Why Pilates is the secret to ongoing gains

Beyond Health’s Cameryn Titus on how Pilates lays the foundation for successful strength and conditioning training.

Do you like to exercise and workout regularly? If so, you are missing a trick if you don’t make Pilates a regular part of your fitness regime. I introduce so many of my clients to Pilates and it’s great to see them discover that it’s an accessible and addictive form of training. It brings about so many improvements in physical and mental well-being that I can’t recommend it highly enough.

What is Pilates? 

Pilates was pioneered by athlete Joseph Pilates in the early 1900s. It’s a low-intensity workout made up of movements that improve strength, flexibility and mobility. It can also help improve posture, and it provides an excellent base for other strength and conditioning training.

Why Pilates is important

In general terms, the body has two muscle groups – our ‘big mover’ muscles and small stabiliser muscles. The former includes the muscles that people love to use, the ones they work on at the gym in strength and conditioning training: the rectus abdominis (six-pack muscles), biceps and quads. These muscles are also used in most sports and when walking throughout the day.

None of this activity truly utlises the stabiliser muscles, such as the transversus abdominis (your deepest layer of your abdominal muscles that provide spinal support). These groups of small muscles are present throughout the body and they are what Pilates targets in order to redress the imbalance caused by a focus on the ‘big movers’.

People don’t tend to notice this imbalance as the big muscles can initially compensate for any weakness in the stabilisers. However, as the mover muscles continue to become stronger, the smaller muscles tend to weaken even further, meaning the imbalance becomes too much and injury becomes almost unavoidable.

The benefits of Pilates

Pilates will improve the strength of those deep-lying small muscles, building up the stability and power of your core in the process. This will help support and improve your strength and conditioning training, and help you to avoid injury. For those who are already injured, strengthening the stabiliser muscles through Pilates will help you get back to the sports and fitness training that you love doing in a safe and sustainable way.

Give Clinical Pilates a try

Pilates has developed over the years into a range of styles and formats. Here at Beyond Health, we’ve chosen the one that we believe gives our clients the best and most long-lasting results. Our moveBeyond Clinical Pilates programme focuses on strength, resilience and posture improvements, and stands out from other Pilates approaches for three key reasons:

• The clinical expertise of our instructors. All sessions, be they one-on-one appointments or small classes, are led by a member of our team who are chartered physiotherapists with APPI qualifications, thus adding a superior level of injury and rehabilitation knowledge.
• Your moveBeyond programme is also designed specifically for you, taking into consideration your clinical history, current diagnosis or injury and any movement inadequacies that might be causing you pain or holding you back.
• Our group sessions have a maximum of three participants, meaning you get to work in a motivating class environment with the security, hands-on attention and clinical expertise of a physiotherapist, something thats not usually available in studio classes.

Call us on  020 3848 9434 or email [email protected] to find out more about moveBeyond Clinical Pilates.