This tip is something I have been doing regularly since I read Joseph Pilates book ‘Your Health’. He mentions briefly in this book that when you are having a bath or shower, it is a good idea to massage your skin. He recommends working up to being able to use a hard bristled brush as this really stimulates the skin, but start with something softer as you get used to the pressure. Massaging the skin this way helps to keep the pores open and clear from sweat, dirt and soap residue. It increases the blood circulation to the surface of the skin which helps to flush away toxins and cleans away dead skin cells. If you use a brush with no handle or a very short handle it also helps you to maintain a certain level of general flexibility as you try to reach all parts of your body (particularly your back). As an added bonus it really helps to minimize ingrown hairs! So find yourself a brush and next time you have a bath or shower get scrubbing!
I like reading the ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ sections on websites and in brochures. When it comes to your health and fitness though, I think that section should be worded differently. I think it should read ‘Questions You Should Frequently Ask’. I say this because it’s your health, your wellbeing and your life. We are confronted with an overwhelming mass of information today telling us how to think, how to feel, how we should look and what we should do. It is much easier to know what information is relevant to you if you regularly make the time to think about your health what you want. So here are some questions that I think we should all frequently ask ourselves. This not only applies to Pilates, but to all aspects of our health and fitness.
What is the current state of my health?
Is your body fit enough to do the tasks you ask of it? The best way to answer this is to pay attention to how you feel at the end of each day and first thing in the morning. Constant aches, pains and exhaustion are a sign that something is out of balance, you are not fit enough for your current level of activity. If you sleep well and wake up enthusiastic then you are probably on the right track. Being aware of your current level of fitness means you are much better equipped to make decisions about what you might want to do next. Don’t let other people make decisions for you about your health. As I said before, it’s your health, so take the time to frequently ask yourself questions and give yourself honest answers.
Has my level of health & fitness changed?
This is especially important if you are exercising regularly and/or attend classes. If you are aware of what your level of health and fitness actually is, and you have made a decision that you want to improve it, then pay attention to whether or not it is actually improving. This sounds obvious enough, but I have met many people who have been taking classes for years and don’t seem to be getting anywhere. Years is too long to not see any results. Remember what it is you want to achieve and seek out the people that can help you achieve it. Even if you are training with a highly qualified instructor, if you aren’t getting results, find someone else.
If you aren’t exercising at all then it is still important to be aware if the level of your health and fitness has changed. Especially as there is a good chance it is getting worse!
What do I really want my body to be able to do?
I always ask my clients what they want to do with their bodies. Some people just want to be able to touch their toes, others want to be able to do the splits and a gazzillion situps, and some people have no idea what they want. It’s important to realise that if you don’t know what you want, then you have no idea if you are heading in the right direction! It doesn’t matter how simple or how complex your health and fitness desires are, having a clarity on WHAT they are will help you enormously when it comes to figuring out how to get there!
Jason and I now have an online courseware site up and running!
Yesterday I put up our first book. The Pilates Basic Mat is FREE to read online, covers everything you need to start getting into shape right NOW and you can also download a print friendly version.
We are still in the early stages, but this book is the first of a lot more to come. We will be offering courses and publishing books through this site on Pilates, Shaolin Kung Fu and general health and fitness. So be sure to keep checking in with us for the latest.
I am so excited! It’s official, I can no do The Pull Up on the Wunda Chair with only 2 springs on the bottom!……and do it well….and repeat it consistently! For those of you who know the exercise and the spring strength I am sure you will appreciate my excitement:)
If you
aren’t familiar with the exercise here is a photo. In this photo I have the usual spring setting of one top and one bottom. You can’t see it in the photo but the springs attach from the peddle my feet are on to one of the three hooks at the back, you can see the bolts on the outside of the chair. There is one spring on each side of the chair. With the Pull Up, the less spring resistance you have the harder the exercise is as you have to use more of your own strength to pull yourself up. The stronger the spring resistance the more help you get. On the Wunda Chair the spring resistance is strongest when you attach them to the top hooks and lightest when you attach them to the bottom hooks. So my next challenge is to be able to pull up with only one spring attached!
Here are three things you can do to help keep your feet in good shape.
The first one, as I mentioned above, is massage. Do it yourself or get someone else to help you out. A few minutes once a week will make a big difference.
The second one is a follow on from a body tip a couple of issues ago. Stand with your heels together, your toes apart, squeeze your legs together and pull your abdominal muscles strongly to your spine. Place your weight evenly on both feet. Keeping your weight even and your heels together, slowly rise up onto your toes. Only lift as high as you can keep your weight even and your heels together! Repeat this a few times, and try it a couple of times a day.
The third tip you can do standing or sitting. Simply try to seperate all your toes. Spread them all out so that none of them are touching and see if you can move each toe. This one is fun, as you get better at it you will be able to see all the muscles and bones up through your foot move.
Have fun with these and remember to love your feet! , as you get better at it you will be able to see all the muscles and bones up through your foot move.
Unless you are lucky enough to have a lifestyle that permits it, you spend most of your days with shoes on. If your feet are lucky you wear good shoes, shoes that allow your feet to move and breathe. If your feet are unlucky, you wear high heels most of the time and often cram them into very uncomfortable shoes, even if they are very cute shoes. When you think about exercise, I bet you rarely think about exercising the muscles in your feet. Thoughts of exercise usually involve wearing sneakers anyway.
I have worked with people who have been told that they need to wear shoe inserts because of the condidtion of their feet, but have never been told to exercise the MUSCLES in their feet. After doing some very simple Pilates exercises these same people have been able to thrown their inserts out. Your feet contain muscles just like the rest of your body and they need to be taken care of in order to function well and without pain. I have included a couple of simple exercises for your feet in the Body Tip section below to get you started. Along with exercise, massage is wonderful and if you have someone who is willing to do it for you even better! If not, then find a good massage therapist and make sure they massage your feet and/or give yourself a regular foot massage. Get some massage oil, sit down somewhere warm and comfortable and pay some attention to your feet.
The Hundred is the first exercise in the Pilates mat work routine. It has a variety of benefits for the body, including strengthening the abdominal muscle as well as the hip and legs muscles. It helps to improve breathing and the co-ordination of breathing with body movement. It’s placement in the mat sequence is important to consider as well. The Hundred is the first exercise in the sequence because it wakes everything up and warms everything up.
There are a couple of common mistake that people make with The Hundred. The first one I see all the time is the position of the spine. When you’re doing The Hundred you should feel your back, right from your pelvis to the base of your shoulder blades, flat on the floor. This whole section of your back should be pressed into the floor. Many people let it lift up, either because they aren’t instructed properly or they are attempting to holdtheir legs lower then their strength can maintain. If you feel that the work moves quickly form your abs to your back when you do The Hundred check your position, try bringing your legs up higher. The goal is to have yourlegs just off the ground but most people aren’t strong enough to do that straight away. Make sure you are working your body intelligently and pay attention to the position of your spine.
The second most common mistake I see is in the head position. A lot of people struggle in the beginning keeping their head up off the mat as they feel strain in their necks. When your head is up it should be all the way up, you should be able to rest your eyes on your belly button. IF your neck is feeling strained you should rest it down on the floor. Don’t make the mistake of trying to hold it a bit lower of the ground as that will make it worse. All the way up or all the way down, if you are looking at the ceiling your position is wrong.
When I first moved to Tasmania I did a Pilates class at a gym to see what it was like. When we eventually got to The Hundred the instructor told us that we should feel the deep abdominal muscles working but let the surface one relax, he also told us that if we were feeling the work in our necks that was good because that was where we should feel it………no, no and definitely NO!
The Huindred should work ALL of your abdominal muscles and you dont’t want to feel it in your neck. You will strengthen the neck muscles by holding your body in this position but you shouldn’t hold it to the point that you are straining the neck.
Here are a few examples of positions for The Hundred. The second two can easily be done with the head on the ground if you have trouble with your neck.
This one’s great. I have been working with it conscientiously for the last month and it has been fantastic! Do things with both sides of your body. That’s it, just be aware when you are doing something with one side of your body and then try doing it with the other side as well. I first started doing this while picking up horse manure. But then I started swapping between arms when I vacuumed, brushed my teeth, stirred cake mix in a bowl and carried my little girl on my right hip as well as my left. One of my physical struggles has been an imbalance in my waist and hip muscles, most of us have this, one side stronger than the other, and it used to cause me a lot of discomfort. Pilates has changed that, but what I found was that even when I wasn’t able to work regularly, I have been able to maintain the strength of muscle balance in my waist just by doing things with both sides of my body! Give it a go, you will probably feel awkward and a little silly in the beginning but your body will love you for it.
There are a lot of Pilates products available today. With all these books and instructional dvds you might be thinking that’s all you need to do Pilates. Why bother spending money with an instructor when you can just use a book in the comfort of your own home? There are many benefits to having lessons with a qualified instructor, probably the most important reason is that what feels correct or well aligned to you when you position and move your body is often not.
I have been observing bodies move for 4 years as a professional Pilates Instructor, and for 10 years as a Shaolin Kung Fu practitioner. What I have seen is that most people are unaware when their bodies are positioned badly, because what has become habitual to them also feels correct. Most of us have developed bad postural habits, the funny thing is that most of us are, to some extent, also aware of this. It’s a common reason people give for wanting to do Pilates in the first place! The problem is that even being aware of it doesn’t help when it comes to positioning your body because the habitual position will always feel more correct. It’s been my experience both in my own workouts and as a teacher that most people are surprised when they are placed in a good position because to them it feels crooked.
This is one of the most important things to keep in mind if you are trying to workout by yourself. With no one to observe your body, how will you correct something that doesn’t feel like it needs adjustment? I recently travelled to Sydney to have a session with my mentor, Cynthia Lochard. After no more than a five minutes into the session she commented that I was carrying my baby on my left hip all the time. She was absolutely right, I was carryign Evie on my left hip all the time, and doing a million other things with my right arm. My hips were becoming quite crooked and it was starting to affect my freedom of movement. I could feel that something was wrong, I just hadn’t been sure exactly what it was. What might have taken me months or years to figure out myself took a 1 hour session with Cynthia and I was back on track.
Even if you can’t get to regular sessions with an instructor, try and do a session with someone whenever you can, the results will be far superior. If you are working out at home, the quality of those workouts will also improve.
The better the quality of the instruction you receive the better the results will be. I have included a couple of links in this issue to great sites that keep registers of authentically trained instructors all around the world. They also have some other great information as well so take a look.
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How often do you pay attention to the way you stand?
If you are like me you aren’t often standing still, and if you do find yourself with a few spare moments you are probably not thinking about your posture. But here is a really simple exercise you can do right now that will change the way your body feels and moves.
Stand up with your heels together and your toes apart. Squeeze your legs together and pull your stomach muscles strongly towards your spine. Take a few moments to feel the weight in your feet. Stand so that you feel even pressure on both feet. You shouldn’t feel
more weight in your left foot than your right foot or more weight towards the front of your feet than the back. Place your weight EVENLY on both feet. Enjoy how balanced your body feels and do this as often as you can.
Most of us stand with our posture all over the place. We carry our children on one side all the time and try to do 101 things all at once. We are usually leaning on one leg with all our weight in one hip. When we do this over years it creates imbalances, which leads to pain. We stand a lot in our daily life, brushing our teeth, waiting in line or at work. All these times are great opportunities to use this exercise and begin developing your strong ‘after baby’ body.
