President’s Report

President's Report April 2015

Wishing everyone a happy winter. The fresh and cold early mornings and snuggling up at night in front of the fire are perfect for encouraging people into our studios to keep their bodies toned and healthy in preparation for the summer months. Due to the shortened days, some find it harder to get outdoors to exercise and are looking for that comfortable indoor alternative. It is perfect to focus on our core in the winter, to prepare our stability for the cardio vascular work in the warmer months.  In Australia, winter crosses the financial year and so many office workers have long work-days and deadlines to meet. The prolonged sitting is detrimental to the health. A Pilates session is perfect for correcting posture and lengthening shortened muscles.

Congratulations to members Catherine Neal and Anita Thompson, from Queensland, who held a successful Pilates Day market, and included the PAA Pilates for Health and Wellbeing brochure in their goody bags. Carolyn at the PAA office still has these brochures available for you to use in your studios or in the community. Please email Carolyn at info@pilates.org.au if you would like some more and she will be happy to send them to you.

We often see gorgeous photos of studios and hear encouraging stories from our clients, so please feel free to share your stories with the wider Pilates community by sending your contribution to us in time for our next newsletter.

Finally I would like to take this opportunity to summarise some of the progress and goals achieved by your PAA committee over the past year or so.

Firstly, the executive committee has managed the introduction of our exciting new online system for members. This provides important information about our membership and the activities they are pursuing, and allows for easy to use access for members and administration staff.  As our membership has grown significantly and quickly, we have appointed some paid support staff for members. There are currently 1.6 FTE, including the Members Relations Officer, Systems Manager and Bookkeeper. We have also implemented professional human resource policies.

We have also introduced a new format newsletter for members with a mix of professional practice articles, events, and news about the PAA. We also advertise workshops run by studios that meet accreditation standards and accrue PDPs.

And more recently, the committee members have been working on the 2015 conference. This is a major and popular resource for our members and always attracts significant numbers. By now I’m sure you realise that we have only 4 months before our wonderful 2015 PAA Conference at Australian Technology Park gets underway.  Running from 22-25 October the schedule is crammed with some marvelous presentations, workshops and classes as well as showcasing a number of fantastic exhibitors. Be sure not to miss out!

Our second goal is to promote the practice of Pilates both for professional purposes and to support the business objectives of members and studios. To achieve this, the committee has just finalised a major marketing project targeting medical centres, doctor’s surgeries, and for studios to use in their own marketing initiatives. This has complemented our steady marketing efforts, including contributing articles and interviews to national print media and blogs. We run an active and ongoing social media campaign. We are also exploring new ways to assist our members to grow their business via social media programs.

The third goal is to promote research in, and support acceptance of, Pilates within the mainstream health care system and the committee hopes that by developing the PAA Research Grant Fund offering three financial grants per year to members embarking on valuable scientific and evidence based research. This complements existing research efforts such as the La Trobe University study into Pilates Exercise for Pregnant Women and other work at UTAS.

We have made good progress working with affiliated educational bodies to ensure that they provide qualifications recognized by ASQA and in educating consumers to seek out registered practitioners. This work is ongoing.

The PAA’s objective has always been to ensure that governments and the health system only work with accredited practitioners and studios. We continue to pursue this strongly and with success.

The fourth goal is to build stronger links with equipment and service providers of interest to members.

The objective is to engage these providers through sponsorship and display opportunities at conferences and other events in order to ensure members and studios have access to the best products on the market. For example, we are bringing a wide range of new equipment from the United States for members to experience at the 2015 conference.

Once again, this quarterly newsletter contains a number of interesting articles on a variety of subjects, so settle back, and spend some time reading and exploring the articles in the following pages.

Enjoy the read and see you all at the Conference.

 

Jen xxxx