It is 10 on a Sunday morning and Maslinda Jusoff is already on her yoga mat, doing a series of gentle stretches in front of the mirrored wall of the dance studio.
Around her bright green mat, rows of yoga mats are laid out, ready for the students who have signed up for her Mat Pilates – Mobility and Flexibility class.
She moves effortlessly, occasionally pausing to reach for the remote control whenever the doorbell sounds downstairs.
Each time a student walks in, she stops what she is doing to greet them with a cheerful, “Hi, good morning!” as if they were her first students of the day.
But they are not.
The mid-morning class is already Maslinda’s second class that Sunday. Earlier, she had taught a 50-minute Reformer Pilates session. Usually, if a class isn’t full, she’ll jump onto an available reformer to demonstrate movements and practise alongside her students, getting down occasionally to correct their poses – and giving herself a full workout too.
By most accounts, having just finished a full 50-minute class, Maslinda should be at least a little spent. Pilates is a demanding workout, after all.
And yet, the 57-year-old Maslinda is steady, and ready to go again. She works through every pose with her class, pausing to check on them. Many of her students are younger than her.
This stamina and quiet confidence – which Kak Linda, as she is known to her students – is something her school friends would never have predicted, she says.
“(I was) that ‘nerd girl’ sitting quietly under the tree,” she recalls of her younger self, who would dodge anything involving sweat, sunlight or running. She lets out a hearty laugh.
“I would stick koyok (medicated patches), on my temples, pretending to be unwell on the days that we had Physical Education and forge notes from my father.”
The younger Maslinda did not like anything that made her sweat under the sun, which made marching drills a torture. She did not like running, partly because her knees knocked together awkwardly.
Fitness, for her, in every sense, was somebody else’s world. Not hers, not then.
Today, not only is Maslinda the lead instructor at her own Pilates studio in Kuala Lumpur, she also teaches classes at other fitness centres.
But the grandmother of two is more than just a Pilates instructor; she also runs an aesthetics business that she had built decades earlier.
“My day begins with an 8.30am class and continues until the studio closes at 10pm,” she says. “Even on holidays, I will look for opportunities to exercise.”
It would be difficult to reconcile that nerd girl with the woman she is now, she reckons. Today, she has made movement an important part of her life – from a way to manage her own physical problems to a profession and a way of life.
“I would tell that girl to start running,” she says when asked what she would say to her younger self.
She pauses, and then laughs. “Nah, I wouldn’t. Life is not like that.”
Finding her way to fitness
By the time Pilates entered her life, Maslinda’s body had already been through a lot. At 17, while still in school, she had an accident that injured her shoulder, leaving a lateral deformity.
The injury threw the rest of her body out of balance – tilting her hips and contributing to a constant back pain.
The effects lingered. Over the years, she developed other problems – knee and shoulder issues and tennis elbow.
She did not address these issues and simply carried on with life, enduring the discomfort – the way many people do, unaware of how much a single injury could shape her movement in the decades to come.
Marriage and motherhood followed soon after. Maslinda had her first daughter at 20, and she noticed that her stomach had grown soft because of her pregnancy. This was enough to send her, albeit reluctantly, to the gym.
That was when her relationship with exercise began. She got into it with full force, even hiring a personal trainer and throwing herself into weightlifting.
Over the years, her exercise regime varied between weightlifting, jogging, treadmill workouts and Zumba. She became stronger and fitter, but there was a downside.
“I was so stiff I couldn’t even fold and roll my body,” she says. “My joints really suffered, and my lower back pain was so persistent that lying flat on the floor was out of the question.”
She knew that she needed to do something about the pain she was experiencing. So, as she approached her 40s, she started yoga, as a way to improve her mobility. And then, she tried Pilates.
The difference to her mobility was almost immediate.
“I felt the difference, especially in my scapula area,” she recalls. “When I did roll-up (a Pilates movement that requires a person to curl the spine, one vertebra at a time), my lumbar spine felt like it was being massaged. Since then, I noticed that Pilates has helped my body recover.”
Pilates also helped her realise what years of weight training had not: Strength was not simply about lifting heavier.
“When we aren’t intentional about using our muscles, we rely a lot on our joints,” she says, reflecting on her own experience.
Pilates, she explains, taught her how to isolate and engage the “right” muscles and use them correctly when carrying out any movement.
For the first time, Maslinda realised that she’d found an exercise that seemed to work with, rather than against, her body.
“I did it (Pilates) for myself,” she says.
But as she continued attending classes, her instructor noticed her progress and encouraged her to consider becoming certified as a teacher. Maslinda eventually took her Pilates certification in 2017.
By then, she had discovered that the practice had given her more than improved flexibility and strength.
She had learnt how to engage her core and pelvic floor, and to pay attention to the smaller muscles involved in movement.
Not only did Pilates strengthen her pelvic floor, she says it also straightened the knocked knees she had lived with since childhood.
She also became more conscious of balance, posture and stability – things she believes become increasingly important with age.
An unexpected career
Pilates was never part of Maslinda’s career plan.
Her working life began in 1988 when she joined the banking industry, where she spent 17 years, eventually becoming the personal assistant to a branch manager before resigning.
Her next chapter was in beauty and wellness.
In 2006, while still working at the bank, she decided to take the Malaysian Skills Certificate (Sijil Kemahiran Malaysia, or SKM) Levels One, Two and Three.
As a trained spa therapist, Maslinda began taking clients, most of them colleagues and friends, at her home, on weekends.
The home-based business eventually grew into its own space in Setiawangsa, before moving to its current location in Setapak, while she juggled work, the spa, family and her on-and-off workouts.
When her second daughter, who was into Pilates, dance and Zumba, needed a space to conduct classes, her Setapak premises became home to both the spa and a fitness studio.
Maslinda also started teaching Pilloxing, a workout combining boxing-inspired movements and Pilates, having obtained a Pilloxing certification for it, but soon realised that boxing’s more aggressive style did not quite suit her.
“I realised my heart was not in boxing. I am more feminine-inclined and preferred Pilates,” she says.
That realisation led her to further her Pilates journey.
In 2020, she bought her first reformer machines. The reformer uses a carriage that slides along rails, with springs providing resistance, allowing for a wider range of motion and more challenging variations.
Mat Pilates, by contrast, relies solely on body weight and gravity, using the floor for support.
The art of movement
Another reason Maslinda pursued her Pilates certification was to help her daughter manage her scoliosis and lower back pain through Pilates-based rehabilitation alongside physiotherapy.
Having learnt Pilates-based rehabilitation herself, she wanted to be able to help her daughter.
What Maslinda enjoys most about teaching isn’t the technical corrections that Pilates offers, or the business side of running a studio – it is watching people change.
Students who arrive stiff, in pain or convinced they are “too old” for Pilates leave their sessions moving more freely and standing taller.
The most common fear she hears from new students is some version of: “I’m too old”, “too stiff”, or “too far gone”.
Her answer is always the same: It is never too late to
start, and being active does not have to mean undertaking extreme movements.
She does not believe everyone needs to run marathons, climb mountains or master difficult Pilates poses.
“You just need to move,” she says.
The important thing, she believes, is to find an activity that suits one’s ability and, more importantly, one that one enjoys enough to keep doing.
“Just don’t be idle,” she adds.
Her grandchildren have absorbed Maslinda’s focus on movement, flexibility and posture without realising it, she says.
The older one, a 10-year-old - who refers to her grandmother as “Bingo”, a nickname borrowed from Didi & Friends, now corrects her own posture, a habit born from years of watching her grandmother teach and practise Pilates.
And her two-year-old brother already mimics downward dog and hip-up poses (basic postures in Pilates) that he sees his grandma doing.
Not slowing down
Maslinda believes movement becomes even more important as people age.
Balance and stability can help reduce the risk of falls, while stronger muscles can provide protection and support for the bones.
She is also keen to dispel the idea that certain physical problems are “common” in older or ageing women.
Instead, she believes everyone should pay attention to their bodies rather than simply live with discomfort.
For her, exercise or rehabilitation is always preferable to allowing a problem to worsen.
“Once you feel pain, don’t wait until you feel worse,” she says. “I would recommend Pilates rehab movements.”
Maslinda clarifies that she is not encouraging people to push through pain. Rather, she believes paying attention to one’s own body and addressing problems early – through appropriate exercise or rehabilitation – is important.
Despite it being a “trend”, Maslinda emphasises that Pilates is not about looking younger or obtaining an ideal body shape.
Rather, it is about maintaining a body that allows her to continue doing the things she wants to do.
And she has no plans to stop anytime soon.
“As long as I’m healthy, I don’t want to stop,” she says. “Because if I stop, I feel like I’m done.”
For Maslinda, staying active is also part of preparing for a meaningful life as she grows older.
She points out that physical fitness is particularly important for Muslims who hope to perform their umrah or haj, where the rituals involve considerable walking and movement.
“People always say, when you’re old, you have to do more amal ibadat (acts of worship),” she says.
“Exercising or being active is, I believe, part of that amal too. You need a healthy, able body to perform your ibadah (worship).”
It is a fitting philosophy for the former PE dodger who once preferred sitting beneath a tree.
She has come a long way from the girl who dreaded running under the hot sun.
Today, movement is her life. And she intends to keep doing so for as long as her body allows.
“Age is subjective,” she says. “If I can do it, anyone can too.”
