I think of all the “Ates” Yogalates was probably one of the first. As the name suggests it is a combination of Yoga and Pilates. I find this one barely strange because if one researches Pilates and how Joseph Pilates created his exercise system it’s obvious that he borrowed exercises from many different disciplines including Yoga.
Many of my Pilates clients who have done Yoga before often say they can recognize many yoga poses in what we do. Now from what I know about Yoga most poses are held for much longer than we hold Pilates moves. In fact when people ask me the difference between Yoga and Pilates I find the easiest way to get people to understand is to say that yoga is static and Pilates is movement based.
The emphasis is also different I believe Yoga focuses more on strength and flexibility whereas Pilates focuses on the core strength, postural muscles and stability.
In a perfect world I think people would benefit fantastically from doing both disciplines. Being biased if I could only do one I would pick Pilates because I believe that as an all round exercise system that prepares you to do your normal daily activities better Pilates wins.
I spent a lot of time in class explaining to people that the main benefit of Pilates is to give them better awareness of their posture outside of class. After all most people do only one class a week and although that’s good it’s what they use out of class that enables them to progress quickly.