ESSE about
Fitness in the 1990s
I am Esse. I have been working in this sector for over 30 years, since I started teaching fitness in the 1990s.
Extreme, crazy and fun, those were the years of post Rocky Balboa machismo and Jane Fonda aerobics in which we passed, without too much of a fanfare, from fitness to wellness, totally unaware of the need for new approaches and new techniques. Anyone, even someone with little experience or after attending a course for just a weekend, could call themselves an “instructor”.
I did not recognise myself in that role, just as I had no desire to spend words and actions without adequate and rigorous preparation as the background.
At that historical moment only ISEF (Istituto Superiore di Educazione Fisica), with its in-depth and broad-ranging study plan, responded to my training needs.
My desire for knowledge and to be up to date at all times led me to accumulate countless certifications, one for each type of gymnastics that arrived in Italy, always far behind the United States.
Meanwhile, I was teaching 10, even 12 hours a day between fitness with music and the apparatus room.
The ISEF diploma
In that landscape, fresh from the ISEF diploma and full of enthusiasm, I understood the need to offer myself as a sort of personal trainer ante litteram. From the management of large groups, I then moved on to small classes, while the need for individual lessons, tailored to the person, grew in strength.
No longer the need for a gym where you could show off your physicality and ability, where you compared the diameter of your biceps or the definition of the famous gym turtle, but instead the acquisition of a space dedicated to personalised training and to the need for a didactic approach that was both preventive and adaptable, based on a concept of well-being linked to health before the aesthetics of the body.
A degree in Motor Sciences and an MA in Posturology
My experience as technical director and then owner of an important fitness centre in Florence was invaluable, but it was with the degree in Sports Science that the vision of what I was doing and what I went on to do changed irreversibly.
Ever more convinced that the functional aspect was decisive and the aesthetic aspect a consequence of the achievement of health, I deepened my skills in the important and controversial topic of Posturology, specialising with a 1st level MA at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery in Florence. My new path was taking shape.
With this enriched cultural and experiential background, and a new vision of the person as a whole, I spent the first decade of the 2000s studying and experimenting personally with different techniques, looking for those that corresponded to my working needs.
The didactic offer for us teachers was broad, but of a modest level. Superficiality had set up camp in training, on every corner schools thrived that followed the various trends (the situation is not much different even now…). There was a swarm of courses and more courses in new disciplines – with no time to acquire skills – adopted for years in other countries but still unknown in Italy.
The Pilates Method
I then began to practise and study the Pilates method, earning certificates from three different schools and then finding the answers to all my questions in Anna Maria Cova’s studio.
With Covatech® I followed the entire training course in Matwork and large apparatus, making my own both the methodological approach and the scientific skills of the well-known physiotherapist who had brought Pilates to Italy in 1989.
With the aim of bringing the people I trained to a new awareness, in parallel with Pilates studies, I undertook the demanding training course in Gyrotonic and then Gyrokinesis, obtaining the I and II level certifications in both specialties.
I was fortunate to study with Silvia Frosali, an exceptional trainer, who combined 30 years of academic experience with the work of Juliu Horvat, visionary creator of the technique.
Collaboration with the Degree Course in Motor Sciences
I undertook a demanding path in professional development and, thanks to the presence of extraordinarily able teachers with cultural depth, I was led to collaborate, from 2007 onwards, as a teacher on the Degree Course in Motor Sciences.
In their experimental theses, carried out in collaboration with Professor of Pharmacology Domenico Pellegrini, my students investigate aspects of athletics, sports, fitness and, increasingly often, posture, analgesia, and urogynecology.
The scientific evidence that emerges is then applied to my work in the studio, thus reflecting a scientific and rigorous approach.
Pre e post-partum
An important chapter in my professional experience is, without doubt, linked to the preparation of the delicate phases of pre and postpartum.
The idea – born out of the objective need to follow my young students during pregnancy, allowing them to continue to train safely despite psychophysical changes – was to prepare my students to face childbirth with maximum efficiency and then recover anatomical-functional, and therefore aesthetic, aspects in a short time.
At the time the gymnastic techniques devoted to this were unsatisfactory and were, above all, very dated.
Abdominal Hypopressive Gymnastics (AHG)
In 2012, Abdominal Hypopressive Gymnastics (AHG) (AHG) arrived in Italy, created by Dr. Marcel Caufriez, it marked a real revolution both from the therapeutic point of view in the context of urogenital problems, and from the postural point of view as regards developments in fitness Functional Systemic Reprogramming (RSF).
I therefore immediately took part in the first training course in Italy, specialising at the highest levels in both courses and introducing this discipline to those those taught in my studio.
Despite the considerable initial difficulties, because my clients found it tiring and boring at first and no one understood what it was (the prefix ‘hipo’ was certainly not attractive), I strongly believed in this new approach, getting great results and not only in the case of postpartum.
The contribution to athletics training
Pilates and Hypopressive Techniques, in particular Functional Systemic Reprogramming, are the techniques I use most in relation to athletics training in different sports, for the most part to increase balance, coordination and core strengthening.
With Gyrotonic and Gyrokinesis, I make my contribution to the physical training of athletes from other disciplines, including golfers, gymnasts and dancers, in terms of flexibility, joint mobility and dynamism.
Pilates for children and teenagers
For some years now, in my studio, I have been experimenting with Pilates for children, with a weekly class, divided by age groups (first and second cycles of elementary school).
Thanks to a particular approach to teaching, in which play makes the lessons engaging, children’s concentration and posture improves, along with their ability to coordinate and balance.
The growing number of teenage students has also led me to develop a specific teaching methodology for them, with which I pursue functional objectives for their important and delicate process of development.