Pilates Helped My Strength Training

You know that saying, “with age comes wisdom”? Well, I’m feeling pretty wise these days about how I take care of my body. I’ve learned a lot through my career in fitness, but there are also a lot of lessons that came from trying different workouts, having kids, healing from injury, and all the other things life has brought me. Discovering Pilates is one of the things I’m most grateful about, because it’s become such an important part of my life. It even changed how I work out. 

How I Discovered Pilates

When I first started doing Pilates, it was literally a way to get out of the house for some “me time” one night a week. We had three young girls, the youngest was still under two years old, and my work days were filled with teaching aerobics, spin, and body-sculpt classes. I signed up so I had one evening a week without doing the bedtime routine. The break was nice, but I gained so much more than peace and quiet.

My big “aha” moment that still influences my approach to fitness today didn’t happen in the Pilates studio, but rather when I started to weight train again. I was still doing my weekly Pilates, but I wanted to lose the last ten pounds from my last pregnancy. Weight training was the missing piece, so I added that in a few times a week. When I picked up the weights this time, however, I started to notice things I’d never noticed before. Pilates had changed how I look at strength training forever. 

5 Ways Pilates Changed My Weight Training

Increased My Body Awareness.

Like most people who practice Pilates, I gained new awareness of my body and how it moves. I noticed my posture, asymmetries in my strength, and where I was weak. I used to think I was pretty body aware, coming from a dance background, but Pilates proved me wrong pretty quickly! 

Thanks to years of carrying my kids, I had a very forward posture. Most of us do these days, thanks to how much time we spend sitting. The back of my body was weak, and my upper back and neck often hurt. My shoulders were rounded forward, with the right side being worse. My butt was weak, but my hamstrings and quads were incredibly strong thanks to decades of dancing. And I thought I had a strong core because I could do crunches for days, but planks? Yikes. Lifting anything overhead hurt, and I disliked pushups because my neck and shoulders were so tight. 

It sounds like I was a mess, but these are all common areas of weakness and tightness that people have. Before Pilates, I just thought I was sore because I slept weird or something. But now I had more knowledge and saw that I needed to focus on different things in my strength training (like my posture!).

In fact, by simply being aware of my posture, movements like squats and deadlifts became easier. I could find a long spine and a stronger connection between my arms and back. It even helped me progress to heavier weights faster than I ever could before. 

Taught Me to Warm Up Differently

Back in the early nineties, I was taught to do a warm up before lifting weights by doing cardio. I’d jump on a cardio machine, get my heart rate up, and then start lifting. Sure that gets your blood pumping, but it does nothing for all the joints you use in strength training. Pilates taught me to warm up my spine, shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles before adding weight. 

Before Pilates, back squats were harder. My shoulders didn’t feel great and I had a hard time maintaining a tall posture. With my new Pilates knowledge, I’d warm up my shoulders, ankles, thoracic spine, hips, and knees… and squats felt good! My joints were lubricated and I could squat lower with a better posture, and my shoulders weren’t as restricted. 

Helped Me Fix My Imbalances & Embrace What’s Hard

Now that I could feel the imbalances in my body, I learned to work the areas that were more weak; which happened to be related to the exercises I hated the most! It turns out that I was skipping out on the “hard” exercise because those areas were weaker. I still did a full-body workout, but made sure to include movements to fix those imbalances. This means single-leg exercises like split squats, planks instead of just crunches, and more plank variations like pushups. 

Showed Me That Everything is Connected

Before Pilates, I already “knew” that everything in the body is connected, but more in that the body is a system. Now, I know that if your knee hurts it probably has something to do with a tight or misaligned hip or back that’s pulling on the knee. The body really is amazing! 

Looking back at my fitness routines before Pilates, it’s almost comical. I can still see my “fit” twenty-something self bouncing around all day doing just cardio and repetitive movements. My poor body! Thankfully that younger body could take it. I’m so grateful for younger Melissa and all the “mistakes” she learned along the way. Those lessons and that one fortuitous Pilates class (and years dedicated to Pilates) inform how I approach fitness today. Pilates is here to help you move better every day, so you can keep doing all the things you love – from chasing the grandkids to running marathons.