“We retire too early and we die too young. Our prime of life should be in the 70’s and old age should not come until we are almost 100.” - Joseph Pilates
Most people have heard of Pilates by now as an exercise method, but have you personally tried it?
Have you tried committing to it?
Pilates was invented by Joseph Pilates, a German immigrant to the United States, who transplanted his counter-culture manner and his vision for counter-culture way of living. Before the method took on his name, he named it CONTROLOLOGY.
Reasons to like Pilates:
A lot of the exercises are done lying down.
Just as it feels challenging, you change to a new thing.
It’s a mix of mobility, strength training, and breath work.
Lots of studios offer group classes and monthly memberships to keep costs down.
There is almost always someone trying to sell a Pilates machine on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace. You could have one of these at home.
You can do a lot without machines.
LeBron does it.
Reasons to dislike Pilates:
It’s really expensive. The average private lesson where you really learn to use the machines is $75-120 per hour or more depending where you are.
There are a lot of machines, they are weird, and you need a guide to show you how to use enough of them to achieve a balanced body.
As a result, Pilates takes time to learn. Teacher Training is generally 500 hours: 100 hours of classroom learning, 100 hours of observation, 100 hours of self-practice, 200 hours of teaching (plus a test). By comparison, my yoga certification was 200 hours.
The machines can take up a lot of space.
Familiarity Breeds Liking
I learned this in the marketing world. The more we understand and know about something, the easier it is to like.
These are the foundational principles of Pilates :
And here’s some more of what it looks like.
How does Pilates work?
When you think of a cell, do you think of a fried egg-type shape? With muscle cells, it’s different.
Each muscle cell, or sarcomere, is like a miniature meat slinky.
And there are thousands pulling together to make up your bicep or your hamstring.
Your brain sends the messages to contract or relax the slinkies. For example, the tricep slinkies need to relax and extend when the biceps slinkies contract.
Modern life and the stress that comes with it can upset our nervous system enough that the slinkies forget to turn off. This is what a “muscle knot” is - a bunch of partially contracted slinkies. Usually in the right trapezius muscle, amiright?
Stress and atrophy can also alter the nervous system pathway between brain and slinky. That’s why when you try to do an exercise that you haven’t ever done or haven’t done in a while, it may make sense in your mind, but it’s hard to express through your body.
We match the breath to each movement in Pilates: “Inhale to prepare, exhale press your feet into the bar, inhale bend the knees…” This way, we are working with the nervous system to relax. The breath is the one way we can connect with the unconscious and relaxation aspects of the nervous system.
Take a lesson this week
I don’t want you to just like Pilates. I want you to run out and buy 10 sessions with an instructor if you’ve never done it before.
If you have done it, I want you to really consider taking a “teacher training” course so you can become autonomous on the equipment.
You will want to teach it once you learn it and it can keep you fit and support you in any other activity, throughout your life. Remember, in this crew we are aiming for 100 years of robust life. How are you planning to get there?
Here’s a routine we learned on the Reformer yesterday in teacher training adding a dowel to keep it interesting and introduce a new challenge. If you’re one of my students, you will get a chance to try it out this week!
Please comment and share your own experiences with Pilates. Give it a try and post a video of you doing it!