Pilates focuses on the core stabilising muscles, spinal alignment, posture, and breathing. It uses exercises and stretches (with or without the use of equipment) to improve physical strength, flexibility, posture, and self-awareness.
Joseph Pilates
Pilates focuses on the core stabilising muscles, spinal alignment, posture, and breathing. It uses exercises and stretches (with or without the use of equipment) to improve physical strength, flexibility, posture, and self-awareness.
Joseph Pilates
What is Reformer Pilates?
There are many variations on how Pilates is taught and practiced. But the at foundation of all Pilates practice, there are a number of common components. Pilates focuses on the core stabilising muscles, spinal alignment, posture, and breathing. It uses exercises and stretches (with or without the use of equipment) to improve physical strength, flexibility, posture, and self-awareness. Drawing upon relevant clinical research, Reformer Pilates provides an evidence-based approach to teaching Pilates in the clinical setting. Pilates involves learning a variety of movements addressing lumbopelvic stability, postural education, correct movement patterning, and body awareness.
Reformer Pilates is the closest form of Pilates that mimics what Joseph Pilates originally intended when he created the pilates training program. Back in the Second World War, Joseph would use old hospital bed springs and create resistance training movements for injured soldiers to increase their movement and overall health. Reformer pilates still use springs as both an Ode to Joseph and also they provide a dynamic resistance along the line of direction for the muscle and joint.
Where did Pilates start?
Back at the turn of the 21st century, a German man called Joseph Pilates developed the concept of Pilates (which he originally termed ‘Contrology’). Joseph suffered from multiple health conditions growing up (asthma, rickets, rheumatic fever), which led him to dedicate his life to building his own physical strength. He was influenced by body building, yoga, martial arts, gymnastics, and the movement of animals.
Matwork vs. Equipment
Matwork Pilates is exercises that are completed via a pilates mat, with the use of small equipment.
Reformer Pilates utilises various forms of equipment, and during this training you start to load the body in a dynamic way.
The underlying concepts of matwork and reformer Pilates are the same. Reformer Pilates can provide a greater variety of exercises and may be a bit more interesting for clients to pursue. It can also modify the load of training compared to mat pilates. For instance, if you’re returning from an injury (lets say a knee injury) and you have been prescribed squats, you are loading your entire body weight on your injured knee to perform an activity that may aggravate the existing condition. A reformer can mimic this movement with a percentage of your body weight until you are able to load completely with good form and pain free.
Is Reformer Pilates for me?
If you find you constantly flare up old injuries, or you have suffered an injury that you need to return to exercise or work from and you want to rehabilitate your body in the right way using the right muscles, then reformer pilates is for you. Reformer Pilates Practitioners also use their understanding of anatomy and physiology with a background in movement dysfunction to create and monitor a specific program based upon your individual needs and underlying dysfunctions.