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Sep 12

5 Ways adding Pilates to your life will enhance your fitness – Seacoastonline.com

Exercise Programs Comments Off on 5 Ways adding Pilates to your life will enhance your fitness – Seacoastonline.com

Pilates has been around for about 100 years, and it still amazes me how many people have not heard of this incredible exercise method. It was first created by Joseph Pilates and initially gained popularity among the dance community as a way to recover from and prevent injuries. But you dont have to be a dancer to practice Pilates or enjoy the benefits.

Ive been incorporating Pilates into my physical therapy practice for the last 10 years and its been transformational for both my clients and my practice. Pilates is a full body strengthening system that emphasizes breath, precision, coordination, and core strength. It helps my clients connect to their bodies in a way that they havent been able to achieve with traditional strengthening methods. Most of my clients are well into their 50s, 60s, and 70s, and they love Pilates because it helps them have more energy, better balance, improved strength, and more mobility. It allows them to participate in all the activities they love with more ease, and most importantly, significantly decreases their risk for injury.

Here are five reasons why I love adding Pilates to any fitness routine, and why you should consider adding it to yours, too!

1. Pilates helps prevent back pain. Once you hit 40, your risk of back injury starts to climb. We specialize in back pain, so we see a lot of folks with this problem in our office. Theyve often worked with traditional physical therapists or chiropractors in the past to successfully get rid of back pain in the short term, but it keeps coming back. And our clients want it gone for the long-term. A regular practice of Pilates is a safe and sustainable way to help keep your back pain-free. It focuses on core strength but is also a well-balanced exercise system. Full body strength and balance is a critical component for life-long back health, and it is not always addressed in traditional back rehabilitation programs or treatments.

2. Pilates strengthens your whole body, not just your core. One of the keys to truly enhancing your fitness is what I call "balanced strength." Thats when each part of your body works together to produce the right amount of force, at the right time, to do your favorite activity in the most efficient way possible. Efficiency means youll be able to do it for longer and with more ease. I see lots of strong people in my office, and they cant understand why theyre in pain. Its entirely possible to be "strong," but have certain muscles working harder than others. This creates an imbalance, which eventually leads to problems. Pilates emphasizes full body strength that is coordinated, which helps promote balanced strength throughout your body, and leads to less injuries over time.

3. Pilates helps you get more flexible and mobile. Do you stretch your hamstrings every single day and get frustrated because theyre still tight? Its probably because youre not stretching the right way. What I love about Pilates is that it stretches your body in a dynamic way with movement so that muscles lengthen the right way. The days of statically holding a stretch for 30 seconds are long gone. Plus, mobility is extremely important for strength. Muscles work better when your joints move fully and freely.

"Mobility before stability" is a phrase you hear daily in my office. And Pilates is a great way to get your joints and muscles mobile while ALSO promoting stability.

4. Pilates puts minimal stress on your joints. Aging is a real thing and along with it comes arthritis. The key to combating arthritis is optimizing the area around the affected joint or joints. When you have good mobility, and balanced strength, you have less compressive forces around your joints. Arthritis doesnt like compressed, crowded joints. So when you strengthen and stretch your whole body in a good, balanced way arthritis becomes less painful and stiff. Pilates helps with all this and doesnt cause any added stress on your joints. Theres a good reason you see lots of folks in their 60s and 70s enjoying our classes.

5. Pilates trains your nervous system. Huh? Is that even a thing? Yes it is and its almost always the missing link for people who feel stuck, or cant seem to get beyond a certain point in their fitness. It can also be the reason why an activity youve been doing "for years" suddenly becomes problematic or painful. If you dont train your nervous system, it gets lazy, and compensations will develop in your body. Compensations lead to problems when unchecked. Since Pilates is a mind-body exercise, it helps to keep the communication between your brain and your muscles fresh. Pilates emphasizes precise and coordinated movements, which enhance and reinforces this connection. In other words, your nervous system cant get lazy when you do Pilates!

If youre not yet incorporating Pilates into your fitness or rehab routine what are you waiting for? Its my go-to exercise system for folks over 40 and its my favorite way to help people keep their back pain gone. We actually have an eight-week program (starting Sept 29th) completely dedicated to folks who are new to Pilates, or who have back pain and want to learn how to develop a safe core-strengthening routine. If you want more information get it touch!

Dr. Carrie Jose, Physical Therapist and Pilates expert, owns CJ Physical Therapy & Pilates in Portsmouth and writes for Seacoast Media group. To get in touch, or to apply for our Pilates 101: Get [Your] Back to Health program, email her at info@cjphysicaltherapy.com.

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5 Ways adding Pilates to your life will enhance your fitness - Seacoastonline.com

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