Pilates Homework in Less Than 10 Minutes a Day

Whether you are ready or not, September is right around the corner. With it comes regular routines, pumpkin-spice everything (love it or hate it), back-to-school, and homework. Like kids practicing their spelling words, doing ten minutes a day of Pilates homework can make all the difference when you get back to class. 

I recently blogged about how many athletes make their activities look easy. No one is born knowing how to ride a bike down a mountain, or how to do a headstand. How do they make it look so easy, then? Practice. What is homework? Practice! By practicing anything for just ten minutes a day, you’ll end up having done five extra hours of that activity a month. WOW. 

These following are my favourite Pilates homework exercises. You can do them all in under ten minutes, can do them anywhere, and they will help you improve your form, strength, and stability. 

Do Your Pilates Homework in 10 Minutes or Less

Arm Slips

1. Sit on your mat with you legs in front of you, knees bent, and feet planted on the mat.
2. Rest back onto your elbows and forearms. Keeping your elbows and forearms on the mat, curl your upper body away from the floor, so that you feel your abs “turn on”, particularly high up under the rib cage. 
3. Maintaining your curl and the position of your torso, reach forward with one arm. Repeat on the other side, keeping your hips evenly weighted on the mat and your feet planted.

Repeat 6 to 10 times per side. 

As you get stronger, you can switch to reaching with both arms at the same time. This drill will help you to build stability in your curl, which will in turn help you with exercises like the hundred and the teaser. 

Partial Roll Backs (hands on thighs) 

1. Sitting up from the arms slips, place your hands on the back of your thighs and bring your feet in a little bit closer to your bum. 
2. Create a strong connection with your hands on the back of your thighs, by lifting your elbows to the side and pulling slightly on your thighs. Notice that your biceps, triceps and lat muscles will fire. 
3. Maintaining this strong connection, start to roll back down to the mat, stopping at the when your arms are straight. You should still be holding onto the back of your thighs firmly. 
4. Slowly return to the starting position.

Repeat 6 to 10 times.

This drill will help you notice all of the muscles (not just the abs) that are working when you curl. This will help you achieve a more controlled roll up, teaser, and roll over, to name a few. 

The Hundred Prep

1. Lay all the way back down on your mat. With your legs fully extended, externally rotate your legs slightly and squeeze your heels together. 
2. Keep this heel connection and try to lengthen your legs to the point that they may slightly hover off of the mat. Repeat 2 to 3 times.
3. From the starting position, curl up your head, neck, and round through your rib cage. Find that feeling in the core that we found in the arm slips, rather than only using the neck.
4. With the upper body in this curl, try the lengthening of the legs again, but only lift one leg an inch from the ground and then the other. As you progress, work towards lifting both feet to a hover while maintaining the upper body curl. 

Repeat 6 to 10 times.

This leads you into the hundred, which can be found over and over again in the Pilates method: the stomach series on the mat, backstroke on the reformer, the teaser, etc. 

Extension Prep

1. Flip over to lay face down on your mat. Stack your hands and rest your forehead on your hands. 
2. Draw your legs together, and once again extend your legs so long that they start to hover off of the mat. 
3. Float your upper body of the mat along with your hands. 
4. Lower everything. 

Repeat 6 to 10 times. 

By doing your Pilates homework every day or every other day, you will soon see the difference when you are in class. After all, if ten minutes a day adds up to five hours a month… Imagine what that means after three months of practice, or six… or a year. 

Free Pilates Homework Tutorial

Visit the b.Pilates & Fitness App  for a free Homework Tutorial. Your first seven days of the online classes are free! 

Each month, two workouts and two mat classes are added. These half-hour classes will keep you moving in the gym, at home, and on vacation. Minimal equipment is needed, and after your trial, the online classes are just $15 a month!