Pilates Reformer Benefits

Matwork is the Pilates method in its purest form, but face it, not everyone has the strength to perform the work without assistance. That’s why I use the Tower wall units to teach some of the mat exercises, especially the rollup and teaser.

But there’s so much more benefit to be had from training on all the equipment, especially the Reformer. And you obtain the greatest benefits from private sessions, where the trainer focuses on you exclusively, and individually tailors each workout to your particular goals and ability levels.

What makes the Reformer so special? Well, for one thing, it’s not named for nothing. It truly “reforms” the way you move. You begin by lying face up on a sliding carriage. After precise positioning by your trainer, you begin to move the carriage in and out with your  feet pressing into a foot bar. But you’re not doing the equivalent of “leg presses” in a weight room. Your trainer is telling you to maintain a neutral spine and pelvis, and to feel the movement originate from your deep, core muscles. You are reminded to “quiet” your quads, hip flexors, and knees, for these, after all, are the most over-worked areas of your body! Your trainer tells you how to work from the back of your legs and to use the hip in a way that absorbs some of the load from the knee.

And just when you think you’ve begun to get the hang of it, your trainer removes the stability of the foot bar! Now, your feet are in the loops at the end of leather straps, and you must maintain the same actions, only recruiting stability and control from deep within your core. And then you begin to circle your legs wide, losing the medial stability of your heels pressed together. Your workout gets increasingly challenging, and at this point, you are still “warming up.”

And so the workout progresses: from the simple to the complex, from the relatively-easy to the supremely-challenging. After performing a movement with the equipment providing all the support and stability, your trainer removes one or more sources of mechanical support. Your body must work harder to compensate. And after doing a series of movements lying, you do similar movements sitting, kneeling, and even bridging.

Session after session you get stronger and more confident in your growing ability to move with ease. Your trainer adds more exercises each session, while perhaps dropping some that you have mastered and no longer need to do. In this way, your workouts remain fresh and challenging.

article from http://www.pilatesconnections.com/reformer.php

This entry was written by scrawford, posted on August 13, 2009 at 7:57 pm, filed under Pilates and tagged Pilates, Santa Barbara, Scott Crawford, SOMA GET FIT. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Origin of Pilates

Joseph Hubertus Pilates was born in Germany in 1880. He was a sickly child who suffered from many of the common childhood ailments of the time, including rickets. To overcome the physical weakness that resulted from these ailments, Joseph Pilates developed a great interest in bodybuilding and all forms of physical exercise. He devoted the rest of his life to developing a system of body conditioning that he called Contrology, which is based on concepts which are outlined in the two books that he wrote,

• Your Health: A corrective system of exercising that revolutionizes the entire field of physical education1 (1934)
• Pilates’ Return to Life Through Contrology2 (1945).

Joseph Pilates was in Britain at the beginning of World War 1 and was placed in an internment camp for enemy aliens. He designed a physical education programme for staff and internees which was thought to have been a contributing factor in preventing mortality in the camp during the 1918 influenza epidemic which killed millions throughout the world.

It was during this time that Joseph Pilates began designing the equipment for which he is famous. The original equipment was based on hospital beds and consisted of springs attached to bars or a moving sled. The brilliance of this equipment is that it not only supplies resistance, but also assistance. The equipment allows one to be assisted in a way that encourages focus on developing optimal muscle recruitment patterns.

After returning to Germany for several years, Joseph Pilates moved to the United States in the late 1920s, where he opened a studio in New York. Many dancers commenced taking lessons with Joseph and his wife Clara and the Pilates Method came to be known as the ‘dancers’ thing’. It was through the Pilates Method’s reputation in the improvement of dancers’ ‘centring’ ability (now called core stability) and the rehabilitation of injured dancers that the wider community discovered the Pilates Method during the late 1980s, and 1990s.

article from http://nowrapilates.com.au/pilates.html

This entry was written by scrawford, posted on at 7:36 pm, filed under Pilates and tagged Pilates, reformer, SOMA GET FIT. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.