HELEN O’LEARY – Director of Pilates

Helen O’Leary

QUALIFICATIONS: Chartered Physiotherapist, BSc (Hons), CSP, HCPC, AACP

Helen qualified as a Chartered Physiotherapist from The University of Birmingham in 2008 and has not looked back since. Helen’s enthusiasm and promise impressed everyone she met and it was no surprise when she accepted her first job at London Wasps Rugby Club. Here she worked within a world class multidisciplinary team and this was where her love of Pilates was born. In 2010 she completed her Polestar Pilates Rehabilitation course and began to teach both mat and equipment Pilates. Helen instantly recognised the huge benefits and potential strength gains Pilates could achieve so began to look at implementing this into the athlete’s programmes from Academy upwards. Players quickly fed back on greater stability and strength in their performance as well as greater body awareness, all of which assisted in the reduction in soft tissue injuries.

After spending three years in elite rugby, Helen quite literally packed up her bags and ran away to join the circus, accepting a position with Cirque Du Soleil in 2011. Helen spent the next two and a half years travelling with the touring show ‘Alegria’. As one of only two Physiotherapists on the show, she taught Pilates as part of performer’s ongoing maintenance treatment, to prevent injuries and as part of active rehabilitation. Pilates helped the performers, from tumblers to contortionists, remain strong and healthy throughout a gruelling schedule of up to ten shows a week.

Helen has now settled in London but continues to work with various Cirque Du Soleil shows around the world as well as with British Gymnastics. When Helen is not working and in the Pilates studio, you will find her with a camera in hand exploring as she loves to travel.

Like all the instructors who work with her, Helen is also fully pre and post natally Pilates trained. If you suffer from any injury or chronic lower back pain you could not be in safer hands