Certainly one of our favourite health consultants is Sean Vigue (bear in mind the superior exercises he’s accomplished for us?). And, guess what?! He has a brand new e-book out!
Pilates for Athletes helps on a regular basis folks (irrespective of their sport or exercise they like to do) attain their highest bodily and psychological ranges and enhance their conditioning, management, endurance, and extra — all by means of Pilates.
Sean Vigue has taught 1000’s of lessons world wide and has appeared in greater than 2,000 well being and health movies. He’s constructive, he is aware of his stuff, and his exercises are FUN. Principally, he’s the very best!
And, we’re tremendous pumped that he’s letting us share an excerpt from his new e-book. Learn on for the highest 10 explanation why athletes ought to add Pilates into their coaching.
Prime 10 Causes Why Athletes Want Pilates Mat Coaching
By Sean Vigue
Pilates mat coaching is a bodyweight-only, whole physique conditioning program which options an exhaustive checklist of core centered workout routines, sequenced collectively to raise your thoughts, physique, spirit and athletic means. Solely a Pilates (or yoga) mat is required to take part. No weights. No machines. Simply you and the mat.
Strictly talking, there are usually not many exercise packages that may ship to an athlete the huge quantity of advantages that Pilates mat can. It’s a lifelong program for the well-rounded athlete to observe, take in and luxuriate in. The advantages are nearly too exhausting to checklist, and there’s no finish to the methods Pilates elevates your well being, health, motion, velocity, energy, management, steadiness, endurance, breath management, focus, energy and adaptability.
That mentioned, listed below are 10 of the highest explanation why athletes want Pilates Mat Coaching.
1. Pilates constructs a robust, sturdy, versatile and balanced core.
Joseph Pilates referred to the core as your “powerhouse” and “girdle of energy”. It’s the heart and assist of your physique. The core is the structural basis that connects the remainder of the physique collectively and develops stability, energy, and management. It begins on the base of the pelvic ground and runs upward to the underside of the diaphragm, and consists of your abdominals, low again and glutes. Technically talking, the core is made up of the rectus abdominis (the muscle folks imply once they suppose “abs”), transverse abdominis (the deepest of the stomach muscle mass which wraps round your sides and backbone), erector spinae (a pair of muscle mass in your decrease again), the interior and exterior obliques (the muscle mass situated on the edges of your stomach) and the glutes/backside/butt (the gluteus maximus, medius, and minimus).
A weak core leaves the athlete open to accidents, compromised endurance and changing into simply fatigued from failing posture. Pilates core workout routines prepare the muscle mass in your pelvis, decrease again, hips, glutes and stomach to work collectively, resulting in improved steadiness, stability and physique management. Each sport from basketball to tennis to throwing darts is dependent upon power radiating out of your heart (core) outwards into the limbs.
2. Pilates builds a robust, balanced and resilient physique.
Athletes of all ages and health ranges have been incorporating Pilates into their coaching for improved total energy, steadiness and resistance to harm. It’s because it’s tough to discover a extra complete and efficient program than a daily Pilates mat observe. Pilates helps athletes enhance their everchanging motion patterns with progressive destabilization, which means the additional you journey into your exercises, the extra the workout routines will work to problem and power your physique to adapt and enhance. As soon as your physique adapts you purchase the next stage of ability.
Every train is equally balanced on either side of the physique to counteract the imbalances seen in sports activities corresponding to tennis, golf or baseball, the place the dominant facet is favored and strengthened whereas the opposite facet weakens and atrophies. Pilates works to repair muscular imbalances and produce symmetry to the physique, bringing with it optimum bodily achievement.
3. Pilates improves mobility and ease of motion.
Pilates workout routines emphasize wholesome, flowing and proper motion. Is your physique cellular? How succesful are you of transferring your physique shortly with out pressure? Can you transfer freely by means of the day with out tightness and discomfort in your physique? How properly do you progress as an athlete? Is your mobility serving to or hurting your athletic ability?
How properly you progress your physique by means of a number of planes of motion determines your athletic success. Pilates coaching strikes your physique by means of each angle and airplane of motion whereas specializing in constructing energy and adaptability in your core. Having a physique which might simply adapt to the unpredictable calls for of a sport—fast modifications of route in tennis, explosive velocity in hockey, driving to the basket in basketball — will provide you with an enormous edge over your opponents and lengthen your profession.
4. Pilates improves total flexibility.
Joseph Pilates as soon as mentioned, “True flexibility may be achieved solely when all muscle mass are uniformly developed.” For that reason, Pilates doesn’t enhance flexibility (outlined because the vary of movement in a joint or group of joints and transferring them by means of a full vary of movement) simply primarily based on the favored “sizzling spots” of the physique, such because the hamstrings and low again. Quite, Pilates works by means of fixed flows and actions which stretch, lengthen and increase the entire physique.
The place many exercises isolate muscle mass and compress the physique and backbone, Pilates does simply the alternative: each Pilates train is designed to elongate and increase your physique by means of a myriad of flows and angles. It’s flowing, dynamic motion which stretches and strengthens the muscle mass concurrently. You’ll easily and gracefully circulate from one threshold to the subsequent, transferring your physique with precision and management by means of as full a spread of movement as doable.
5. Pilates is a superb instrument for rehabbing your physique throughout harm and fixing issues related to muscular imbalance.
Pilates mat observe is low affect on the joints, making it the best train when rehabbing your physique and recovering from an harm. You can too construction your Pilates exercises to your particular person wants — there isn’t a one-size-fits-all method to Pilates. You might be accountable for your coaching, not the workout routines. They exist to serve you and your particular bodily, psychological and conditioning wants.
6. Pilates mat solely makes use of your body weight, so you possibly can prepare wherever and anytime.
Environment friendly and simply adaptable to your present coaching program, Pilates can match into the busiest of schedules. No weights, gear or machines of any sort means you possibly can rely completely on the best fitness center you’ll ever have: your physique.
Your exercises can final from 10 to 60 minutes relying on how a lot energy, flexibility and focus you want at that second, and you may prepare every single day, mixing up your exercises so you might be constantly hitting new areas.
7. Pilates offers an everchanging, endless provide of workout routines and sequences to maintain you continually challenged.
Athletes must be challenged to power their our bodies to adapt and enhance. Pilates coaching is a journey of progressive destabilization with each exercise. The workout routines turn out to be more difficult and integrative as you progress, and with every new train, you combine new components of your physique into the actions. As soon as the train turns into too “straightforward”, we add a motion which forces your physique to adapt and enhance in actual time. It doesn’t matter what the athlete wants, Pilates can provide it.
8. Pilates builds and reinforces correct posture and alignment.
Having correct physique alignment — how the top, shoulders, backbone, hips, knees and ankles relate and line up with one another — improves your posture and reduces the stress and pressure on the backbone. Standing, sitting and transferring with correct postural alignment will lower pressure in your muscle mass and ligaments and enhance your means to circulate with extra effectivity and precision. For athletes, the muse of management begins with good posture. From this basis comes the massive actions corresponding to leaping, tackling, swinging, throwing, catching and sprinting … but when your physique is just not aligned accurately, these actions shall be compromised and weak.
Good posture, working in tandem with a robust core, helps stabilize the physique and assist the athlete’s want for velocity, energy, rotational power and fast modifications of route. Pilates will assist reinforce good posture and alignment throughout each section of your sport.
9. Pilates improves your means to breathe.
Too usually, we breathe in a shallow methodology, draining our vitality and focus and crippling our posture. Deep Pilates respiratory strengthens the core and lifts our our bodies into a robust, aligned posture.
Pilates teaches deep lateral thoracic respiratory, which pulls the breath upward out of the low stomach and produce it into the edges and the low again. This type of respiratory drenches the lungs and muscle mass in oxygen and will increase your means to usher in and course of the breath with effectivity. It helps you make the most of each breath cycle, drawing contemporary oxygen into the lungs and squeezing each atom of breath out, filling and emptying the lungs with each breath.
Bettering your means to breathe will drastically enhance your athletic efficiency and talents. Efficient respiratory requires thoracic mobility, core energy and a pliable diaphragm for pumping the breath out and in of the lungs. An athlete who’s using their full respiratory potential will expertise elevated vitality, extra blood circulate, sharper focus, and enchancment when going through nerve-racking and unpredictable conditions. Pilates additionally teaches the athlete how one can breathe into the motion, which helps the workout routines circulate smoother by means of the complete vary of movement and with extra management. Deeper respiratory and elevated consciousness of the breath interprets into higher type and energy with swings, jumps, sprints, modifications of instructions and throws. Join your breath with motion and reduce the wear and tear and tear whereas elevating your means to maneuver — a win-win-win.
10. Pilates enhance your explosive velocity and energy.
The Pilates combo of deep, expanded respiratory, a stronger core, improved flexibility in all the physique, elevated energy and environment friendly motion mix to create a physique which might transfer faster, sooner and with extra power behind it. It’s fairly easy: the looser and extra in management you might be of your physique, the sooner your velocity and extra practical your energy.
Whether or not it means transferring faster with extra precision when rolling out for a soccer go, maneuvering across the protection en path to the purpose in hockey, or planting, leaping and spiking the ball in volleyball with explosive energy, Pilates offers the instruments to do it.
Backside line: the advantages of Pilates are highly effective and transcend all sports activities. Each breath you are taking and each transfer you make enhances your bodily and psychological efficiency, combining to create a deep-rooted love of bettering your self each day. On this, Pilates is a continuing and devoted companion. Attempt it!
Excerpted from Pilates for Athletes with permission from Hatherleigh Press.
An enormous because of Sean for letting us share this gem of an excerpt! You’ll want to decide up his newest e-book right here! —Jenn
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