Pilates Part 1 of 3

Hello all!

I'll get straight into it-- pilates is where it's at. It's a great cross-training tool to use to strengthen your body, especially your core, and better yet, it is a no impact exercise tool. It's so great, in fact, that I will devote three separate blogs to this awesome stuff, for lack of a better term, because it is 8 pm on a Sunday after all. :)

Pilates has been a recent discovery of mine, along with yoga. These were two things I never had time to do as an athlete, and unfortunately, I wish I had done it during my tennis days, as I think it would have made me a stronger, better player. So let's talk about pilates. Pilates was originally made by a dude called John Pilates, who created machines specifically made to help recovering injured soldiers as physical therapy to strengthen their whole body without having to get up and walk around. It has since morphed into a popular gym experience, most of which occurs on the mat, even though true pilates is based off of machines, like this:

   This machine looks scary, but in reality it's easy to use and can strengthen every muscle in your body with different movements. But because these machines are A LOT of money, and because even going to classes with these machines are A LOT of money, most pilate-ers are mat fanatics, because all you need is, well, a mat. Or something squishy to sit on.

So the basics of pilates include terminology that you'll here thrown around, like pelvic floor muscles, which sounds very fancy, but in fact are the muscles you contract when you really need to pee and you're holding it in. Pilates stance is when your heels are touching each other and your toes are facing out, like a ballerina. One of the more likely things you'll hear on the mat is the sitz bone, which at first I had no idea how to spell, so I googled sitz, and apparently that's the correct spelling since it corresponds with the bones you "sit" on! More clearly, the sitz bones are the bones at the bottom of your pelvis. You'll always be reminded, including here, to align your sitz bown as close to your heels as possible, and this may not make sense at all. What you want to make sure, essentially, is that your not laying directly on your butt cheeks. Instead, you want to align your body so the weight is distributed fully across it, which means you'll probably have to adjust your butt (or sitz bones) by arching your back a bit back and forth. You should be laying down straight, but with a natural curve at the base of your spine. This is called a neutral pelvis-- an arched back or flattened back puts more pressure on your spine. In some pilates moves, you have to work to keep your hips and back in neutral.

Tabletop is another term that means you are laying on your back and have your knees up and together in a 90 degree angle. This is a resting position in pilates. Kind of like her:

   The only difference with tabletop and what this girl is doing is that your arms would be down and resting. What she is doing is called hundreds, which represents the breath count (one one hundred, two one hundred, ect.). When doing hundreds, you can either keep your legs in tabletop or straighten them, all the while pulsing your arms up and down, but not touching the mat. Straightening your legs is obviously harder, but targets your lower belly better. For those of you with the dreaded belly pooch, these are fantastic for strengthening your lower abs.

Let's talk about some more exercises. This one below doesn't have a name that I can recall, but is a good side muffin burner. Notice how the feet are positioned side by side, and the arm is aligned (or should be aligned) with the shoulder so as to not put too much pressure on the wrist. The other arm is straight up. There are two variations of this exercise. The first one is simply balancing, and the easy of the two. The other variation is to use the arm that is already up above your head, move it through the space created between your legs and other arm slowly until you reach the opposite end of your mat, and then slowly bring it back up again. If you need a visual, think about this guy with the red shirt in the picture. His left hand is high up in the air, and he would move this arm through the opening created by his arm and legs, turning his body but not falling, and reach it to the right side of his mat.

Then there is this
girl on the right.
She's doing an extended leg hundred, or she could be reaching up to touch her legs and then bringing everything back down, which are two pilates exercises that are great for the back and lower abs.

The image with the green mat and the girl in black is both a stretching and strengthening pilates move. Digression: pilates rarely makes you sore, because most of the exercises are both strengthening and stretching. Pretty awesome! Anyways, she is keeping both legs straight, bringing one leg up at a time and pulling her leg closer to her for a hamstring stretch using her hands. You can grip like she does, by her ankle, or for those of us who are not that flexible, you can grab behind your knee, but make sure you keep your leg straight. The opposite leg will always hover above the ground.

Finally, the exercise below is a good hamstring and butt strengthening one. Notice that she lifts her leg up-- you can start with keeping both legs on the ground and lifting your pelvis. If this is too easy, bring your feet in closer to your body and lift up on your toes, then lift your pelvis. Still too easy? You're reading for her pose, which necessitates lifting one leg up at a time. You can either pulse here, try and stay here as long as you can, or lift and switch legs each time. 

Till next time, adieu!