No Pain All Gain: 10 Good Reasons to add Pilates to your Workouts
1 – Longer, Leaner Muscles
This method of exercise helps streamline your muscles. Balancing strength with flexibility not only allows your body to achieve a long, lean look that is also limber – your body learns to move with ease.
2 – Core Strength & Stability
Flatten, tone and strengthen your abs without endless sit-ups. A constant focus on torso stability, combined with simple exercises performed with more control makes Pilates famous for strong flat abdominal muscles.
3 – Injury Prevention
In addition to increasing flexibility, this exercise method strengthens muscles using resistance on both the “in” and “out” movement (concentric & eccentric contractions), improving muscle control — control which prevents injuries that commonly occur upon impact.
4 – Stress & Back Pain Relief
The concentration and focus needed for Pilates is a sure stress buster. Combine that concentration with the concentration on the core muscles and you get back relief. Lower back pain would plague far fewer people, if they worked to strengthen the muscles which support it.
5 – Balance Strength with Flexibility
Most of us overtrain some muscles while neglecting others – way too much forward bending and not enough strengthening and stretching of the back. Pilates works on rebalancing the muscles around the joints to work effectively and reduce chance of injury.
6 – Enhanced Athletic Performance
Dancers have sworn by Pilates for years because of precision performance, focus and injury prevention they achieve. Try it and see what it does for your game.
7 – Improved Posture
These exercises recognize and restore the important shock absorbing features of the spines natural curves, which help you stand straighter and walk taller.
8 – Increase Circulation & Relieve Tension
A continual emphasis on breathing not only oxygenates the blood and increases blood flow to the brain – but it also helps focus and concentration. The added bonus – a revitalizing effect on the body.
9 – Enhanced Body Awareness
By identifying and strengthening the body’s deeper support system – the torso muscles – the body learns to move more efficiently. Being conscious of your muscles and how to control them strengthens a powerful mind body connection. This heightened awareness and focus carries over into everyday life.
10 – Increased Self Confidence
This method of exercise feels so good to do as it brings noticeable results, so a boost in self esteem is sure to follow – Feel great about yourself with Pilates!