Incorporating Pilates to your life

History

During WWI, the founder of Pilates exercise, Joseph Pilates, served as a hospital orderly on the Isle of Man. There, Pilates worked with patients who could not walk due to war injuries. To help support the patients’ limbs and build their strength, he attached bed springs to their hospital beds. This is what would later become the main equipment of Pilates exercise, the Pilates Reformer. A Reformer is a sliding carriage inside a long frame connected to springs, ropes and pulleys.

After the war, Pilates and his wife moved to New York, where they continued to work with patients. They quickly attracted members of the ballet community. They found the Pilate’s technique useful for recovering from injury and improving performance. Pilates exercise continues to be widely used for dance conditioning and rehabilitation.

The Benefits

Pilates offers the physical fitness benefits of added strength, length, and agility as well as rehabilitation from injury.

Many injuries are caused by muscular imbalances within our bodies. Many things cause these imbalances. Our posture; the way we walk, bend over, sit, lie down, or work out. Basically the way we move. Travelling in aircraft long distances or regular short flights exacerbates the imbalance. The addition of external stressors such as missing luggage or delayed aircraft, can also cause imbalance. Most of us move incorrectly in some way or another, which puts too much pressure on some muscles and weakens others. This causes the imbalances.

Exercise

The exercise promotes even musculature throughout the body by strengthening the core. The core is considered the “centre” of the body and consists of the deep abdominal muscles along with the muscles closest to the spine. Pilates also stresses spinal and pelvic alignment, which is critical in getting us to move the way we’re supposed to move to avoid injury.

Pilates exercises can be modified for each person and still be extremely effective. You can go from basic movements to very advanced, depending on how a patient needs to progress or how badly they are injured.

Physical Therapy

However, if you’re still in the recovery phase, you should get the all-clear from your consultant before travelling. Safe travels. Conventional physical therapy, often involves patients being given a set of exercises that may be too hard to tolerate. Maybe because they cause too much pain, or perhaps they are not aware of how to correctly position their body for maximum results. More and more we see Pilates and physical therapy offered hand in hand for support to become injury free and in optimising health. Take up the challenge and join Pilates your body will thank you for it.