Suzanne Newby
Director and Principal Instructor - PFIWA
My journey into Pilates was a long and winding road. Throughout my youth I took part in every possible dance style, but always found my way back to contemporary dance as I was so flexible and loved the free expression you could exude through the body. Unaware, I practised a lot of Pilates during my dance and theatre training.
I have always been a larger than life personality and was always into rock climbing, abseiling and other exciting extreme sports like jumping out of planes (anything that provided an overall body buzz!). After finishing school, I knew I wanted to travel and see the world before studying anything too intense. With my drive and love of helping others I completed a personal training course which I used overseas.
After spending five years travelling around the world, I finally settled in Cardiff, Wales, where I stayed for the next five years. During this time I became an aerobics instructor, becoming famous as the crazy energetic lady who provided 1 hour of pure cardio bliss (or what I thought was bliss!).
As I became older and wiser, I realised that my body wasn’t built to be worked to death and it started to give me signs that it wasn’t coping. I started to get lower back pain and migraines (due to minimal transverse abdominal strength and bad posture) and I knew I needed to find a different way to exercise. I started to look into Pilates and just by reading about it, I knew I was going to become a Pilates instructor.
I moved back to WA and made it my sole mission to find the best Pilates studio in Perth and I definitely found it with PFIWA.
In my first beginners course I was blown away with the amount of informative detail and instruction I received, and I left that first class thinking ‘why the hell didn’t someone show me this before?!’ Aerobics was gone, I now lived and breathed Pilates with no looking back. After months of my own intensive Pilates training, I was ready to do my instructor training course.
As I became more experienced as an instructor, I specialised in many Pilates areas such as Reformer, Fitball, Pregnancy and Post Natal Pilates and I currently hold a Diploma in Professional Pilates Instruction and am a member of the Pilates Alliance which is the Pilates industry peak body. Many thanks to Sally Anderson for my recent training experiences with you, you have and will continue to be a fantastic mentor.
With my love of helping others and a real sense of urgency to have every person in the world feel how I feel about Pilates, it was inevitable that Frances and I would be drawn together as business partners, great friends and Directors of the PFIWA.