Engage Your Muscles in Pilates the Right Way

Have you ever wondered how to engage your muscles in Pilates with each exercise? We’ve all been told that Pilates will strengthen the core, so you may think you need to engage your abs the whole time. Then you have Pilates teachers (like me) who tell you that Pilates is a full body exercise, and will strengthen much more than your core. So how do you know which muscles to focus on? 

I’m here to let you off the hook (sort of), because you shouldn’t be thinking about how to engage your muscles during Pilates. Instead, you should focus on the six principles of Pilates. By working on your breath, concentration, control, precision, center, and flow, you will naturally get stronger! Here’s how. 

The 6 Principles of Pilates 

1. Breath. Despite everyone needing to breathe to live, most people don’t breathe as fully or deeply as they physically could be able to. This becomes really obvious during exercise if you’re clenching your muscles (like your core) tightly. When you focus on your posture rather than engaging your muscles, you can breathe so much easier.  Try it! Squeeze your core and try to inhale through your nose. Not so easy. But if you sit up tall, your core muscles naturally engage, yet it is significantly easier to breathe deeply. Bring this into your Pilates practice by thinking “long”. So in movements like the teaser or the hundred, rather than “crunching” up, imagine curling up while lengthening your spine.

2. Concentration. By bringing awareness to your Pilates practice, you will naturally become stronger. How? Well, if you’re thinking about alignment, posture, your movement, and how you connect to the mat or apparatus, you’ll naturally engage your muscles without thinking about it – just like in the breathing example above. Another example could be by working to push evenly through both feet on the reformer, you’ll work your muscles with more symmetry and ones that may not “turn on” without you concentrating on your body positioning. 

3. Control. I often remind my clients of this principle because Joseph Pilates originally called this method of exercise Contrology. Control can be a difficult aspect of the method in the beginning. When you’re learning the reformer you might notice that the springs on your apparatus are loud or the carriage bangs when you close it. It’s natural to try and move with more control to stop those sounds, something that requires you to naturally engage your muscles. On the mat, the rolling exercises require a lot of control to stop your body in the correct position. Again, as you work on controlling the movement, your muscles will gain strength. 

4. Precision. Executing each exercise with precision is a big part of Pilates. Joseph Pilates was very specific with his exercise instructions in his book The Return to Life Through Contrology. Finding precision means you must pay attention to your breathing, control of the movements, and concentration. 

5. Center. This relates to where you’re moving from and controlling your movements from in Pilates. Most movements pay close attention to how you move your spine: lengthening, flexing, extending, side bending, and rotating. It all comes from the center (core) of your body! Lengthening through all of the movements is key, because this engages your core muscles automatically, which helps to strengthen them. 

6. Flow. As you move through the Pilates exercises, flowing from one to the next, your pace should never be too slow or too fast. As you know the Pilates exercises better, you may start moving faster which can knock you off balance. On the apparatus, this could even mean falling! Since your body and muscles don’t want to falter or fall, the correct muscles will engage to help you stay balanced. The flow challenges you to find more control. 

If you want to embrace the Pilates method to get stronger, stop trying to engage your muscles. Focus on the six principles instead and let your body naturally gain strength, mobility, and flexibility.