Pilates 2 out of 3

Hey all!

I'm sure you've been doing all of your pilates since last week's post, so I'll assume you're nodding your head to the screen and that you are ready for harder routines! A lot of these ones will be with the addition of a yoga ball, so if you don't have one try and find one at the local gym or find a squishy smaller ball to start off with.

Let's get it started, preferably to some zen music playing in the background (trust, you'll need it). Okay, the first one is called a caterpillar. The caterpillar starts with you straight across the ball with your shins on the ball and your hands parallel to your shoulders. Then, you're going to use your abs to pull the ball closer to you, keeping your hands in the same position, and end the way the lady in black to the right is finished. Start off with keeping your feet flat, rolling the yoga ball across your ankles and down your foot, but once you've done this a time or two, roll the ball all the way to your toes and then grab onto the ball with your toes. This takes major abdominal strength, so its a challenging ab routine that shouldn't be done by beginners. Aim for five well done the first time, and eventually you'll be able to add fifteen to your routine.

The next exercise is also a very challenging one, so if you are just starting, try it out without the ball first, then add a small squishy ball, something that a two year old can play with, and then go for the yoga ball, which is heavier. The lady with the green yoga ball is making this look quite easy. Your goal is to not fall over forwards or backwards, and you'll most likely do both a couple (and that's forgiving) of times. Kind of like I snowboard, but unfortunately I have yet to stay upwards more than a couple of seconds. But I digress. Your objective is to lift both your upper body and legs squishing the ball in between using your muffin top. Try getting about 2 to 3 right, then add on until you reach ten to each side.

The plank is a typical tennis exercise and an exercise that is labeled frequently as the best core exercise out there. This is a harder version, with a leg lifted. You can also move from hands to elbows, holding for ten seconds each variation.

Once you are done with your workout, it'll be useful to stretch out your back, and this awkward looking man is showing how to stretch out your back well. Kick your legs up all the way until your toes are pointed to the ceiling, and then slowly bring them as far back as you can towards and over your head. If your legs don't want to go that far, leave them be. This is an intensive back stretch and if you overextend you'll pull your back muscle, which is extremely painful and detrimental to a tennis player.

Make sure you come back next week for the last session of pilates with me! See you then.

 

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!