WHAT IS PILATES?

Who should be doing Pilates?  Pilates is for anyone and everyone! Women, men, teens, seniors, expectant moms, people recovering from injuries, athletes, dancers, cyclists, runners, golfers, and the list goes on. Pilates benefits all.

Pilates dramatically transforms the way your body looks, feels and performs. It builds strength without excess bulk, creating a sleek, toned body with slender thighs and a toned abdomen. It teaches body awareness, good posture and easy, graceful movement. 

One of the primary benefits of Pilates is how it affects everything else one does. One learns not only the specific exercises, but a philosophy for the correct use of muscles, joints, and breath during basic life movement. As students develop this body awareness, participation in other strenuous activities are less likely to cause injury. In short, Pilates students will actually get more benefit out of that activity because of the application of the principals they have learned through the Pilates method.

Pilates is an excellent way to rehabilitate injuries and conditions including; back pain, all kinds of disc dysfunction, neck issues, knee injuries, knee instability and pain, hip injuries, hip replacements, ankle instability, frozen shoulder, shoulder impingement, rotator cuff issues, scoliosis, kyphosis, lordosis, SI joint problems, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis and more!

What is Pilates?  Pilates is a system of exercises developed by Joseph Pilates nearly a century ago using unique apparatus, designed to improve physical strength, flexibility, posture, and to enhance the mind-body connection. It focuses on the core muscles of the body, the abdominals, back and glutes, but it is a full body workout.

Pilates is taught one-on-one or in small groups so students can learn how to engage the right muscle groups and work with proper alignment. This bodily re-education will change the way you look and the way you live in your body.

 

Rather than doing many repetitions of one movement (like 50 push-ups), in Pilates, the student performs 5-10 reps of many exercises designed to affect the muscles slightly differently. By emphasizing deliberation and control in every exercise, each set of muscles is trained in such a way as to create perfect balance in the body; whenever a muscle is worked, its opposite muscle is also worked. This creates the long, lean musculature that Pilates is known for. On-going Pilates training will also elongate the spine through realignment, improving overall flexibility and restoring height that life and gravity may have diminished.

The Pilates method originated during World War I as a therapeutic option for osteopathic patients. Its inventor, Joseph Pilates, called his regimen “Contrology” because it taught a student to be in control of his/her body and “not at its mercy.” When the discipline was discovered by the dance community in the 1920s, the Pilates method was enthusiastically endorsed as an exercise capable of building long, lean muscles without adding bulk. Through these dancers, the regimen has gradually moved to the forefront as a fitness option and today is a basic part of physical training and physical therapy.