All about... Pilates for healing
The healing benefits of Pilates continue to amaze even the most experienced instructors. From healing injuries, helping clients regain mobility, alleviating chronic back pain, to supporting recovery after childbirth, the low-impact practice has already helped to improve the quality of life of millions of people worldwide - and you could be next. Here’s just a few of the ways we see Pilates helping to ‘heal’ our clients every single day.
Healing injuries
Pilates is hugely beneficial for helping to rehabilitate and recover from injuries like tennis elbow, achilles tendonitis, runner’s knee and more. As the practice is low impact, it places very little stress on the joints and problem areas, so you can work through the injury and regain mobility, strength and comfortable movement, without aggravating it further. There are a seemingly endless number of exercise options in Pilates too, all of which can be progressed or regressed with props, resistance and different apparatus - meaning you can build up gradually and keep your body safe on the journey to recovery.
And it’s not just about responding to injuries - Pilates can also help you prevent them in the first place. Too often injuries occur because the individual has not realized that they were moving in a way that was doing them harm until it’s too late. As well as strengthening and mobilizing your body so it can support you as you move through daily life, Pilates also helps to improve your understanding and awareness of your own body. This means you will know more quickly if a movement doesn’t feel quite right, if your alignment is off or if something you are carrying is putting excessive pressure on those precious joints - for example - and can adjust yourself accordingly to prevent an injury occurring.
But you don’t have to navigate this alone! A qualified Pilates instructor will create a personalized plan that specifically addresses the individual’s needs; strengthening, stretching and mobilizing the body as needed, and tailoring each session not only for the injury but also for the clients body, lifestyle and movement preferences.
Remember: there’s a reason so many professional (and globally loved) sports men and women do Pilates!
Healing posture
The damage to our bodies caused by hours upon hours spent hunching over our phones and laptops, poor driving positions and too much time spent sitting on our backsides cannot be overstated! Long term, this harmful body position (and lack of movement) will not just cause us to sit and stand with permanently slouched posture, but can also pave the way for long-term pain, digestive issues, poor sleep quality, reduced confidence, and more - all of which we want to avoid!
Unlike other types of workout, Pilates is specifically centered around optimizing the biomechanics of the human anatomy that keep us functioning optimally. How? As SmartFit instructor Hui Lin explains, “By focusing on core strength and stability, Pilates helps to strengthen our postural muscles and improve posture in the long run. This means we are able to hold static positions longer with less strain on the body.”
Join us for either group or private classes and you’ll experience for yourself how Pilates exercises help to counter that desk hunch and ‘tech neck’. Our instructors always focus on strengthening your core, improving your spine mobility, easing tight or aching muscles and - in private sessions - tackling imbalances and helping to correct them.
If you often feel the need to stretch out your neck or back at the end of the working day because you’re feeling stiff or achy, it’s time to heal that posture now before it’s too late! Better postural alignment means you’ll be able to stand tall and proud, whatever life is throwing at you.
Healing mobility
“One of the main things our body needs for overall wellbeing is mobility,” says SmartFit instructor Yue Tong. Unfortunately, our mobility naturally declines as we age so it’s important to take steps to safeguard it and ensure yours is as good as it can be now so that you stay as healthy and mobile as possible, even into your golden years! Keep in mind too that lifestyle factors such as being too sedentary day to day can also accelerate this decline. Lucky for you, Pilates can help.
As for how Pilates helps to improve mobility, Yue Tong has the answer. “The body needs to be worked with a combination of ‘compression’ or resistance (such as the resistance provided by the Reformer springs), ‘decompression’ or length (all those wonderful Pilates stretches), as well as movement that challenges us to achieve our full range/potential in different planes of motion.” She adds, “Pilates allows us to do all of this through the good fundamentals of mindful movement, balance and building balanced muscle tone.”
Practice regularly under the careful, trained eyes of an instructor, and you’ll soon feel the benefits as daily movements (as well as playing sport!) becomes easier, more natural and more comfortable. And - even more importantly - will help you maintain that mobility as the years pass.
Healing pain and inflammation
Back pain is one of the world’s most common ailments. It’s thought that up to 4 in 5 people will experience back pain at some point in their lives, and while for most it will ease after a few days of rest, for many others it persists so long that it becomes an unhappy part of daily life. This kind of ongoing back pain is generally referred to as chronic and/or inflammatory back pain.
How to know if yours is chronic/inflammatory? We always recommend going to a medical professional for diagnosis, but there are a few factors that may point to your pain being inflammatory: 1) How long you have been suffering - i.e. whether the pain has persisted for more than three months. 2) The area of pain - particularly lower back and/or buttocks. 3) How the pain escalated - often it will start as mild and gradually get worse over time. 4) Your age when the pain started - typically 45 years old or younger.
Osteopaths and physiotherapists often refer their clients to start doing Pilates if they’re suffering with chronic back pain as the practice has been repeatedly shown to make a significant difference. SmartFit instructor Hui Lin explains how: “Pilates mobilizes and stretches the back and hips, which creates space in our vertebrae, brings nutrients to our spine, and helps the back to feel more ‘relaxed’ too.” She continues, “Pilates also teaches us to find our neutral spine and pelvis in different functional positions like sitting, standing, squatting. This ‘neutral’ position is where there is the least compression on your spine, which is particularly important when we’re in weight bearing poses/positions.”
All of the above helps to stress, stiffness and inflammation, which can the culprits for your pain. Working with a highly-trained private Pilates instructors means they’ll also work to identify and targeting areas of weakness and/or tightness create a personalized Pilates programmed tailored to your body’s needs, to help reduce and alleviate your pain - not just now, but hopefully for good!
Healing the body after birth
The beautiful journey that a woman goes through during pregnancy, labour and then post-partum is miraculous - but it takes a serious toll on the body physically. Pilates is praised around the world for helping new mums to heal, recuperate, adapt to motherhood and start to feel more like ‘themselves’ once again.
Post-partum, the practice can be invaluable in helping women to regain control of the pelvic floor, improve and reduce diastasis recti (abdominal separation), correcting imbalances (often caused or worsened by carrying your new baby on one side of the body) to reduce aches and pains, as well as providing a chance for a little you-time and self care. This last one is not to be overlooked, and can play a big part in feeling confident, calm and self-assured as you adjust to life with your precious new baby.
At SmartFit, we have several instructors certified in pre and post-natal Pilates, and who have the knowledge, experience and kindness to help you - or anyone you know - to heal after pregnancy. Keen to know more? Get in touch with us here.