Testimonials

Stacey Valant

Stacey has been my personal Pilates instructor for over five years. She has worked with me in my home doing mat Pilates and strength & resistance training. Stacey is an outstanding instructor & trainer. She is hardworking, reliable, upbeat and very intuitive. She knows exactly how hard and how far to push a client. She is constantly researching and implementing new exercises to keep her routines fresh and exciting. Exercising with Stacey never feels stagnate or repetitive. She is motivational, which has been very important for me because sometimes I have trouble getting and staying motivated. I would highly recommend Stacey Valant for any type of fitness instruction. Anybody would be lucky to have an instructor like Stacey. — Wendy K

The intent of this note is to share my experience over the past year with Stacey Valant and her instruction. Simply put, WOW!!!!!! What a year!!!!! I have received a tremendous gift being introduced to this form of body/mind toning. I say this because each session I encounter it not just challenges me physically but I experience an inner connection the like of which I have never experienced, even through years of training in yoga.

My background is Nursing and I spent several years as an aerobics instructor and personal trainer and enjoyed many years running marathons. That said, my body has never experienced the transformation it has with Pilates. It has truly ascended to new heights. Thanks to the ever-professional and experienced Stacey Valant I have seen flexibility I only dreamed to be possible. My muscles have taken on a shape of long, firm and lean not available through the constant barrage of weight training.

Two years before meeting Stacey I developed a very serious liver disease. I was operated on, then in ICU and on a respirator for quite sometime. The surgeons cut across my entire abdomen severing all my abdominal muscles, nerves and connective tissue. I had been literally cut in half. A year later, I returned for repair to the abdominal wall from an incisional hernia that had developed. I share this because after the surgeries I had no feeling or any abdominal strength whatsoever. Through Pilates I have developed collateral circulation and new neural pathways have opened up such that sensations have returned and my abdominal strength has once again returned.

I am the mother of three girls and I have a grand-daughter and nothing pleases me more than to walk into the girls closets and share their clothes and hear them say “you look better in that than I do”.

I was at the park the other day and without thinking about it started doing knee-ups on the kids monkey bars. This took a tremendous amount of abdominal & upper body strength to perform but I was doing it with ease and having fun. The clincher for me, however, was that when my children and the young people I was with tried to do it NO ONE else could do it!!!! Trust me pushing 50 I felt pretty proud! — Kathee P