Monday Workout: For Balance

I’m still thinking a lot about balance, so we’re working asymmetrical and core exercises.  Three rounds.

1 leg step ups	30
bench press	20
truck driver	10
squat to leg lift	30
flies	20
kickbacks	10
woodchoppers	30
rows	20
v sit press	10

The Amazing Stickie and Deadlift to Curl

The Amazing Stickie loves to be efficient.  So today she is working her whole body by doing the deadlift-to-curl.  She begins standing with good posture holding some dumbbells.  She chooses the weight based on what she can curl, not on her maximum deadlift weight.  Then, keeping her chest lifted (slight thoracic extension, in technical terms), she hinges forward at the hips, letting the weights dangle at the end of her arms.  She returns to her starting position, except that she bends her elbows so that the weights curl up toward her shoulders.  She lowers them back to the actual starting position before doing the next rep.  Sets of twenty are good.

Pilates Principles: Axial Elongation and Core Control

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.

Foot Fun for Ankles

I recently watched a presentation by Brent Anderson of Polestar Pilates on ankle function.  Ankle injuries are super common and, unfortunately, tend to reoccur.  So what do we do to improve our ankles?

The good news is that many of the exercises that help our ankles are very simple to do.  They involve our foot intrinsic muscles, which are muscles that begin and end in our feet.  These muscles make the adjustments we need to balance and react to the ground.  With my clients I use a Franklin ball, but a tennis ball will also work for the exercises that use a ball.

 

Here we go:

 

1.     Push like a gas pedal.  Place the ball under the ball of the foot.  Then, using just the ankle (not the whole leg.  The goal is not to flatten the ball, but to work the ankle), press the ball of the foot down as if accelerating in the car.  Do a set of ten.

2.     Side-to-side.  With the ball in the same position, grip it slightly with the toes and move the forefoot side to side (big toe toward the floor then little toe).  This movement should also come mostly from the ankle, not from the hip rotating in the socket.  Do ten reps.

3.     Sink into the grass.  People who have never worn high heels may not relate to this image, so imagination may be required.  This time, the ball of the foot is on the floor and the heel is on the tennis ball.  The heel presses into the ball, which is like what happens when a person wearing heels attends a summer wedding and the heel sinks into the damp grass.  Do ten reps.

4.     Arch stretch.  Place the ball under the arch of the foot.  Put some weight on it.  Go gently at first as this can be a little uncomfortable until we get used to it.  Hold as long as is comfortable.

 

Repeat all exercises with the other foot.

 

These next exercises don’t require any equipment at all!  We can do one foot at a time or both together.  At first, they may not seem possible, but with practice, we get better.

 

1.     Big toe lift.  With the foot flat on the floor, we lift just our big toes off the floor.  The ball of the foot should stay down.  Do ten.

2.     Other toes lift.  This time the big toe presses into the ground and the other four toes lift.

3.     Middle toes lift.  The big toe and the little toe both press into the ground and the middle three toes lift off the ground.

 

Don’t be discouraged if it feels impossible.  Practice helps build the motor pathways which will give eventual success.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: Gravity

This week we continue to work on balance with a variety of relationships to gravity.  Which is to say, we are doing some standing balance work, but also doing some core work with weight bearing on our arms.  Three rounds.

plank jacks	30
renegade rows	20
pushups	10
leg kicks	30
bench press	20
1 leg squats	10
squat raise	30
flies	20
pretty princesses	10

The Amazing Stickie and Spiderman Pushups

The Amazing Stickie loves to read comics in her spare time.  But first, she likes to do Spiderman pushups.

She begins in plank position.  She lowers her upper body toward the floor, keeping her elbows in toward her sides and her shoulder blades flush against her ribcage.  Then she presses back to plank position.  She brings her right knee toward her right elbow and then returns it to its starting position.  Then she does another pushup and brings her left knee toward her left elbow.  Sets of ten are good.

Pilates Principles: Breathing

Over the next few Wednesdays, I am going to be writing about some Pilates principles.  They are, of course, central to Pilates practice, but they apply to movement generally.  The first principle is a simple one:  breathing.

We are all breathing (at least I hope so!  Reading after death is impressive…).  Becoming conscious of how and when we breathe, however, can change how we feel and how we move.

 

A lot of us think that when we breathe in, the front of our body expands.  We know our chests lift and our abdomens fill.  This is, of course, true, but it’s not the whole picture.  In fact, our whole torso, front, back, and sides, expands when we inhale.  Depending on how mobile the joints are in our spines and ribs, the expansion can be large or small.  Improving the mobility of joints gives us flexibility in our breathing.

 

That flexibility in breathing in turn facilitates our other movement.  If we have, for example, the ability to breathe into the sides of our body, side-bending movements become easier.  When we are bent forward, we can use the expansiveness of our backs to give us a way to get breath into our bodies and we can use the exhale to increase our ability to flex our spines forward.

 

Pilates offers a number of opinions on the best way to breathe for different kinds of movement.  Some options make the movements easier and some challenge us more deeply.  At first, thinking about how and when to breathe while doing new exercises can be one thing too many, so it is absolutely all right to breathe any way that works.  We can experiment and refine later.

 

It can be fun, though, to try different kinds of breathing in exercises we already know well.  For example, we can try breathing in during the lowering phase of pushups and breathing out in the raising phase.  Then we can try the other way around and see what happens.  I would love to hear what folks discover!

 

Bottom line:  keep breathing.