I often get asked by my clients
“Should I practice Pilates to improve my posture?
Quite simply, the answer is a resounding YES!
Pilates exercises can be a wonderful way to help change your postural habits.
Pilates improves your fitness, gives you better body awareness, improves breathing and concentration and reinforces good postural habits. Pilates exercises have been shown to improve alignment, strength and flexibility. This then transfers to better body mechanics which help improve the efficiency of your muscular system.
Improved posture is then directly related to a more efficient muscular system and a great way to develop this is with a Pilates workout program
Just because you are in the gym exercising, it doesn’t necessarily mean that this will improve your posture. However, through the use of Pilates exercises, you are able to identify what a good and bad postural habit is and then choose appropriate exercises to change those habits. This will then lead to reduced joint pain, allow you to stand taller and drastically improve both physical and mental wellbeing.
Now, I have some questions for YOU!
- If I could help you gain a quarter of an inch, or more, in height, would you be interested?
- Have you ever suffered from chronic neck or low back pain, disc or tailbone problems?
- Do you have chronic shoulder, hip, or knee pain and wish you could be pain or injury free?
- Do you notice a relationship between your physical health and mental outlook on life?
If you answered YES, to any of the above questions – How would you feel if I told you, that practicing better postural habits could benefit all of the above!
All I ask is, that you make a commitment to making a few small changes in your sitting and standing habits, then let Pilates do the rest!
Whether you realise or not, prolonged, repetitive daily postures, directly relate to our overall health. Poor posture, over a long time, has a direct correlation with a number of musculoskeletal issues which in turn can lead to other various health conditions, including:
- Poor mobility
- Increased pain
- Poor circulation and restricted breathing
- Difficulty maintaining an optimal body weight
- Increased mental and/or emotional stress
It doesn’t make much sense to ‘wish’ for good health, and end up spending lots of money on finding a cure, you are much better off fixing the root cause of the problem – YOUR POSTURE!
Everybody has a different postural setup, with stronger and weaker muscles contributing directly to our alignment and overall posture. Many people just accept that this is part of the natural ageing process.
Why?
Because we see these changes happen over such a long period of time that we actually don’t notice it is happening until it starts to affect our day to day functionality, for example, a stiff neck may actually be worsening for many months, but it is not until we cannot look over our shoulders to check a blind spot that this becomes a problem.
A common misconception is that as we age, we should be stiff and weak and have poor balance. Unfortunately we are conditioned to believe that this is normal and the only solution is found in pills and surgery!
In part 2, I’ll explain the three key components of Pilates and how ‘accepting’ the ageing process is a fallacy!
