Ashley Mcintosh
I started running after graduating high school in 2003 and in 2006 got a job at Fleet Feet, a running store and my first race was a half marathon. After that, it was injury after injury and jokes about making it to the next race. I turned to the hot yoga studio across the street from Fleet Feet in hopes that might help my chronic injuries with running. Unfortunately, that made them worse.
I had persistent hip, shoulder, rib and lower back pain. Eventually the lower back pain got so bad I had to seek out a chiropractor to help. She sent me to Jeni, who I knew from when both of us ran together with Fleet Feet. She had been trying to get me to pilates for years. In 2016 I finally buckled down and committed to 2 pilates classes a week. Within a few sessions I was moving better and running uninjured. I am healthier now at 35 than I was at 20 and am still able to run, though maybe not marathons.
A year into my pilates journey I was hooked.
I learned about the hyper mobility in all the joints of my body and how I had no control over stabilizing anything. My injuries came from hanging out in my joints all the time. Pilates gave me the control I needed to get out of my joints and work on lengthening and extending.
I own a piano school, McIntosh Piano Academy, and have been teaching for 18 years. Because Jeni knew me from when I was director of all the running classes she attended with Fleet Feet, she saw my potential to join her teaching family.
My journey from pilates student to pilates instructor happened so organically, I’m still not sure if it was my idea or Jeni’s idea first. What I do know, is that I love it. I was born to teach and I’ve never been able to keep from sharing what I’m passionate about. My own journey in pilates of slowing down movement to gain control, has developed me into a very detail oriented teacher. It never seems to matter what I’m teaching, I have always wanted to create a strong foundation and I’ve found the best way to do that is go slow and take it one step at a time until you find those connections.
My goal in teaching pilates is to help anyone who attends my class find the little things that make the big differences. Having so much instability in my own body, yet being so strong at the same time helped me realize it really is the little things, or stabilizer muscles, that matter most. I hope to help all my students to find the same magic I did.