What Pilates is For

I recently had someone email me saying she isn’t seeing results from her regular workouts anymore, and she wants to start Pilates to lose her stubborn fat. I had to break it to her that Pilates is not for fat loss; rather, what Pilates is for can vary, depending on your goals! It certainly has a lot of benefits… 

7 Things Pilates is For

1. Core Strength: Pilates strengthens all the muscles of the torso (abs, obliques, pelvic floor, back, and pelvis), which helps to improve:
   1. Balance
   2. Posture
   3. Stability of the pelvis and spine
2. Improved Joint Mobility: You’ll see improvement from your toes to your fingers, ankles, knees, wrists, elbows, hips, and shoulders!
3. Better Flexibility: Every Pilates exercise has an element of stretching, along with strengthening and mobility.
4. Better Body Symmetry: Build more symmetry in your body in strength, flexibility, and mobility – from one side of the body to the other and front to back.
5. Body Awareness: Pilates exercises are controlled and precise. Your breath and awareness of your movements help with calming your nervous system, while also helping you zone into your mind and body as they work together.
6. Patience: Pilates gets harder with time and practice. The more aware you become of how to move your body to find your two way stretch, the more difficult and sweaty Pilates gets. It just won’t happen on day one in Classical Pilates. 
7. Fat Loss? By paying attention to your diet, doing cardio, maybe adding strength training a few times a week, and having a solid Pilates practice, you could very well reduce your fat mass. You most definitely will increase your muscle mass, too. 

How Pilates Helped Me

Back to the woman who wanted to try something new… Shaking things up with a new form of exercise is a great idea. That’s how I found Pilates, myself. I was a fitness and spin instructor and kept hearing about this new trendy thing called Pilates. 

Despite working in fitness, I didn’t realize until I started doing Pilates (and then learning to teach it), that the constant tightness in my traps, the kink in my neck, my sore calves, my clicky hip, and the pain in my butt were all results of imbalances in my body. I also wasn’t very flexible and my mobility was lacking in some areas of my body. The years of repetitive movements and lack of awareness of how I was moving were actually causing these pains.  

I never thought of these constant aches and pains as “injuries”, so I never really didn’t do anything to try and fix them. They’d come and go, sometimes getting better then worse, but they never stopped me from working out. It was through Pilates that I became more aware of how to move my body well and to identify the areas that I needed to work on. In turn, the pain I’d been living with for so long started to dissipate. 

By trying this new, trendy Pilates class, I found a career I love. More than that, I’m now so much more aware of how I move my body as I move through life. When I do get new aches and pains, it’s usually when I’ve let my Pilates practice go or have skipped out on the exercises that are a challenge for my body. 

We Can All Do The Same Pilates

Those challenging movements are probably harder to execute because your body is less strong or has limits in mobility or flexibility. Still, we can all do the same Pilates to improve on those limitations. For example, the tight traps and kinked neck that I often dealt with in my 20’s and 30’s made reaching my arms behind me very difficult. It was uncomfortable to say the least. However, with time and consistency, these exercises got easier to the point that I now enjoy them. I still get tight in those areas and love having these exercises available to find relief. 

It turns out that I much prefer to live life without all those nagging aches and pains that I just ignored or pushed through before. 

What Brings People to Pilates

I often say that Pilates is for every body, and when I look at my schedule of clients, it’s true. I’ve got people of all ages and abilities who have turned to Pilates as their solution to move better through life. Some of the things that bring people to my studio are: 

• Car Accident. Often people have back or neck pain, sometimes still bothering them years later. 
• Runners & Cyclists needing help with hip or back pain or plantar fasciitis.
• People with Autoimmune Diseases with joint pain or inflammation. 
• Hip and Knee Replacement Patients for surgery prehab and rehab. 
• Athletes that do sports like baseball/softball, basketball, soccer, golf, hockey, pickleball, lacrosse, etc. There is a side of the body that will always be working more than the other, creating imbalances in the body. 
• Office Workers and people who sit for long hours every day.
• Dancers.
• Hikers. 
• Moms that need to strengthen their core and backs due to pregnancy and all the “momming” like lifting small children and carrying baby seats.
• Seniors looking to improve their balance and core strength.

In general, I most often see active adults who have noticed that they are feeling stiffer and tighter than they once did. They want to keep doing the many activities that they love to do but are starting to fear that they might need to quit.

Getting Results With Pilates

When you first start Pilates, you’ll see results quickly in some areas. Others, though, will creep up slowly over a longer period of time. I often say that I wish I took photos or videos of how a client moves in their first couple of sessions and then how they move a month later and a year later, etc.  (Maybe I actually should!) Your results will vary with how often you do Pilates, though there is no “set amount” you should do. Do Pilates to help you with what your body needs. 

I wish that Pilates was something that everyone could learn to do at an early age and then keep doing it for life. I may be starting to sound like Joseph Pilates, but I believe it’s beneficial for everyone. You can even learn to do the mat work well enough to do it at home on your own. I’ll often sit on the floor and do a handful of Pilates exercises if I’m feeling tight or sore. And that is what Pilates is for – to help you feel better when you need it.