Ealing based Timea Kirwan is a Pilates and Yoga instructor with nine years’ experience helping busy women get in shape and keep in shape with a minimum daily investment of time. She has four children of her own and has developed a special set of exercise routines for mothers wanting to get their figures back after pregnancy. Now Timea’s company, tkPILATES, has launched an exercise app and a range of active clothing. West London Mum asked Timea about tkPILATES and her ideas on fitness, launching a business, being a working mum and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
What inspired you to start TK Move?
I was always keen on keeping fit and I experimented with various systems. Pilates and Yoga produced the best results and so I devoted myself to it. Friends began asking if I could help them – specially women with young families and women who travelled constantly for work. Soon I was giving classes and doing individual coaching…next a friend with IT experience came up with the idea of the app…then the clothing range seemed a natural extension. The whole thing snowballed…
What makes TK Move unique?
It’s all about efficiency. The tkPILATES regime has been designed to deliver real results – results that last – quickly and with the absolute minimum of time-input. The whole programme – exercises, app, clothing – has been put together for people who just don’t have much time. We know it works: it works for me and it works for our clients, thousands of them, all over the world.
Your top three exercising tips?
First, learn to trigger your accessory muscles: this will enable you to bring skin back into a tight bond with the underlying muscle tissue. Second, practise performing all the exercises with maximum power and precision: this creates good definition. Third, develop your skeletal and muscular systems together so as to keep your growing strength and flexibility in balance.
What issues have you faced?
As a mother, I faced the possibility of losing the figure I was so proud of unless I took positive action. I made myself a promise: I could be a success as a mother, a success as a working woman and a success as a fit and healthy person…and I would. That was the start of tkPILATES!
Advice to women setting up their own business?
Most enterprises start with a dream. When you’re knee-deep in problems it’s easy to forget the dream. My advice is: don’t! Treasure the dream, never give up. And don’t throw the rainy days into the bin: there’s always something to learn, something to appreciate, even when you’re feeling at the end of your tether.
Most rewarding aspect of what you do?
What I love is seeing women try the tkPILATES programme, in tkPILATES outfits, experience results in look and mood, get inspired and set out on a journey to renew themselves. It’s just wonderful watching how happy they become.
How do you juggle kids and work?
With difficulty! It can’t be easy. I’m lucky because my husband supports my business career and both of us try to involve the kids in our professional lives as much as we can. For instance, we do yoga and Pilates together, they help me with stock control, and we talk about tkPILATES a lot. So the answer is that my husband and my children make it work… they make it all possible.
Favourite restaurant in west London?
We’ve always loved the River Cafe. But the great thing about west London is that there are so many new restaurants opening up – and healthy eating seems to be a universal theme here.
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Photo credit: nicolabensley.com
