Exercise & Fitness Articles

Being physically fit is a part of not only a healthy body but a healthy mind and spirit.

Pilates was designed to give you complete control of your own body. This is seemingly something only for athletes and dancers. Not so ? it is within anyone?s grasp and it can be attained on a daily regimen of 10 ? 20 minutes or even 4 times a week.

Control of muscles is a sense that can be developed like seeing, hearing and smelling.

Just like you use your hearing or sight, you can use your muscles and it can become just as inherent as sight or hearing. Pilates is a skill attained that not only increases the clarity and sharpness of your mind, but also your physical fitness.

That?s a pretty good deal.

The hot body tip this month is again breathing. Why again? Because it is the foundation of physical fitness.

With a fully functioning breathing system the muscles and blood are fully oxygenated, the impurities removed and the heart helped. All these work better.

Here is a little exercise: Lying down on your back, knees up, feet flat on the floor, pelvis in neutral (see Body Basics 2) and a cushion for the head and upper shoulders.

If you possess a theraband, have it under your body around your ribcage and held with one hand over your breastbone ? some tension on the band.

If you don?t have a theraband, place your hands on the sides of your ribcage.

Inhale through the nose and feel the ribcage flattening into the floor underneath you and the ribs coming out sideways away from the spine. You will feel the theraband expand or the ribs come out into your hand. Try not to lift your shoulders or upper breastbone.

Inhale through the nose until you feel no more air can go in. Then you will naturally start to exhale through the mouth ? let the ribs drop down and get as much air out as you can.

Light headedness can occur with this deep breathing but after practicing this daily it disappears.

The trick is to expand the ribs to get air in ? not the abdominals below.

If you have trouble keeping your abs out of the inhale, try this isolation exercise.

Breathe in ? hold your breath for a short time and push your lower abs in and out. Then exhale and use the lower abs to help push the breath out.

By all means use the lower abs to help you push the air out by flattening them across your lower belly. When you inhale though keep the expansion in the ribs.

Got it? Good. Practice it daily. The above ab isolation is directly from Joseph Pilates and here is what he says about breathing:

?It may seem silly to say at first, but many millions of people never learn how to breathe properly. True heart control follows correct breathing. This simultaneously reduces heart strain, purifies the blood and develops the lungs.?

Here are some more success stories from my clients.:

This lady has been a dancer and done Pilates before. Being too busy to write something up she told me her wins and I wrote them down.. She says with the foot work I gave her, a long standing misunderstanding about how to use her feet was resolved and as a result she feels much more stable with the ground up through her legs and in her core area because of that firm connection below. She also says that getting her to drop her breastbone and keep it down and anchored towards her mid back has provided a stable center for her shoulders to move from and she feels much more stable in that area so that a chronic shoulder condition is now releasing and starting to relax. Release exercises for the shoulder have also contributed. Her spine was also compressed opposite to her breastbone from continually and automatically lifting the breastbone creating a curve in the spine. This curve in her back has now relaxed, more mobile and the muscles are no longer locked tight. Basically she found the three stable points of the body when exercising or the three anchor points as I call them. The feet, the pelvis and the spine opposite the breastbone.

Success Story:

?I suffered lower back pain on and off for 30 years. My back would ?go out? from time to time to a point when I turned 50 it was going out about 4 times per year and would take several days to a week to get out of the pain band. My wife trained as a Pilates instructor a couple of years ago and at that time I started doing Pilates once or twice a week. I then got to a point where for about a month I was doing it for about 10 minutes 4 times a week which is not a whole lot of investment of my time.

Now I do it one good hour a week.

The success I have had is that my back has not gone out in over a year. The little I have done in Pilates has been enough to change my body to the point where I no longer experience the repeated back problem I once had.? G.F.