Top 3 Reasons to Start Pilates Now
Sometimes being a pilates instructor can actually hurt your credibility when it comes to speaking your mind about ab conditioning. People think all the great things I say about pilates are just a way for me to sell more pilates packages. While I am definitely responsible for keeping my business afloat, I can tell you that if I didn’t believe in what I was selling, I wouldn’t be selling it.
First of all, I’m a terrible salesperson. I’m too blunt and too much of an evangelist of the things I believe in (like pilates) that I can’t even imagine why I would have to convince you to do it. My none-too-subtle pilates pitch would go something like this: Pilates has been proven for almost 100 years to strengthen your core, alleviate your back pain and improve your sex life, work life and social life. Olympic athletes, pro-ballers and lithe celebrities who can afford any kind of workout they want, use pilates to prevent injuries and stay in peak condition. If you haven’t already found an incredibly detailed and effective instructor to help you incorporate pilates into your life regularly, you are a perplexing fool.
See? Not something you would read in “Sales Effectiveness 101.”
So I’m here today to try to give you a more objective sense of why you should take up pilates, if you haven’t already. Sorry about the perplexing fool bit.
Pilates is famous for deep core conditioning.
What this means is that pilates exercises work all four layers of your abs. We are more
than the ab “washboard” which everyone seems to aspire to as the model of core health. In fact, the washboard or rectus abdominus is the easiest of the ab layers to exercise. There are three more layers of abs underneath the washboard and together these layers allow you to bend forward, back, sideways and twist. Underneath your external obliques and your internal obliques is the transverse abdominus – the deepest and most important layer. It’s the muscle that provides stability for your truck. It keeps you upright when you trip, it holds you together when you walk. It is the core of your core strength and must activate first to hold your spine and pelvis in place before you move your arms and legs.
I have yet to meet anyone in the adult human population that doesn’t need strength in their core. (Babies seem to spend most of their time sleeping or squishing around on the floor, I don’t know that core strength is essential to them. Then again maybe there is a pilates baby expert out there that knows more about this topic than I do.) At the very least, you need a stable spine and pelvis just to walk about your day comfortably with the least possible strain to your back, hips and knees.
Pilates is adaptable for students at any level and almost any condition.
When I say anyone can do pilates, I mean pretty much anyone. I have taught students with rods in their spines, students with one leg, pregnant students who can’t lie down, students with sciatica, scoliosis, blood clots, herniated disks, vertigo and pinched nerves. I have 80-year-old grandmas and 30-year-old marathoners. A personal trainer friend trains a 90-year-old cancer survivor who is pushed to his workout every day in his wheelchair. If your instructor has the proper training, experience and is paying attention to you, they will know how to adapt exercises to help you strengthen your body – whatever your issues are.
Pilates doesn’t feel like exercise.
New clients are sometimes surprised to discover that pilates feels good. Not after the workout, but during. My clients who work with gym trainers tell me they have to drag themselves out of bed to go to the gym but they look forward to coming to pilates. They don’t want to miss or even be late to their session because they enjoy pilates while they are doing it. While I’m all for gym workouts too if that floats your boat, I don’t understand why anybody would drag themselves to a workout that’s not enjoyable. Life’s too short to make yourself miserable when you have so many other options. To stay fit, you need to find something you enjoy and will do regularly. That can be swimming, Zumba, boxing, weight-lifting, or pilates.
Pilates workouts are unique and feel good while you are doing them because the workout focuses on how you are working, not what you are doing with outside props, weights or machines. You do not have to be in pain for pilates to work. When you first start doing pilates, forget about “no-pain, no gain.” (Once you become more advanced, your instructor may start to throw some crazy moves at you that will make your eyes pop. But don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to work up to that.) Instead, you are learning to retrain your mind and body in a way that produces subtle movements but that lead to profound improvements in strength, flexibility, coordination and posture.