What is Pilates?
Pilates is a way of exercising that develops control, strength and balance of the key postural muscles and in particular those of the back and abdomen. It is a style of exercise named after its creator Joseph Pilates. Joseph suffered from a number of potentially debilitating illnesses as a youth and this prompted him to develop his exercise system to overcome the weaknesses that followed these illnesses.
Whereas more conventional forms of strengthening exercise focus on specific muscles, Pilates works on muscle groups and the co-ordinated action of chains of muscles throughout the entire body to maintain good posture and correct form. Thus Pilates focusses on quality of movement rather than quantity of reps – it is not, for example, concerned with how many sit-ups you can perform but rather the precision with which you can perform them and how well the exercise targets the intended muscle groups.
Who would benefit from Pilates?
Everyone! Pilates has been successfully used to help people recover from injury, to manage lower back conditions and is increasingly used by athletes to enhance performance and reduce the risk of injury. However, Pilates has an important role for the ‘general population’ too – the skills, body control, self awareness and strength developed with regular participation can help all of us reduce the risk of developing muscle-skeletal aches and pains.
How are Pilates exercises performed?
Pilates exercises are performed very differently from other forms of exercise. Most traditional forms of strength training focus solely on the parts of you that are moving during an exercise. Pilates exercises in contrast focus just as much (if not more so) on the parts of you that should not be moving too! For example when we perform leg lifts in Pilates we are just as concerned that the pelvis and lower back are being held in the correct ‘neutral’ position as we are with the actual leg movements.
Breathing too is an integral part of Pilates exercises in terms of how we use the ribcage and diaphragm and also ensuring that certain parts of each exercise are performed on either the in or the out breath.
It is because of this emphasis on the whole body when performing Pilates exercises that it often takes new participants a while to ‘get’ the exercises. It can take many sessions of Pilates before users become fully adept at all aspects of the exercises. Fortunately the benefits for body awareness and control will be felt right from the first session.
For this same reason, it is important to be aware of the limitations too. Pilates in some environments is taught with too little emphasis on body control and awareness. In these circumstances individuals often progress to the more advanced versions of the exercises but without having developed the necessary awareness and control of their lower back and pelvis which can lead to an increased chance of injury. At MassageHealth we ensure that all exercises are performed with meticulous emphasis on body control.
**A deliberate mistake**