Last week, I wrote about breathing as a principle of Pilates. Today, I’m adding a second principle: axial elongation and core control.
What the heck is axial elongation? Basically it is making sure that our spines are positioned optimally for good posture. Our spines are not intended to be rigidly straight. The neck portion of our spine curves forward slightly, the chest portion curves back slightly, and the lower back curves forward again slightly. This ideal shape tends to get distorted in real life by everything from structural abnormalities to plain poor usage. How many of us spend a lot of our lives hunched over desks? That messes with our axial elongation so we often end up with a posture that has our heads thrust forward and the whole rest of our spines curved around our bellies.
Pilates strives to help us get and maintain a better alignment because when we start from an optimal position, we have more freedom of movement and we can move more efficiently.
We get that axial elongation through, among other things, core control.
Core control is not, as some of us may think, simply holding in our tummies all the time. For one thing, the core musculature is not just in the front of the body! For another, all our muscles are strongest when they have the right amount of tension on them. Clenched muscles and totally slack muscles are both weak compared to muscles with the correct amount of tension.
The Pilates repertoire helps us learn how to keep our spines long and happy and our cores strong. People often report that they feel taller after a Pilates session.