Pilates increases your flexibility & strength

Research has shown just 45 minutes of Pilates, twice a week for 8 weeks, was able to increase both flexibility, strength and your lower back control. This study looked at difference achieved by those who completed Pilates compared with people who did not. Clinical Pilates enhances your ability to achieve these results under the watchful guidance of a physiotherapist who will also help you fix injuries and reduce your chance of injury.

Optimal muscle function requires you to adopt a good posture. Without good posture, you are unable to use the efficient system (deep supporting muscles) that your body is designed to. This increases the chance of muscular pain, back and neck pain. By learning what these ideal postures are, you can then identify which muscles you should feel working when you exercise. This allows you to build up the intensity of exercise and increase the work on your global muscles while you maintain the support from your stabilising ones.

It often is not as difficult as it appears to relearn different postures for your back and neck, however you really need expert guidance to achieve this. Otherwise the next steps of progressing into harder movements and exercises may well be a complete waste. Once you are able to achieve a better posture, you require lots of repetition becoming familiar with this new position to ensure this postural change is permanent. And that is where the frequency of you Pilates or your home exercises is crucial in making this change. Muscle memory is the term often used as the process of encoding these movements patterns in your brain, and although the exact number of repetitions for a movement to become habit is controversial, it’s usually accepted that this requires thousands of repetitions!

Whether Clinical Pilates is completed in small groups or as one-to-one, you can look and feel great while making your body more able to tackle life.

Published September 29, 2017