How Injury Rehabilitation with Pilates Exercise can help
Read this incredible story of a double amputee who finds the power of STOTT PILATES® exercise for his rehabilitation. His dedication and commitment in practising Pilates 3 times/week is positively helping him overcome his physical limitations.
Furthermore, having found injury rehabilitation with STOTT PILATES® exercises has helped him take his first step on his long prosthetic legs. Watch how he takes many more steps along the way in this exciting blog (more…)
What are the best exercises for back pain?
The best exercises for back pain are the ones you can easily commit to doing every day. Evidence suggests that exercising regularly is beneficial for people with low back pain. Moreover, research shows that becoming sedentary is proven to worsen things!
As a result, staying active and carrying on with day-to-day activities tends to improve pain outcomes. Even during times where you must stay at home, you can still exercise by watching online videos.
Therefore, we recommend that you start with only 5 simple exercises that you can commit to. Just get moving.
Here are 5 easy Pilates exercises for back pain that will help you mobilise and strengthen your spine. Do them every day for 2 weeks before progressing to more advanced exercises (more…)
Reformer Pilates for back pain
Reformer Pilates can be very beneficial for back pain. However, One size doesn’t always fit all.
Some of the widely advocated benefits of regularly practising Pilates reformer are improved core strength, posture, and increased flexibility. These will help you improve and prevent bak pain. Pilates exercises focus on strengthening your abdominal muscles, in fact preferentially recruiting the deep ones. The goal is to retrain your muscles to fire when they are required, with the right amount of force at the right time in order to stabilise your spine. At the same time, maintaining your entire spine mobile. Remember, “You are only as old as your spine is” Joseph Pilates…
Intelligent Exercise. Focus and Think
Concentration is crucial to Pilates exercise! Mindful movement means that you have to be present in the moment without distractions and focus on the task in hand.
So if you are looking for exercises to fix your back without having to think about what you are doing, Pilates is not for you. If you are willing to put the effort and voluntarily learn how to recruit your muscles by concentrating and focusing on precision and learning anatomically how your body needs to work, Pilates is definitely for you. #intelligentpilates
Working from the Inside Out
As with every rehabilitation programme, local stability means that the joints in your spine are preferentially recruited before calling on the big power producing ones. Truly, deep stabilising muscles work close to the joint and need to work before targeting the big mobilising ones. Learn how to do this with our Pilates Exercise for Back Pain classes.
How Does the Spine Degenerate?
As we age and sometimes through injury, the spinal segments degenerate. Spinal degeneration happens when the spine is put through stresses that the discs are unable to withstand. Moreover, poor posture, sitting for prolonged periods slumping will speed up this process. A weak support system can cause also the spinal segments to shear, compress the discs and it’s contents. (annulus fibrosus and nucleus pulpous.
Compression of the discs cause small tears to appear on the outside portion of the disc (fibrillation). These tears heal with scar tissue. Scar tissue is weaker than the original architecture of the disc.
Overtime, the annulus and nucleus lose its water content, the disc loses height and the vertebral segments come closer to each other. As a result, the facet joints in the back to overlap and twist into an unnatural position. In an attempt to stabilise the spine, the body creates bone spurs on the vertebral bodies and the facets. These spurs can cause pain, ache or discomfort as they lose their ability to move properly and may irritate the joint capsule as you move without support.
Pilates as Prevention For Further Damage
Pilates Exercise for Back Pain can help maintain your spinal segments mobile, strengthen your deep abdominal musculature in order to stabilise your spine as you move around in your daily activities.
Prevention is better than the treatment!
We Can Help
If you suffer from episodic mechanical, non-specific back pain, a Pilates programme may be beneficial for you.
Book now an assessment. We can diagnose, treat and help you get strong through Pilates exercise
Blog written by Carlo Yanez
Registered Osteopath B.A.(Hons.), B.Ost.(Hons)
Fully certified STOTT PILATES® Instructor
Bursting some Pilates Myths:1. Pilates is only for women? Pilates has never been “just for women” and its benefits are certainly not gender biased. After all, Pilates was developed by a man, Joseph Pilates, who from archive photos you can see was a very muscular, strong and fit man. He was a gymnast, a boxer, and a military trainer in his early years, and these same photos of Pilates even into his eighties, reveal a very strong physique. Men have always played an important role in maintaining the Pilates work and shaping its evolution. Many male celebrities and athletes break this myth such as Tiger Woods, Hugh Grant and the New Zealand All Blacks. Find out how Pilates can help your game in Pilates classes Notting Hill Gate W11.
2 Pilates & Yoga are the same thing?
Both disciplines are mindful forms of exercise. They both use breathing patterns to connect the mind to the body. However, there are quite different as football is to basketball. From a purely exercise perspective, these differences mainly have to do with how each discipline is practiced and what their primary goals are.
Primarily, Yoga is designed to facilitate serious contemplation. In other words, it tries to provide an integrated approach towards objective and transcendental knowledge. Stronger muscles, stress relief and improved circulation are essentially by-products of practicing Yoga.
Pilates on the other hand, primarily strengthens the body through focusing on the core stability muscles of our body to improve the way we function in our daily lives.
Yoga exercises themselves are typically static poses that are held for a period of time, say for one minute each for example. Pilates exercises are flowing and follow each other in a natural order. Advanced Pilates exercises are very athletic and were created for gymnasts and dancers.
A very important part of Yoga is the deep breathing that is done while holding each pose and while transitioning from one pose to the next. Breathing is also a very important part of performing Pilates exercises.
With Pilates, the breath is used more as a technique for providing the muscles with the energy they need to exercise effectively. Concentrating on the breathing technique throughout Pilates will help you to manage the quantity of oxygen coming into the body and travelling to the muscles to aid each exercise.
Pilates has only one basic style of breathing, deep ribcage breathing. The purpose of this style of breathing is to stabilise and protect our spine while we are in different positions by holding our abdominal muscles tight while still allowing us to take deep breaths.
Yoga, meanwhile, has many styles of breathing that are used for many different purposes.
Another difference between the breathing of Yoga and Pilates is that in Yoga, you use your nose to inhale and exhale while in Pilates, you inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth. We offer Pilates classes Notting Hill Gate W11 that will allow you to see the difference between these two forms of exercise.
3. Pilates only works your abdominal muscles
Well, there is truth in this one that Pilates is a fix for flabby abs. Pilates is well-known for flattening tummies. The reason is that Pilates does focus on working from the core, especially the deeper abdominal muscles. Toning the abdominal and pelvic floor muscles provides stability and freedom of motion throughout the body. This is also one of the reasons that Pilates has been so successful for people who have back pain.
However, Pilates is much more than just an abdominal work out. If done correctly you can effectively tone and strengthen every major muscle in your body. Try Pilates classes Notting Hill Gate W11.
4. Pilates is easy.
As Pilates instructors we hear this myth often.
I think the idea that Pilates is easy comes from a few places. First, Pilates is very adaptable, it can be easy or very hard, depending on the needs of the individual. The ability to modify exercises for different populations is actually one of the greatest strengths of Pilates. Second, the soaring popularity of Pilates has meant that there are many beginner Pilates classes in practically every gym and studio around the country. This is a good thing, but it also means that people are not necessarily exposed to the intermediate and advanced levels of Pilates. Third, Pilates exercises are often done slowly. There is an emphasis on awareness and control that can make an exercise look easy to the casual observer.
Finally Pilates is popular during pregnancy so this can be perceived to the outsider as an easy exercise option. Of course we know this is not the case, it is just adapted to each individual.
Book your session today in our classes Notting Hill Gate W11, and find out how to strengthen your body, look amazing and feel great with this mind-blowing type of exercise.
Pilates Reformer gluteus workout
The Pilates Reformer offers numerous possibilities for gluteus activation and workouts.
What are the gluteus muscles?
Three muscles make up the gluteal muscle group. The deepest is the Gluteus minimus, overlapped by the Gluteus medius and finally, superficially covered by the Gluteus Maximus muscle.
Their actions are individually unique, but they work together in concert to stabilise and move the hip joint into extension. The deeper layers, the medius and minimus work to stabilise the hip joint, abduct the hip and assist in medial rotation, flexion and some fibres extension. So, side splits with tension is a great example of how these two muscles work.
The larger gluteus maximus forms what you can see as your buttocks. This muscle is a prime hip extensor and lateral rotator and assists in abduction as well.
Side splits on the reformer adding hip extension with a flex band resistance forces to engage all the fibres of the gluteal muscles, as the movement is abduction and hip extension.
By adding a posterior rotation/tilt of the hip along with the added resistance of the flex band encourages the hip to further extend to its end inner range of hip extension, thus adding a greater challenge for the client.
Pilates Reformer gluteus workout
In this video, Side Splits is shown on the reformer from a neutral stance with an anterior to posterior pull to increase gluteus activation.
Additional cues are to tuck the tailbone underneath to increase a posterior rotation or tilt of the pelvis.
Various variations can be added to this exercise, such as Plie in, and Plie out or skating from the classical repertoire.
To find out how to do this, book into our of our group classes or schedule your Pilates personal session today.
BOOK YOUR FIRST PILATES SESSION NOW online
or contact us on 02078541934
Blog written by Carlo Yanez
Registered Osteopath B.A.(Hons.), B.Ost.(Hons)
Fully certified STOTT PILATES® Instructor