We all do it. I do it but then I know what I’m doing

I’m talking about video sharing sites of course. I use the video sharing sites to get ideas for my Pilates classes. I’m always on the look out for new exercises and more importantly new teaching points to help my clients get the best from my classes.

But do you know what you’re doing? Would you know whether a particular Pilates Workout was safe for you to do? The likelihood is you don’t and that’s a problem. Some of the videos I’ve seen would be perfectly safe for most people but some in my opinion are lethal particularly if you have an existing injury, weak core or postural problem.

In  my classes not only would I have screened you for injuries but I would modify (make safer) any exercise that would be contraindicated for you (risk of injury). But the Pilates you see on the Internet gives no such modifications and in most cases you are not even asked to get cleared for exercise by your health professional.

Call me paranoid but I think it’s a recipe for disaster and I’m sure a lot of people are going to injure themselves trying to do an exercise that isn’t appropriate or safe for their level. What’s worse is that Pilates could get a bad name because of it. After all in the general public’s mind Pilates is therapeutic it’s supposed to make you better not worse isn’t it?

Watch the following video and you’ll see what I mean.

Robert Bartram
(Pilates Instructor)

Pilates Workouts – What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You is a post from: Pilates For Beginners

A question I get asked frequently is “Why an I not benefiting from Pilates?” Translated this means I’ve been coming to class for six weeks why hasn’t my posture / back pain / strength / flexibility improved.

I sigh inwardly and patiently explain that it’s not possible to correct years (sometimes decades) of Poor Posture in six weeks and that if they stick with Pilates they will get the promised benefits.

In my experience about 10% take my advice and continue on the Pilates journey. That means sadly 90% will give up before Pilates has had a chance to improve their quality of life.

I blame in no small part the media who continue to promise us a quick fix for all that ails us if we just hand over our hard earned money. Everything from fast weight loss to inner calm no hard work necessary just hand over your cash.

Well life isn’t like that and I’m afraid if you don’t do the drills you won’t get the skills (or benefits). Anything worthwhile is always worth persevering with so if you’re thinking of taking up Pilates remember the tortoise will always beat the hare and start with the idea that it will take some time and effort. It’ll be worth it I promise you.

Why is Pilates like brushing your teeth? Take a look at this video and discover more.

Robert Bartram
(Pilates Instructor)

Pilates Classes – Why Am I Getting No Benefit? is a post from: Pilates For Beginners

I’m always trying to persuade more guys to come and give Pilates a try, pleading with them that it will do wonders for their posture and flatten their stomach, making them taller, straighter and – well, more manly

It’s like talking to the wall.
In the male mind, Pilates does not class as “real” exercise and is the province of ladies of a certain age “pretending” to exercise.

Tell that to some of the world’s top athletes, including the New Zealand All-Blacks, all of whom do Pilates on a regular basis to boost performance and reduce the likelihood of injury. Pilates also focuses the mind, which is a useful tool for motivation before competition.

I know there are mostly girls in class, but come on, guys – be brave and give Pilates a try; the girls’ll be dead impressed, and you’ll be amazed at the difference Pilates can make to your life.

Carol J Bartram
(Pilates Instructor)

Pilates For Men – Do Real Men Do Pilates? is a post from: Pilates For Beginners

As part of the Pilates For Beginners team I thought I’d take the time and introduce myself. I’m Bob the ugly bald half as you’ll see from the video

I got into Pilates late in life at aged 47 and if I could go back in time that’s one of the few things I’d change. I wish I’d started earlier, much earlier. The earlier you start the earlier you’ll get the benefits and for the younger amongst you even if you have no problems at the moment trust me without Pilates you probably soon will!

In our sit behind a desk world developing bad posture and muscle imbalances is almost certain. When young we can shrug these off but as we get older (in our 40′s)  they come back and sometimes cause us pain.

Take a look at the video below and discover how I managed to reverse some fairly bad posture and how by continuing to practice Pilates I keep them at bay.

Robert Bartram
(Pilates Instructor)

Pilates For Beginners – Pilates Instructor Bob’s Tale is a post from: Pilates For Beginners

I often get asked the question: Will Pilates Help Me Lose Weight?
Yes, it will, BUT only if you do other exercise as well and reduce your calorie intake – I don’t mean that you should diet, as diets don’t work other than very short-term.

If you cut down on your food intake drastically, as people do when they go on a diet, you will certainly lose pounds in the first week, but it won’t be pounds of fat.

It will be mainly water and muscle tissue, and muscle tissue is the LAST thing you want to be losing. Added to that your body will declare a state of siege; it will hoard all your fat like a miser hoarding gold and increase your appetite to the point where you will mug the sparrows in your garden to get the stale bread!

I mean cut down on the junk and fatty foods that most of us eat. A good idea is to keep a food diary for a week, and then have a good, hard look at it – often this is all it takes to pinpoint weak spots and bad habits. One lady I knew simply didn’t realise she was eating 21 slices of cake in a week; every time she had a cup of coffee, she had cake. It was more a habit than a mad desire for the cake!

So, eating habits make up part of the weight loss puzzle. Now to add some exercise – namely a Pilates session or two. Pilates is a system of exercises that will tone your deep muscles, straighten your back and make your legs look longer. Any session with a properly qualified instructor will give you an effective, full-body balanced workout, strengthening you from top-to-toe from the inside out.

Doing Pilates works the muscles deep inside your body that lie next to your skeleton, and are bypassed by most other types of exercise. If you focus on workouts exclusively for your superficial muscles, such as your quadriceps and hamstrings, without taking time to work the muscles underneath, then you can become like a tree with strong branches, but a weak trunk.

A tree with a weak trunk will blow over in a high wind, and a person with a weak core will never get good results in toning up and will be prone to injury.

If you do Pilates as part of a regular exercise program and also include cardiovascular exercise like cycling, brisk walking or swimming and also do some sessions with weights, then that is a brilliant combination that will give you fast, effective results and a balanced body.

Ladies, you don’t need to use heavy weights, and you won’t build big, bulky Man-Muscles! Testosterone, the hormone predominately found in men, needs to be present for muscle – growth to that extent.

Adding Pilates  to your workout routine is easy as Pilates Exercises are mainly done using bodyweight, so can be done anywhere with very little or no equipment, and you are never too old or too young to add Pilates to your weight-loss plan, whether you are male or female, retired athlete or couch potato.

Carol Bartram
(Pilates Instructor)

Pilates For Beginners – Can Pilates Help With Weight Loss? is a post from: Pilates For Beginners

In my quest to deliver even better quality Pilates videos I have been working on Chroma-Key technology. This involves filming Carol with a solid colour in the background. With some technical magic it’s then possible to remove the background and place her inside another video clip.

That’s how in our Beginners Pilates Workouts videos I’m able to incorporate her in the Power Point presentation.

Well that’s the theory. See what happens when you don’t place the screen properly and I leak into the video by mistake.

So for your viewing pleasure here’s the gruesome outtake

Outtake – Is Your Posture Giving You Pain? is a post from: Pilates For Beginners

I’d like to talk to you about Pilates; what it’s done for me and how it could benefit you too if you take it up and practise the exercises regularly.

Put simply, Pilates has banished my pain; the muscle pain I have held in my neck and back for years. The pain that was the result of years of poor posture and not taking proper care of my back.

“Posture” is one of those things your mother always nagged about when you were young – “Sit up straight!”; Stand up properly – come on, head up and shoulders back!” I never took any notice, but (I hate to say it), she was Dead Right! If I had taken notice then, I wouldn’t have half the back problems I have now, and probably neither would you!

None of us want to have pain; those that do have it want a way to ease it, and anyone that doesn’t have pain (yet) would be wise to take steps to prevent it.

This is where Pilates comes in; an exercise system that is based on the results of a lifetime’s work by Mr Joseph Pilates, who was born a century ago and became a self-taught genius in the then-unknown field of physiotherapy and rehabilitation.

You are never too young or too old to learn Pilates. Learnt young, the exercises will head many aches and pains off at the pass before they even manage to develop. But equally good, Pilates taken up when you are older will correct many of the problems that a lifetime of bad posture has caused.

Up to approximately the age of 40, our bodies are forgiving and tolerant of us – any muscular injuries heal quickly, and sitting at a desk all day, or standing leaning on one leg for hours at a time while we iron or lifting kids around just causes minor grumbles from our backs which ease when we rest.

But as we get older, our bodies cope less well, and that’s when old injuries and a lifetime of poor posture start conspiring to give us aches and pains we never had or noticed when we were younger. And the older we get, the worse the problem gets, as our spines stiffen and our muscles weaken. You see elderly people shuffling along slowly with a big hump on their back and their head pushed forward.

They’ll tell you they have constant back pain, which hurts worse if they even try to straighten up, as their spine has “set fast” in the wrong shape. So they move around less and less, their posture gets worse and worse, and we all know where it ends.

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

No matter how old you are, your spine can be made more flexible and your muscles can get stronger. And no matter how young you are, it’s never too early to learn how to exercise your spine and muscles to keep them strong and slow down the ageing process. Getting old is inevitable. Feeling old isn’t ?.

Anyone can learn Pilates Exercises– it’s safe, effective, and the benefits will last a lifetime.

Carol Bartram
(Pilates Instructor)

Pilates For Beginners – Is Your Posture Giving You Pain? is a post from: Pilates For Beginners

This exercise is the most important technique in Pilates that you can learn, in our opinion. I wouldn’t call it difficult, but it can be tricky to get the hang of it at first – it’s a bit like learning to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time – but once you get it, you will never forget how to do it.

There is very little point in doing any Pilates exercises without Zipping and Hollowing as your midsection and back won’t be braced, the exercise won’t work as it should and you may even pull a muscle. So practise Zip & Hollow until it becomes second nature to you; the best thing about it is that you can practise anywhere and at any time, and no-one else will notice a thing. It’s not called The Hidden Secret of Pilates for nothing ?.

“Zip & Hollow” is simply the term we use in class when we want everyone to engage their deep abdominal muscles and pull up on their pelvic floor. Other Pilates instructors use different terms; one instructor I knew would shout out “Brace yourselves, Ladies!”, but our classes would keel over laughing if Bob came out with that one ?.

Doing a Zip and Hollow stabilises your trunk internally, bracing your midsection for the exercise you are about to perform. The actual muscle set-up is fairly complex, but the effect is like tightening a corset.

Here are the instructions for Zip and Hollow in Standing: -

Start by finding Neutral spine in Standing and make sure your neck and shoulders are relaxed.  We’ll begin with the Zip.

Pull up between your legs, as if you’re trying to stop yourself going to the toilet. This is the pelvic floor that’s moving. Pull up a few times as far as you can, then halfway up, then a third of the way up. If you feel hardly any movement DON’T WORRY. Takes a bit of practice…even if the muscle just twitches at first, it means you’ve given it a wake-up call! Relax the rest of the body and don’t forget to breathe…the crazy thing here is if you tense up and try too hard, you won’t get anywhere. Close your eyes and let the Force flow through you. ?

As you do this, you’ll probably feel your deep tummy muscles contract a bit and your lower back tense slightly. This is GOOD…it means your deep core muscles (called your Transversis Abdominis or TVA has switched on. The TVA is a sheet of muscle that runs around your midsection; another name for it is “Nature’s Corset”.

Now we’ll do the Hollow.

Imagine that you’re wearing a pair of jeans, and they’ve suddenly got too tight, so you have to pull your bellybutton backwards away from the waistband. Practice pulling it back as far as you can towards your spine, then halfway, then a third of the way – just like your pelvic floor. You will feel your abdominal muscles flatten slightly. Keep the contraction low down – if you suck in the muscles directly below your rib-cage, you won’t be able to breathe easily as they are the wrong muscles!

Now try doing the two actions together….pull your pelvic floor up a third of the way, and at the same time pull your bellybutton back a third of the way towards your spine – and there’s your Zip and Hollow

Now do the two together and breathe at the same time! This may seem like one too many things to do at this stage, but persevere. Remember learning to drive? How impossible it seemed to change gear, indicate and look in your mirror all at the same time, while not stalling the engine at those uphill traffic lights? (I go into a cold sweat just thinking about that one!). But after you’d been driving for a while, it all became second nature and you could do it subconsciously and hardly think about it. Your Zip and Hollow will become like that. I promise

Watchpoints

The most important one is to remember to breathe normally and not tense up and clench your jaw. When you first practise pulling up on the pelvic floor and pulling the belly-button backwards, it’s almost impossible not to raise the shoulders and hold your breath! Perform the Zip and Hollow and then deliberately drop your shoulder-blades down your back – which will relax your upper shoulders and neck.

These deep muscles in your core are not meant to fire all the time, so practise pulling up and in and then letting go whenever you can. Your body will soon start to respond.

See the video for the verbal instructions.

Carol Bartram
(Pilates Instructor)

Beginners Pilates – The Zip and Hollow is a post from: Pilates For Beginners