Exercises

Are you doing a random training programme that you read in a magazine? Or maybe it’s from a particularly lazy fitness instructor who just wrote out a list of miscellaneous exercises for you to do. You end up walking back and forward from the rowing machine to the stepper with a vague idea of what you are doing. You’re confused!

It is common these days for busy personal trainers and gym instructors to just make a list of machines out of their heads and magazine workouts to recommend generic nonsense to people as being the holy grail of weight loss. Let’s look at a few examples.

Michelle joins a gym and asks for a programme to ‘tone up’ and she’s doing 40 minutes on the treadmill and some chest presses.

Paul wants to lose 40 lbs and he’s doing 40 minutes on the treadmill and some chest presses.

You see where I’m going with this?

The idea behind warm up is to gradually increase intensity to allow three main adaptations to take place

1. Some fuel to be burned in the muscles to allow body temperature increase therefore softening the muscle, ligaments and tendons therefore reducing soreness, stiffness and injury and making exercise much more comfortable.
2. To allow necessary time for the joint membranes to begin making and releasing fluid into the joints to protect the joints. This ‘synovial fluid’ lubricates, cushions and feeds the joints with nutrients and takes away wastes.
3. To allow time for nerves to fire/ function properly. Nerves work much better when warm. This allows better nerve control over the muscles and joints as you exercise and reduces risk of injury and increases comfort of exercise.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Although Newton’s third law of motion was designed for physics, it can also be applied to muscle training. Each muscle in the body has an opposite muscle, which performs the opposite action. For example, the bicep bends the elbow, bringing the hand closer to the shoulder. Its opposite muscle would therefore extend the elbow and bring the hand away from the shoulder, which is the function of the triceps. Unfortunately, through lifestyle and poorly designed weight training programs, many of these muscle pairs are not equal, which can lead to poor posture, muscle and joint pain, and injury. The majority of muscle imbalances occur where the front muscles are strong and tight and the back muscles are weak and stretched.

The advantages of Pilates practice include:

• Improved posture
• Core strength
• Fluid movement
• Relaxation
• Better muscle tone

Additionally, anyone who has ever suffered from joint pain will find that it alleviates the pain associated with this condition. In fact, because of its emphasis on fluid movement, Pilates may be helpful in preventing the onset of arthritis.

Cutting to the Core of Pilates Training
Pilates spoke of the powerhouse, which included the deeper muscles of the abdominal area, the gluteus and the back. He believed that all movements stem from this area. Today, we call this region “the core.”