Spandex or Not: Breaking It Down: Pilates Understood

This blog will help break down the important Pilates principles and will help you better understand your work outs. Enjoy and please don't hesitate to contact me with questions.

Pelvic Rocking: First step in practicing Pilates is understanding the concept of a neutral back position. This can be practiced with Pelvic rocking.

Flat Back or Imprint:

Arched Back:

The idea is to find a nice "happy" place for your back between these two extreme back positions that feel comfortable for you. You don't want to feel like you are forcing your back onto the mat, but you also don't want to arch either. You need to be in a place where your abdominals can engage the fullest.

Imprint vs. Neutral: It's important to understand when to have an imprint vs. keeping the neutral we just established. This is actually easier than it seems.

Knees up or in table top: Imprint

Feet on the mat or legs Straight out in front: Neutral

When we start to incorporate equipment, this changes; for mat, this is all you need.

Basic Abdominal Curl: Here, the two places you want to focus on are the neck and your pelvic area. A lot of times when people do an abdominal curl they will lead with their chin:

When people pull on their neck, or lead with the chin it can put a lot of stress on the traps and cause pain in the neck itself. Notice how my neck looks strained in the picture above.

A couple of helpful cues:

Keep your head heavy in your hands, elbows stay wide.
Keep your chin slightly tucked with your gaze towards your knees
Try leading with your chest, keeping your chin in line with your collar

It should look like this:

Here my neck looks so much more relaxed. I'm also releasing my hip flexors by letting my knees open to the sides. This is another common problem in ab curls. People tend to grip with their hip flexors or overly tuck the tail bone (extreme pelvic tilt):

You can almost see my butt lifting off the mat. It looks like my abs are engaged, but actually, I'm really using my hip flexors and soaz muscles to compensate for my lower abdominals.

To help release the hip flexors, try letting your knees open up to the sides as mine are in the picture above. This will release the tension allowing the lower abs to fire. Even comparing the pictures you can see how much more relaxed my legs look allowing my abs to engage.

Feet in Table Top vs. on the mat: When you are over tucking in table top, or gripping with the inner thighs, it is even easier to notice. As you curl up, to your knees pull in?

Or, can you keep your knees stable throughout the exercise.

If you do notice your knees pulling in, try to butterfly your knees out like before:

When you curl up in an abdominal curl; think about keeping your butt super heavy. This will help to keep your knees stable and your lower abs engaged.

Remember, if your knees are in table top, your back is in an imprint. If your knees are on the mat, you are in your comfortable neutral (meaning there could be two pockets of air on your lower back. Personal Trainer, Krys, at CSC put it best "Back Dimples".

Understanding the Pelvic Floor: This is a quintessential part Pilates. It's the idea of lifting through your entire body to lengthen and strengthen. I'll break it down into steps:

Engage the inner thighs slightly, not to the point that your gripping; but as Leah says, "not to the point your walking like a robot, just so if you were wearing short shorts, they wouldn't jiggle..."
Now lift from the pubic region. Think what happens when you go swimming in the ocean in May in New England. Think about the point your pubic zone hits the water... That feeling, is the next part of the lift. You can also think about it as stopping the flow of urine, but that kind of grosses me out...
Pull your lowest abdominals up and in. To practice this, place your hands on your lowest abdominals. Exhale really deep and press your hands in to your abdomen to feel what happens.
Draw your front ribs towards the back while opening the collar bone. Most people let their upper ribs pop out, especially men. To understand what I'm talking about, place your hands on your upper rib cage. Inhale, feel how your ribs expand:Notice how my hands spread apart and my chest looks open. Exhale deeply and feel how your ribs close together. Now, think about your lowest abdominals pulling up and in causing your cage to pull down. At the same time, try to notice your collar bone. If you are forcing your ribs down, your shoulders will start to hunch. Notice below how my shoulders look like they are rolling forwards. The idea is to only pull in the ribs to the point of lengthening the body and supporting the upper back.To engage properly through the pelvic floor, you will notice a feeling of length. At first, this position is hard to hold. It may even feel unnatural. It does start to feel better as you learn proper posture and alignment. Engaging your pelvic floor unleashes your Pilates power house.

Crown vs. Tiara: The crown is the upper part of the head, the tiara is the forehead. Royalty wears crowns, Barbie wears the tiara. Think about always lengthening up through the crown of the head to try make the neck long. The idea in Swan is to lengthen the lumbar out. The head will have the same neutral in all 4's and even c curves and roll backs.

Crown:

Tiara:

Here my lower back looks compressed as is the back of my neck. The idea is to lengthen from head to toe as in the picture above. Notice how much longer I look.

Rib Hip Connection: Pilates is all about the integration of your rib and hip connections. Think of an abdominal curl, you are simply sliding your ribs towards your hips.
Think of a C curve... Same thing as the ab curl; sliding ribs towards hips.
Most Pilates exercises have a "paper doll" like effect. Simply rotate the picture, and one exercise will look like another. Understanding these similarities will change your work out.