Miscellaneous: Righting Response

Because I am a responsible trainer and Pilates instructor, I keep up with my continuing education.  I often learn little tidbits that I like to pass along.  Recently, an instructor in a course I was taking said that when we are training balance, we actually want to lose our balance from time to time.

I thought:  WHAT?

 

Here is the thinking.  When we are unstable and we lose our balance in a safe environment, we train our righting response, or, in other words, our bodies learn how to catch us.  This, I think, is akin to learning how to fall in martial arts training.

 

The broader lesson is this:  learning comes through mistakes and failure.  If we are succeeding at everything we are doing in our workouts, we are limiting our growth.  I am NOT saying that we should do unsafe things, just that we can push ourselves just a little bit past our comfort zone in order to enlarge that very zone.

Thursday List: 6

There are more than two basic principles of Pilates.  Here is the whole list:

 

1.     breathing

2.     alignment/weight bearing of the extremities

3.     axial elongation and core control

4.     spinal articulation

5.     head/neck/shoulder organization

6.     movement integration

 

If you want to know more or experience Pilates in action, you know how to find me.

Back to Basics: Pilates 2

One of the other principles of Pilates that seems both basic and powerful is alignment. 

In the literal sense, when we move with improved alignment, our bodies are more graceful and efficient.  We are less likely to get injured, either through repetitive stress or catastrophe.  Balance and coordination are easier.

 

The thing is, the alignment of our literal bodies tends to have metaphorical effects as well.  As we align, say, our heads over our shoulders, we align our principles with our actions, our values with our work, our hearts with our minds and bodies.

 

I’m not saying that doing Pilates will automatically transform our lives.  Just that there is an opportunity there for the kind of small shift in alignment that can have, over time, big results.

Back to Basics: Pilates 1

 

Getting back to basics with Pilates is kind of the point of Pilates.  When we show up to our sessions, we want to check back into our bodies, to connect the body and mind more consciously (pro tip:  they’re always connected; it’s our awareness that shifts).

Personally, the part of Pilates that triggers that most directly and easily is the breath.

 

I’ve had more than one person tell me that they were bad at breathing.  That is not a thing.  Anybody who is not dead is doing a perfectly adequate job of breathing.  So we’re all starting from a place of success.

 

There are two exercises that, for me, facilitate connection to the breath most and they’re both really simple and accessible.  One is the pelvic clock.  To do it, we lie on our backs (hooray!) with our knees bent and our heels lined up with our sit bones.  As we exhale, we tilt the pelvis gently toward our belly buttons.  Then, when we inhale, we tilt toward our pubic bones.  There are further progressions of the exercise (tilting side to side and making circles), but this basic movement takes the natural motion of the spine as we breathe and slightly exaggerates it.  What I mean by that is that our spines naturally flex a little as we exhale and extend as we inhale.  We make conscious what happens without our even knowing it.

 

In a similar way, arm arcs do the same thing in a different part of the spine.  To do them, we start in the same position as for pelvic clock with our arms down at our sides.  As we inhale, we raise our arms overhead.  Then we lower them as we exhale.  This exaggerates what is called the “pump handle” motion of breathing.  As we inhale, the spine extends and the sternum rises like an old fashioned pump handle.  The exhale lowers the sternum, pumping out the breath.

 

Bringing attention to the way our breath moves our bodies and our bodies move our breath is a quick route to mindful movement.

Pilates Favorites: 10

Other favorite Pilates mat exercises include:

 

1.     chest lift

2.     arm arcs

3.     side to side

4.     swan

5.     leg circles

6.     dart

7.     roll down

8.     push up

9.     twist

10.  mermaid

Pilates Favorites 2

My other favorite Pilates mat exercise is the bridge.  Again, because most of us spend too much time sitting, we suffer from tight hip flexors and relatively weak glutes.  Bridge to the rescue!

I love how many variations of bridging there are, including the single leg version, the “chip and dip,” the typewriter, and more.  I particularly love adding a hip flexor stretch by sliding a yoga block under my pelvis at the top and then extending my legs long to let gravity do the work.

 

One important note, though.  Those of us who have osteoporosis need to be a little careful in our bridges.  Articulating through the spine is not recommended because it puts us at risk of fracture.

 

Be careful, but enjoy!

Pilates Favorites 1

Since not everybody has a studio full of Pilates equipment, I’m choosing my favorite Pilates exercises from the mat work.  We all have floors.

Because, like most of us, I sit at a desk more than is ideal, my favorite Pilates exercise is the supine twist.  I like to do it with yoga tune up balls under my back at the spot just above my bra strap (people who do not wear bras will have to envision the spot) with one ball on either side of my spine.

 

To do the exercise, we lie on our backs (With or without balls.  People new to this exercise might find doing it with balls a little… spicy.).  We bend our knees and place our feet flat on the floor.  So far, so comfy!  Then we extend our arms up toward the ceiling and place the palms of our hands together.  Throughout the exercise, the hands stay together and the elbows stay straight.

 

First, we keep our head still and move our arms as far from side to side as we can without moving our hips or suffering more than discomfort.  After about ten reps, we shift to moving our arms and taking our heads with us; another way to think about this is that we keep an eye on our thumbs as we move.  Then, after about ten more reps, we take our arms one way and our head the other way for ten reps.

 

At the end, our upper backs tend to feel looser and our breathing is easier.

 

Try it!

Interdependence: Pilates and weights

One way that interdependence plays out in workouts is in the synergy between weight training and Pilates.

As everyone knows, I offer both personal training and Pilates.  When asked which one someone should do, I usually say that both are good, and not because I want more business.  Both are good, and they’re better together.

 

Here’s why.  Weight training increases our strength.  It’s where we build lean body mass, encourage our metabolism, and acquire what we think of as “tone.”  Those are all good things.  However, if we want the most benefit from the work we do with weights, we need to hone our form.

 

This is where Pilates is so beneficial.  In Pilates, we train our proprioception (five dollar word for “knowing where our bodies are in space”).  We work on our alignment.  We challenge our stabilizing muscles.  We open up both our range of motion and our control of that range.  When we apply our Pilates skills in our weight training context, we get better results.

 

Conversely, when we bring our strength to Pilates, we open up more of the repertoire.  We can tackle some of the challenging exercises without worrying that our basic strength isn’t up to them.

 

All that said, some of us do better starting with one or the other.  If you want guidance, you know where to find me.

Fresh: Pilates 2

Another way to refresh the Pilates experience is to take it out of the studio and into the world.  This is in line with Uncle Joe’s general philosophy.

What does that mean?  It can mean anything from thinking about how we are moving while we are weight lifting in the same way we do while we are doing Pilates—focusing on what our bones are doing, on how and when we exert effort, on the quality of the movement itself—to watching the flow of our breath in line at the grocery store or while we wait for the microwave to beep.

 

Pilates, like all fitness, is not intended as an end in itself, but rather as a means to a happier, healthier, more zestful life.  (Zest is a word that Uncle Joe liked a lot!)

 

Go get zesty!

Fresh: Pilates 1

Pilates, like all practices, can fall into ruts.  We show up, we plop down on the reformer and we go through the motions.  Uncle Joe would applaud that we showed up and yet be disappointed in our behavior, maybe.

One of the easiest ways I’ve found to wake up in Pilates is to switch equipment.  For a lot of the repertoire, there are versions of the exercises for use on the reformer, or trap table, or ladder barrel, or chair, or spine corrector, or mat, or all of the above.  When we move from one piece of equipment to another, we may find ourselves in a different relationship to gravity.  We may experience resistance in different ways.  We may learn different qualities of motion.

 

If we are habitual users of the equipment, doing a mat workout can be instructive.  Similarly, mat class habitués may find enlightenment in using the equipment.

 

Change is good in this context, friends.

Love Month: 6

Quick reasons to do Pilates:

 

1.     Increased mobility

2.     Increased flexibility

3.     Better balance

4.     Better posture

5.     Better efficiency

6.     Fun

Love Month: Love your muscles long

Yesterday I wrote about strong muscles.  Today, I need to add a bit about long muscles.

 

OK, not necessarily long.  Muscles at optimum length.  Bear with me here.  In our muscles, there is a relationship between length and tension.  That relationship produces strength in action.  A muscle with an optimal length-tension relationship is as strong as possible.  One that is too short (contracted) or too long (released) can’t do its best work.

 

It’s true that most of us walk around with a lot of muscles overly contracted.  (PSA:  this is a good time to lower your shoulders away from your ears.)  What we may not realize is that this means we are also walking around with a lot of muscles overly stretched.  For every muscle group that bends something, there is a group that extends it and vice versa.  When some are too tight, some are too loose.  We need to balance everything out.

 

So what do we do?  Let me introduce you to my favorite “uncle,” Uncle Joe Pilates.  Pilates (and yoga) as a practice does a great job of teaching us to use the right amount of force at the right time.  We may notice the increased flexibility more, but the increased strength in the opposing muscles is there, too.

 

Don’t want to do Pilates?  That’s cool.  Do some stretching at least, making sure to stretch both sides (e.g., both quads and hamstrings) for best results.

 

(I’m a Pilates instructor.  You can make an appointment with me!)

 

Go play. 

Physics!

Yesterday I mentioned the connections between all our body parts and talked a little about how they interact.  Today I’ll give another reason to work on range of motion in all the different parts.  It’s physics.

Don’t worry:  there is no math in what follows.

 

The physical principle that we care about in this instance is that distribution of motion allows distribution of force.  That means that when we have an amount of force, we can put a lot of force in a few places, or a little bit in a lot of places.  That second option is usually better in our bodies.

 

Take, for example, our knees.  There they are, sandwiched between our hips and ankles, trying to mind their own business.  That’s fine as long as the hips and ankles do their part.  However, if our hips get stiff and restricted from too much sitting or our ankles get too used to wearing heels, they can’t move as much.  That makes the forces we generate when we walk land on our knees.  Over time, that force wears our poor knees out. 

 

The good news is that we can loosen up the tight places and give our knees a break.  Pilates is fabulous for this, but stretching, SMR, and massage also help.

 

Want to try Pilates?  You know how to find me!

Dry Bones

In the old song, the ankle bone’s connected to the knee bone and the knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone and so on.  The anatomy might be a little questionable, but the overarching theory is correct:  our bodies connect.

This is not just a bulletin from Captain Obvious, as much as I like those.  The fact that the different parts of our bodies connect has implications for how we move.  If, for example, we have an ankle that doesn’t have much range of motion, that changes how our knees work.  How our knees work, in turn, impacts how our hips work.  We may feel pain in our lower backs while the problem might be somewhere else in the body entirely.

 

As a result of this connection, I try to ensure that every workout involves as much of the body as possible.  When we work all the parts, they tend to work together more smoothly.

 

Go play.

Subtle

Pilates can be a subtle practice.  Most of the time when we do it, we don’t end up sore.  We might feel tired, but we’re also energized in a calm kind of way after our sessions.  It can be hard to notice what Pilates does for us.

Until we skip it a while.

 

I notice the lack of Pilates when all of a sudden those problem areas of my body start whining again.  I find my range of motion decreases.  So does my flexibility and my balance.  I move with less grace.  And the hamsters in my head start their obsessive running.

 

The good news is that Uncle Joe is always there, ready for us, however we show up.  When we breathe and move mindfully, we tap into the Pilates magic.

 

Poke me if you want to try it!

Month of Gratitude: Uncles

November is a month of gratitude.

Today I am thankful for my two favorite fitness uncles, Uncle Joe and Uncle Patanjali.

 

Uncle Joe is Joseph Pilates, visionary creator of the eponymous system.  His determination to create health and “spontaneous zest” in his own life and the lives of others has been transformative.  I am thankful for the training I have had in his methods because it makes me a better mover and teacher.

 

Uncle Patanjali is credited with systematizing the huge complex that is yoga into sutras.  The practice of yoga brings peace to my body and my mind.

 

Who are your fitness heros?

Falling (or not) into Fall

Since we’re into fall now, let’s talk about falling.  As we age, falling can become more and more of a risk.  Unless we work really hard, those of us who are over 30 are losing muscle mass, a process which accelerates as we get older and older.  Our balance may get more precarious.  Our bones get more fragile.  All these things put us at greater risk of falling and of having injuries that are difficult to recover from.

Interestingly, in a small study done on Pilates for people classified as high risk for falls, the greatest predictor of actual falls was fear.  Having positive movement experiences that were not targeted at improving balance or strength or even core control moved people out of the high risk group.  There was no significant correlation between strength and risk in this study.

 

What does that mean?  It means that we are people who need to keep moving.  We need to keep our focus on doing what we can do rather than dwelling on what we can’t do.  We need to take ownership of our experience.  (Yeah, it sounds pretty darn woo-woo to me, too, but it turns out to work.)

 

Don’t know where to start?  Poke me.  I can help.

I Have Answers

Because I do both personal training and Pilates, folks sometimes ask me which they should do.  I have two answers:  it depends and both.  (Yeah, I know.  I’m annoying like that.)

The “it depends” answer springs from the fact that we are all coming to fitness from our own special spots in the universe.  We have individual needs and goals.  For most of us, it will be pretty clear whether the usual outcomes of weight training or Pilates will align better with what we need and want.

 

The “both” part comes from the synergistic nature of weight training and Pilates.  When we do both, we improve our outcomes even more than just by getting the individual benefits of each of those training modes.  The strength we gain in weight training opens up opportunities for us in the Pilates repertoire.  The finesse and balance and alignment we learn in Pilates translate into better form and performance in our weight training.  Our powerful brains benefit from the mindset of both disciplines and from the challenge of switching between them.

 

The good news is that we can start anywhere.  It’s all good.

One at a time

In Pilates, we learn that we can only do so many things at once.  This applies in lots of ways, but the way I’m thinking about right now is about how our spines move.

Our spines move, roughly, along three axes.  We can flex and extend our spines (bending forward and back).  We can side bend left and right.  We can twist.

 

The interesting thing is that we have the greatest range of motion along any of those axes when we are only moving one way.  That is, we can bend forward and back more when we’re not also trying to side bend or twist, or we can twist more when we’re not also bending to the side, etc.

 

So if we are trying to increase our ability to move in a particular direction, we will do best if we work on just that one thing at a time.  We can add the other fancy stuff later, when we’ve achieved our range of motion goals.

The Amazing Stickie and Pilates Twist

The Amazing Stickie knows that many of us don’t do enough work on rotation.  Uncle Joe Pilates to the rescue!  Today she is doing his Twist exercise.

 

Stickie begins in a side plank position, the upper arm raised and her top foot in front of her other foot.  From there, she lifts her hips and pokes her non-weight-bearing arm through the arch she has created with her body.  Then she returns to the start position.

 

She likes to do about five reps on each side.