Sunday, March 29, 2009

Benefits of Pilates Exercise

Pilates Exercise image

Benefits of Pilates Exercise #1

Strong Core - Pilates concentrates on strengthening your deep abdominal muscles, your back and your butt. You will be able to develop these muscles without adding bulk, increasing your flexibility and agility and at the same time toning your stomach and thigh muscles. You will have a less likelihood of sustaining an injury in your back as the exercise ensure greater pelvic stability. You will also enjoy having a flat, toned and sleek tummy.

Benefits of Pilates Exercise #2

Improved Posture - It concentrates on lengthening the spinal compression that one might be developing, especially as one grow older or spend long hours hunched over in front of a computer. Majority of us spend a great part of the day with our shoulders slumped forward. The exercise regimen allows one to lengthen the back of the neck and to slide one's shoulder blades back and down. Your abdomen and back muscles will be strengthened and your spinal columns will gain strength. This results in better postural alignment and enables one to stand and sit straighter and taller.

Benefits of Pilates Exercise #3

Increased Strength and Flexibility - Majority of the people who do weight lifting are suffering from muscle imbalances. Strong muscles get over trained and weak muscles get more strained as the muscles are worked in isolation. With Pilates, you will be using many muscles at the same time and also stretch and strengthen the muscles during the same exercise. This helps to correct muscles imbalances and develops better body alignment. Through the pilates exercise sequence, you also learn how to more effectively coordinates movement in your entire body that will help you to be more flexible in your daily work.

Benefits of Pilates Exercise #4

Longer and Leaner Muscles - The exercise regimen build strength without 'bulking up', instead it helps one to gain long, lean muscles and flexibility. Conventional workouts tend to build short, bulky muscles that are most prone to injury. Pilates exercise elongates and strengthens muscles and at the same time improves muscle elasticity and joint mobility. A body with a balanced strength and flexibility is less likely to be injured.

Benefits of Pilates Exercise #5

Improved Mind Body Connection - The exercise regimen not only stretches your body and muscles but also stretches you mentally. You are always focusing on your body, your alignment, your breathing and the way you are doing your movements. This increases your mind body connection and help you maintain better posture. It can also helps to relax muscle tension and reduce stress through proper breathing.

Benefits of Pilates Exercise #6

It is Safe for Everyone - The exercise regimen is a gentle, low impact exercise that are tailored to individual unique level of strength, flexibility and fitness. With proper instruction, it is safe for everyone including seniors, those who are physically challenged and those who are recovering from injuries.

Pilates is an invigorating form of exercise for your mind and body that can improve your strength, flexibility and overall mobility. It is perfect for those who have old sport injuries by helping to nurse your wounds back into normalcy. It focuses on quality, not quantity and in most cases, you will usually only do 10 repetitions of any given exercise. Because you are focussing on the quality of each movement, you get a greater benefit from each exercise than with traditional strengthening exercise. It helps to restore your body to balance and as a result, your posture will change and you will move more efficiently. If you want to look and feel your very best, start your pilates exercise today.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Pilates exercise for Beginners

Pilates Exercise

Pilates is a complete exercise method developed by its founder Joseph Pilates over the course of his lifetime dedicated to improving physical and mental health. It is a type of physical and mental conditioning using well-designed, choreographed movements properly performed and in a balanced sequence. The emphasis is not on quantity but on quality. It is a mindful form of exercise where each movement is performed consciously, with slow control and with a particular breathing pattern. Pilates workout focuses on building a strong healthy body by encouraging concentrated movement. It is developed with the intention to combine your breathing rhythm with the movement of your body. During the exercise, beginners are required to hold their torso tightly in place while moving their arms and legs in different directions. These exercises challenge the beginners flexibility, balance, stability and strength.

For beginners, the exercises are hard at first as the body adjusts to the feeling of using the supporting muscles for the balancing and strengthening movements. Therefore, all beginners are encouraged to begin the exercise slowly as the body allows, and slowly introduce more moves to the routine as the body adapts.

The Benefits of Pilates Exercise

The exercise can benefit your overall health and sense of well-being in many ways. It conditions the body from head to toe using a no- to low-impact approach suitable for all ages and abilities that requires patience and practice. Bewares of pilates programs that promise dramatic weight loss solutions or overnight transformations. That is not what pure Pilates is about. However, through time and dedication, The exercise can:

  • Improve posture and relief from back pain - The exercise works to lengthen the spinal compression that you might be developing, especially as you grow older or spend long hours hunched over in front of your computer. A great deal of lower back pain comes from poor posture and our daily mistreatment of our spines. Pilates encourages you to lengthen the back of your neck and to slide your shoulder blades back and down. It encourages better postural alignment and allows you to stand and sit straighter and taller, and also eliminates lower back pain.

  • Relief Stress and Helps people who suffers from Insomnia - The exercise is a great stress reliever. It is not an extraneous workout, and exercise in general is a great way to reduce stress. It will give your mind the chance to relax by focusing on the exercises without applying too much strain. It can help stretch muscles, release tension, pain and also help triggers natural sleep responses.

  • Help in Weight Loss and Fat Burning - Pilates help in increasing the heart rate and in turn increases your metabolism that allows your body to burn excess fats. A regular pilates exercise regimen results in a flatter stomach and a thinner waist and thighs, as well as increasing mobility in joints. The exercise is just great for someone who are looking to lose weight that is slower, safer, sensible and permanent approach to better health and wellness. If you want to achieve the maximum slimming effect with the least amount of effort, then it is advisable that you go for the Winsor Pilates exercise. These exercise works every part of your body and focuses on the core muscle groups - abdomen, lower back, hips and buttocks - which are going to burn the most energy for weight loss and make the biggest difference in your physical appearance.

  • Helps aid recovery after injury and prevent injury recurring - Pilates is widely recognized as being beneficial to people who are recovering from certain types of injury including whiplash and a wide range of sporting injuries because of its low impact nature. It can play a big part in ensuring correct body movement and core body strength leading to lesser occurrences of such injuries. As acknowledged by worldwide physical therapists, chiropractors and orthopedists, the exercise can also be integrated into rehabilitative exercise and physical therapy programs designed to speed recovery of soft tissue injuries.

The great thing about pilates is that just about everyone - from couch potatoes to fitness buffs - can do it. Because of the heighten attentions given to pilates recently, pilates classes are flourishing everywhere. You will probably find many fitness centers and YMCAs offering pilates classes, mostly in mat work. The complete mat method works every muscle group in the body with special attention to the muscles which stabilize the joints, thus producing correct body mechanics, economy of energy expenditure and a uniform flow of energy channelled through the entire body. The pilates mat program follows a set sequence, with exercises following on from one another in a natural progression, just as Joseph Pilates designed them. Beginners will start with basic exercises and build up to include additional exercises and more advance positioning. The Pilates movements start, stay and end in the core. The benefits of Pilates are both emotional and physical. Pilates routines help you achieve inner awareness and calm along with a sense of mastering the mind and body. But before you start any exercise program, make sure you consult a physician.