It’s a mysterious sounding word when you first hear it, and you can’t help but wonder if they are mispronouncing the name of those seagoing ruffians of yore, but in actuality, Pilates is a wonderful workout routine that can help you achieve better balance, improved flexibility and strength, build up muscle tone, and even provide some relief for chronic aches and pains! Pilates might look a little intimidating at first glance, but it’s really easy and fun once you get the hang of it!
Pilates has been around for nearly a century, Joseph Pilates developed this unique style of exercise and body conditioning as a way to help dancers recover from injuries without losing their hard-earned high levels of physical fitness. It is more popular now than ever with new devotees signing up for Pilates In the Northern Beaches every single day! The reason behind its great success is that it’s highly customisable, able to adapt to your personal health goals, regardless of your age, sex, health, and level of physical fitness.
Dancing is a highly strenuous art form, a kind of sport, really, and it requires hours of practice with very repetitive motions. This can result in frequent injuries, and even people who aren’t dancers can suffer from similar maladies just from lading our daily lives! We all walk, take the stairs, stand, and sit at our desks in certain ways that are just as repetitive as the moves of a dancer! This repetition causes our muscles to become imbalanced from overuse, so Pilates was developed to counteract that. The principles of Pilates have quite a few things in common with yoga, such as concentration on every movement, controlled breathing, the gentle use and stretching of the abdomen and low back muscles, and precise but flowing movement patterns. Depending on what exercises are being performed in the session, Pilates routines can use specially designed apparatuses, such as the bed-like reformer, or simply take place on a mat.
At its heart, Pilates is a type of strength training, but it has little resemblance to the strength training exercises you might be familiar with. Rather than building up muscles, Pilates focuses on improving muscle tone. The results are similar, giving the participant greater endurance and stability. Pilates isn’t designed to bulk you up with heavy muscles, it is designed instead to foster a longer, leaner look with a strong, well-balanced physical foundation. Not only is Pilates great exercise, its benefits are therapeutic to any existing injuries, and preventive of future bodily harm. Pilates can help chronic back pain and ease debilitating muscular tension, all while making you look and feel great too!
The Australian Government’s Better Health Channel gives Pilates a very positive rating, describing it as “a safe and effective method of rehabilitation and exercise that focuses on muscular balance, and improves strength and flexibility.”
We hope this inspires you to join millions of other health-conscious people and find out for yourself just how great Pilates is as a way to increase your mobility, heal from injury, and become a healthier, stronger person!
