When people enquiring about Pilates “I’m not very flexible” is often one of the first things they say.
Yes, if you look around you will find photographs of people doing Pilates moves that involve a crazy level of contortionism; you may have also seen the Yogi’s doing moves that require their leg to end up closer to their ears than is anatomically possible.
But….
No one starts there; and more importantly, you may not want to end up there! With every class you do you will develop a new level of stability, strength, and flexibility; this development comes from YOUR starting point – wherever that might be!
Furthermore, Pilates should be applicable to your life. For many people, Pilates is about making daily life and the movements we do in daily life easier. What would be the benefit of us teaching you how to get your legs over your head if your aim way to be able to pick up your grandchild.
That said if your aim is to be able to run fast, build your strength then Pilates will also help with that. Pilates can also help you to recover more quickly from your exercise routine and injury.
Within your Pilates class, we will spend time teaching you how to stand, how to hold your body in correct alignment. Correcting poor posture can be a magic bullet to reducing general aches and pains. We will teach you how to engage your core muscles which will reduce the stress on your muscles and joints and will enable you to move more efficiently.
Many of our moves are quite small – we look for a precise, controlled movement we focus on perfecting the simple stuff before dashing into the big stuff.
Generally, you won’t find us holding stretches for ages; one of our fundamental principles is flow. You will work through your current range of movement allowing the body to find a greater range of movement when it is ready. In addition to developing that range in your own time, we focus on it being a stable range as you stretch the limb instead of disconnecting the limb from the body. We use the muscle strength around the joint to draw the limb back into the joint capsule. This technique builds strength and stability around the joints reducing the risk of future injuries.
If not being flexible enough is the reason you haven’t made it to a class, I ask you to reconsider. Although much of the imaging around Pilates is bendy lycra-clad bodies that isn’t who we are at Pilates Avenue. We are real people with real bodies that put the work in to develop our Pilates moves too.
At Pilates Avenue we offer a range of classes for different abilities and we are great at adapting classes depending on the needs of our participants.
We are here to support you in developing the body that allows you to live the life you want to live.
If you would like help and advice with booking a class please contact Lisa on 07952 489027 or email [email protected] – we cant wait to help you experience the benefits of Pilates.