Welcome to the March edition of Pilates Central News.
In this edition:
- Pilates for beginners
- Re-farmer Pilates
- Wheel exercise
- It’s a record breaker
Pilates for beginners
Pilates is ideal for beginners because it is low impact, it builds on strength and control and helps the user in their everyday life. Pilates is made for the body you have, whatever your level of fitness. You don’t have to learn complicated new skills, all that is needed is some suitable clothes to exercise in, a mat for the simplest form of Pilates and the ability to listen to your teacher’s instructions. Beginners can also take up Reformer Pilates with the guidance of expert teachers and routines and resistance levels will be adjusted to suit your body. If recovering from injury or returning to exercise after a long break the exercises on the Reformer can be adjusted to suit the user’s needs.
The emphasis is on placement and technique over repetition or high-intensity training. You won’t come out of a Pilates class dripping in sweat but you will be working on the smaller muscles around the joints, stabilising your body and improving your core, the corset of muscles around your middle. Some of the exercises will be new, others may seem more familiar, as many physios also advocate Pilates-based exercises such as planks and glute bridges.
Pilates will improve your mobility, so at first you might be able to squat a little bit lower or move your hips more. It will also improve flexibility by lengthening muscles. It should help make you less injury-prone and improve your posture.
Pilates for tight hips and shoulders
Office workers spend hours hunched over desks and this can lead to tight hips and shoulders. Targeted exercises can be good for hip pain and less aggravating than higher-intensity exercises. Pilates can also tackle the underlying mechanical issues and increase the range of hip motion through strengthening the hip muscles and core. For those who find standing painful there are many exercises that can be performed seated or lying down. Tight shoulders are another problem but head, neck and shoulder stretches will all help relieve tension in the upper body.
Back pain also hits many older people and can be the result of bad posture and a deskbound life. Learning to fully extend the spine and strengthen your core muscles will both help with back problems.
Pilates for the over-50s
You’re never too old to start Pilates and it will help alleviate many of the problems of ageing. Over a lifetime bad habits can form such as shoulder rounding or anterior pelvic tilt caused by sitting down a lot. Weak glutes can lead to hamstring and calf strain. The aim of Pilates is to improve your body’s alignment and iron out these imbalances.
Another benefit of Pilates for the over-50s is that it will improve your balance. Standing on one leg is said to be a good indicator of longevity. Pilates includes one-leg work and aims for a neutral spine and neutral pelvis. This can help with stability when you are hit with an unexpected impact doing sport or when falling over in day-to-day life.
The body can lose proprioception, or the ability to sense its position in space, as we get older, leading to falls. But Pilates can help improve both coordination and stability when the deep stabilising muscles have been strengthened.
Pilates also encourages concentration on slow mindful breathing, inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth, while improving lung capacity. This can help relieve the stresses of work and calm the body.
To conclude, those new to Pilates will soon learn to move with more control and feel more balanced and connected to their body. As Joseph Pilates himself said: “Change happens through movement and movement heals.”
Re-farmer Pilates
“The 71-year-old farmer who is a middle-aged Pilates pin-up,” reads the headline in the Times. Pete Sedgwick, a former farmer turned Pilates teacher, has been earning praise from clients in the Cotswolds. The Times article reveals that Sedgwick suffered lots of accidents farming, being crushed by a herd of cattle, having a car crash that injured his neck, slipping in a barn and nearly bleeding to death, getting a frozen shoulder every time he reached for a sheep with his crook, plus a fall from his horse badly injuring his hip.
Sedgwick’s daughter Chloe Hodgson had become a Pilates teacher and looking for a way to improve his health, “he quit drinking, sold the farm, hung up his crook, underwent ablation therapy for his heart and started attending his daughter’s sessions.” Pete was so impressed that he gained a Stott Pilates qualification and began teaching private sessions.
Now a lithe 71-year-old grandfather, Sedgwick holds classes at his daughter’s studio, Chloe’s Pilates in Oxfordshire, teaching “aristocrats, pop stars and farmhands” and the Times’ Simon Mills, all accompanied by a Tom Petty soundtrack.
Since taking up Pilates Sedgwick found he didn’t need the hip surgery his doctor suggested, with his doctor telling him, “Carry on doing what you are doing. If anyone is a good advertisement for doing Pilates, you are.”
He’s also a better horse rider. Sedgwick tells the Times: “I am on a mission to encourage people of a similar age to me not to get surgery but to work on their inner core, so that they can build up their strength and find another way to recover… My riding has improved 100 per cent since I started Pilates. I definitely fall off less. And even if I did, with the muscle strength I’ve built up by doing Pilates, I will have reduced the chances of serious injury from an accident.”
Wheel exercise
A former Kansas City gymnast in the US has opened a Pilates studio specially adapted for 14 wheelchair users. Anna Sarol suffered a spinal cord injury in a sports accident in 2015 and after her accident found that many wheelchair users felt intimidated or unwelcome in studios. So she became a Pilates instructor herself, teaching from her wheelchair.
“I noticed that there wasn’t representation, especially considering that Pilates isn’t promoted as the most accessible form of exercise,” Sarol told the KSHB 41 TV channel. “Not in my wildest dreams did I think I would be a Pilates instructor, that is incredible in itself.”
At Sarol’s adaptive Pilates classes at the Bodybar studio wheelchair users happily move around the space, often sitting cross-legged on Reformers to work on their upper body stability, core strength and posture. She told the TV channel: “I thought about every barrier physical and psychological. We designed the studio to be as open as possible thinking through how multiple wheelchair users could navigate the space… It was for disabled people by disabled people. There’s something powerful about being the majority especially in a fitness space.”
More classes are now planned. “I want others in the disability community to see that we can take up space in this space too, and we can do so and thrive and accomplish these goals,” says Sarol. “We don’t need someone to have all the answers for us. We just need someone to say yes and to take us on and to get creative with us, to problem solve something that isn’t the norm.”
It’s a record breaker
Not even Pilates Central can attract 3487 participants to one session. But that’s what’s hopefully happening on the Isle of Man when there’s a bid to break the world record for a Pilates class on July 19 at 2pm. Fittingly the record attempt is at Knockaloe, the birthplace of Pilates. It was here at a world war one internment camp that Joseph Pilates first developed his now world-famous exercise system.
The outdoor event will be hosted by local investment firm Ramsey Crookall, wellbeing magazine 34Moves and Visit Isle of Man. There will be a Wellness Festival and Charity Village on-site. The giant class, led by instructors from around the world, will last 30 minutes and be suitable for beginners. The current world record for a Pilates class is the 3486 participants who turned out in the Denizli municipality in Turkey in 2013.
Ruby Griffiths of 34Moves says: “I feel so proud to be one of the organisers of this world record attempt and wellness event. Having dedicated my life to studying the human mind and movement, it feels very special to honour the Pilates method in the location where it was first shaped. Through 34Moves, everything we do is grounded in a simple belief: wherever you are in life, there is always something you can do to support your body and mind.”
Visitors are welcome and you can book via eventbrite here. All participants will receive a certificate saying they are a world record holder. Good luck to all, even if there might be a bit of a queue for the changing rooms afterwards.
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The Pilates Central Team
