Pilates is a great way to provide exercise for the whole body in a gentle and supporting way. The benefits of Pilates are endless, but we’ve summarised some of the most important ones below.
Gentle for our body…
Pilates is gentle for the body as many of the exercises are performed sitting or lying down, and most of them are low impact using your own body weight or equipment like thera-bands. Pilates is often used in physical therapy to rehabilitate injuries.
…But also challenging
Pilates suits anyone with limitating injuries to the elite athlete due to the modifications that can be done to the different exercises. There’s also different equipment such as reformer or trapeze table which can be used to increase the difficulty.
Helps develop a strong core and relieve lower back pain
Pilates help to strengthen our core which is the “centre” of our body and what basically holds everything together! The core consists of our deep abdominal muscles (Transverse Adbominus) along with the muscles (Multifidus) closest to our spine. These muscles support our spine. People experiencing episodes of lower back pain can, have a weaknesses in these muscles. This will lead to more stress on the spine as the muscles aren’t strong enough to offer the correct support. When completing everyday tasks such as standing, picking things up, twisting or simply carrying something heavy, we can do a lot of damage to our lower back. An easy thing to think about when engaging our core is to draw our navel to our spine, to switch it on. Why not give it a go right now?
Helps to create an evenly conditioned body, prevents injuries, and improves sports performance
Traditional workouts can be focused on just one muscle group at a time. Normally we train the things we’re good at and avoid the things we can’t do that well. This means our weak muscles will get weaker and our strong muscles will get stronger. We have then created a muscle imbalance- a primary cause of injury.
Pilates conditions the whole body, even our feet and wrists. Our muscles are evenly trained and balanced which helps us enjoy our daily activities, enhance performance and minimize chance of injury. Many 
professional teams and athletes have discovered the benefits of Pilates and now use it as a critical part of their training regimen.
A mind and body workout
Pilates puts emphasis on proper breathing, correct spinal and pelvic alignment and smooth flowing movements. It’s takes a lot of concentration to perform these movements and will help us to get in tune with our body. You will learn how to control the body’s movements. Proper breathing is essential during the different exercises and by focusing on this we can help reduce stress.
We have Personal Trainers, who are also qualified Pilates instructors. Enquire about Personal Training and Pilates here.