The uses of Pilates...

Some folks wonder what exactly Pilates is FOR.  It’s not exactly weight training and it’s not quite as meditative as yoga and there’s so much weird equipment.

While what Pilates is for does vary some from person to person depending on individual needs and experience, here are a few things that it can improve:

• Range of Motion.  Many very strong people spend so much time strengthening and contracting muscles that they end up with limited movement options.  Pilates can open up more space.

• Balance.  Falling down is bad.  Sprained ankles and thrown-out backs are also bad.  Good balance helps prevent injury.  And we all like to be graceful (or at least not entirely clumsy…).

• Posture.  Posture doesn’t sound all that sexy, but really it is.  In our screen and chair culture, we create a lot of back and neck pain for ourselves.  Pilates helps us undo the damage and even create better ways of interacting with our environments that don’t hurt us.  Also, we look thinner when we stand with better posture.

Try it!

And bring some water...

Go outside and play.

No, I’m not your mom (unless T. and Syd are reading this…), but it’s still a good idea.

I love the gym.  I love weights and cardio machines and classes and handy showers and often I even love the cheesy music.  But.

Outside is better.  The view from the treadmill doesn’t change much, but a walk or run out in the world can change our perspective.

It can also be a reality check.  No matter how much we vary the intensity or incline or speed on a cardio machine, it’s not the same as tackling real hills or dealing with different surfaces.  We don’t work out to get better at working out.  We do it to get better at the stuff we actually want to do.

So get out.  Feel the sun and the breeze.  Breathe a while.

In which I disagree, slightly, with the Grateful Dead, in some contexts

Enthusiasm can get us into trouble.  In general, I am in favor of having lots of it.  It’s inspiring.  It helps us try new things and embrace the weird and wonderful.  It can also lead to those moments when we have to ask, “How did I end up here?”

I’m talking about fitness contexts here, so I don’t mean those times when we wake up wearing a hula skirt and several decorative fish, or even those times when the conversation in the car is so good that we pass the right exit and don’t notice for another seventeen miles.

No, it’s when we start something new in fitness and fall in love with it, or when we are getting back to something we love after an injury or vacation or other layoff.  We are so excited to be doing this wonderful thing that we overdo ourselves.  Too much of anything can hurt us.

By all means we need to find the play and the fun.  But we also need to have a real sense of enough so we stop before we get hurt.