Pilates for Wellness
Strength and Conditioning
Pilates is an innovative and safe system of mind-body exercise using a floor mat or a variety of equipment. It can dramatically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. Pilates builds strength without excess bulk, capable of creating a sleek, toned body with slender thighs and a flat abdomen.
It is a safe, sensible exercise system that will help you look and feel your very best. It teaches body awareness, good posture and easy, graceful movement. Pilates also improves flexibility, agility and economy of motion. It can even help alleviate back pain. With its low impact mentality, there is much less risk of damaging muscles and connective tissue than say weight training and heavy resistance or impact training, which carry a much higher risk of injury.
Pilates for Wellness
Aging with Grace and Strength
Pilates improves awareness and functioning of the torso, which yields many benefits in performing the activities of daily living such as bending, lifting, sitting, rising, reaching, and many others. It also leads to similar functional improvement and body awareness for other joints.
Another beneficial aspect of Pilates is its ability to improve proprioception, which is the body’s awareness of its place and movement in space. On a practical level for an older individual, this means training the body to better and more efficiently respond to changes, such as regaining or maintaining balance on uneven ground to reduce falls. Increased adaptability and coordination can help decrease the chance of injury from accidents or improper overuse in a particular body movement. As flexibility, strength, and functional improvements are made, incorporating other forms of fitness such as cardiovascular exercise becomes safer and easier.
Pilates for Wellness
Rehabilitation and Recovery
Pilates continues to receive attention in the field of rehabilitation – with good reason. Recent research supports Pilates as an appropriate intervention for common orthopedic injuries. And when compared to other common forms of rehabilitation, it has been equal if not superior in physical, psychological and disability measures.
Pilates helps you not only regain lost strength and use of damaged joints and muscles, but throughout the length of therapy will enable you to correct any imbalances that over time compensate for injury. Throughout the treatment process, you will be working on your core body strength, breathing, concentration and precision. The flowing motion of all Pilates exercises carefully avoid the rapid, jerking or explosive movements that so often can create impairment in the first place.
Pilates for Wellness
Neurology and Pregnancy
Neurological Conditions: Neurological diseases are slowly progressive degenerative disorders that affect the body’s systems. They lead to slowness of movement, as well as difficulty planning and executing muscle movement. Pilates exercises require you to work with neurological conditions and Pilates is not to get every exercise “correct” but to help neurons fire and to work towards connecting the mind and the body to work together as one
Pregnancy: Pilates is the ideal form of exercise for pregnancy. It is no impact, body balancing and core strengthening. By practicing Pilates throughout your pregnancy, you will maintain a stronger core, experience a more comfortable pregnancy and delivery, and recover more quickly. Pilates will also help you to get back into your pre-pregnancy clothes quicker.