One in every of our favourite health consultants is Sean Vigue (keep in mind the superior exercises he is finished 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 way of Pilates.
Sean Vigue has taught 1000’s of lessons all over the world and has appeared in additional than 2,000 well being and health movies. He is optimistic, he is aware of his stuff, and his exercises are FUN. Principally, he is the perfect!
And, we’re tremendous pumped that he is letting us share an excerpt from his new e-book. Learn on for the highest 10 explanation why athletes ought to add Pilates to their coaching.
Prime 10 Causes Why Athletes Want Pilates Mat Coaching
By Sean Vigue
Pilates mat coaching is a bodyweight-only, complete physique conditioning program which options an exhaustive checklist of core centered workout routines, sequenced collectively to raise your thoughts, physique, spirit and athletic capability. Solely a Pilates (or yoga) mat is required to take part. No weights. No machines. Simply you and the mat.
Strictly talking, there will not be 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 follow, take up and luxuriate in. The advantages are virtually too exhausting to checklist, and there’s no finish to the methods Pilates elevates your well being, health, motion, velocity, power, management, steadiness, endurance, breath management, focus, energy and suppleness.
That mentioned, listed here are 10 of the highest explanation why athletes want Pilates Mat Coaching.
1. Pilates builds a robust, sturdy, versatile and balanced core.
Joseph Pilates referred to the core as your “powerhouse” and “girdle of power”. It’s the middle and help of your physique. The core is the structural basis that connects the remainder of the physique collectively and develops stability, power, and management. It begins on the base of the pelvic ground and runs upwards 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 after they suppose “abs”), transverse abdominis (the deepest of the belly muscle tissue which wraps round your sides and backbone), erector spinae (a pair of muscle tissue in your decrease again), the inner and exterior obliques (the muscle tissue positioned on the perimeters 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 practice the muscle tissue 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 relies on drive radiating out of your middle (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 power, steadiness and resistance to damage. It’s because it’s troublesome to discover a extra complete and efficient program than an everyday Pilates mat follow. Pilates helps athletes enhance their everchanging motion patterns with progressive destabilization, that means the additional you journey into your exercises, the extra the workout routines will work to problem and drive your physique to adapt and enhance. As soon as your physique adapts you purchase the next stage of talent.
Every train is equally balanced on each side of the physique to counteract the imbalances seen in sports activities similar 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 way of the day with out tightness and discomfort in your physique? How nicely do you progress as an athlete? Is your mobility serving to or hurting your athletic talent?
How nicely you progress your physique by way of a number of planes of motion determines your athletic success. Pilates coaching strikes your physique by way of each angle and airplane of motion whereas specializing in constructing power and suppleness 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—offers you an enormous edge over your opponents and delay your profession.
4. Pilates improves total flexibility.
Joseph Pilates as soon as mentioned, “True flexibility may be achieved solely when all muscle tissue 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 way of a full vary of movement) simply primarily based on the favored “sizzling spots” of the physique, such because the hamstrings and low again. Moderately, Pilates works by way of fixed flows and actions which stretch, lengthen and broaden the entire physique.
The place many exercises isolate muscle tissue and compress the physique and backbone, Pilates does simply the other: each Pilates train is designed to elongate and broaden your physique by way of a myriad of flows and angles. It’s a flowing, dynamic motion which stretches and strengthens the muscle tissue concurrently. You’ll easily and gracefully circulate from one threshold to the subsequent, transferring your physique with precision and management by way of as full a spread of movement as attainable.
5. Pilates is a good device for rehabbing your physique throughout damage and fixing issues related to muscular imbalance.
Pilates mat follow is low affect on the joints, making it the best train when rehabbing your physique and recovering from an damage. You can even construction your Pilates exercises to your particular person wants — there isn’t a one-size-fits-all method to Pilates. You’re in charge of 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 physique weight, so you’ll be able to practice anyplace and anytime.
Environment friendly and simply adaptable to your present coaching program, Pilates can match into the busiest of schedules. No weights, tools or machines of any sort means you’ll be able to rely completely on the best gymnasium you’ll ever have: your physique.
Your exercises can final from 10 to 60 minutes relying on how a lot power, flexibility and focus you want at that second, and you may practice on daily basis, mixing up your exercises so you might be persistently hitting new areas.
7. Pilates offers an ever-changing, endless provide of workout routines and sequences to maintain you always challenged.
Athletes have to be challenged to drive their our bodies to adapt and enhance. Pilates coaching is a journey of progressive destabilization with each exercise. The workout routines develop into more difficult and integrative as you progress, and with every new train, you combine new elements of your physique into the actions. As soon as the train turns into too “simple”, 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 pinnacle, 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 cut back pressure in your muscle tissue and ligaments and enhance your capability to circulate with extra effectivity and precision. For athletes, the muse of management begins with good posture. From this basis comes the large actions similar to leaping, tackling, swinging, throwing, catching and sprinting… but when your physique is just not aligned accurately, these actions might be compromised and weak.
Good posture, working in tandem with a robust core, helps stabilize the physique and help the athlete’s want for velocity, energy, rotational drive and fast modifications of route. Pilates will assist reinforce good posture and alignment throughout each section of your sport.
9. Pilates improves your capability to breathe.
Too typically, we breathe in a shallow technique, draining our power 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 decrease stomach and brings it into the perimeters and the decrease again. This fashion of respiratory drenches the lungs and muscle tissue in oxygen and will increase your capability to usher in and course of the breath with effectivity. It helps you reap the benefits 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.
Enhancing your capability to breathe will drastically enhance your athletic efficiency and skills. Efficient respiratory requires thoracic mobility, core power 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 power, extra blood circulate, sharper focus, and enchancment when going through worrying and unpredictable conditions. Pilates additionally teaches the athlete the best way to breathe into the motion, which helps the workout routines circulate smoother by way of the complete vary of movement and with extra management. Deeper respiratory and elevated consciousness of the breath interprets into higher kind and energy with swings, jumps, sprints, modifications of instructions and throws. Join your breath with motion and cut back the damage and tear whereas elevating your capability to maneuver — a win-win-win.
10. Pilates will increase your explosive velocity and energy.
The Pilates combo of deep, expanded respiratory, a stronger core, improved flexibility in your complete physique, elevated power and environment friendly motion mix to create a physique which might transfer faster, quicker and with extra drive behind it. It is fairly easy: the looser and extra in management you might be of your physique, the quicker your velocity and extra practical your power.
Whether or not it means transferring faster with extra precision when rolling out for a soccer move, maneuvering across the protection en path to the objective 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 enhancing your self every day. On this, Pilates is a continuing and devoted companion. Strive 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 choose up his newest e-book right here! —Jenn
