Jim Munson didn’t exactly embrace Pilates when he was introduced to it more than two decades ago.
“We were living in Glen Arbor and my wife was taking a Pilates class,” he recalls. “She signed me up without asking me.”
Munson recalls beginning his Pilates practice “with a bad attitude.”
“I thought, ‘I did not belong with these women. I played football in high school and college, I am an athlete,’” he said. “I ran for years and I loved track.”
But pretty quickly, Munson had a change of heart.
“I was so impressed with what the women could do, and they gave me plenty of room doing balance work. I decided this is good. And I have loved it ever since,” he says. “It’s been a wonderful thing … I think of it as therapeutic, an exercise that goes further than what I used to do, which was to run and do sit-ups.”
Finding relief from back pain
It was through a regular Pilates practice that Munson no longer struggled with pain in his back.
“I thought if I continued running I’d end up in a wheelchair,” he said. “But then I got into Pilates. That’s what really brought my core strength around. I had stopped playing tennis and golf over concerns of injury. I had started swimming. I was swimming a mile a day, and if I hit the wall wrong on my laps, I would throw my back out. It took several years of Pilates, but I don’t have a back problem any more.”
The Pure Pilates difference
Jim and Barbara Munson were married for 54 years when she passed away about nine years ago. While staying in his condo in Traverse City, he discovered Pure Pilates, just a short distance away. He started taking classes at the studio.
“I’ve had enjoyable and delightful classmates,” he says. “The class is really super, and [instructor] Sahra is delightful, just so special.”
Munson is committed to taking a Pilates class once a week — “no question about it,” he says — and calls it “a discipline that I strive to follow.”
He’s also a big fan of the studio’s skilled instructors.
“Every one of the teachers there is just terrific,” he says. “I enjoy the companionship I have not only with the teachers, but the fellow students. I’m always early for class and I sit there and have enjoyable conversations. It’s just wonderful.”
Importance of family
A few years back, Munson began spending time with his companion Merry, who also lost her longtime spouse. She had been married for 57 years when her husband passed away.
“Every day, I appreciate her and tell her so. We have a lot of fun together,” he says. “Merry and I said early on, ‘I can’t replace Tom and she can’t replace Barbara, but we can certainly communicate and share our lives together.’”
Munson, who is a proud father to two daughters and several grandchildren (and two great-grandsons), enjoys spending winters with Merry at her condo in Florida. Together they relish their summers in northern Michigan, where he can keep moving and stretching and strengthening his body and mind at Pure Pilates.
“I’m not a gym-goer. I don’t enjoy that,” he says. “But I sure enjoy going to Pure Pilates.”
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