One in every of our favourite health specialists is Sean Vigue (keep in mind the superior exercises he’s performed for us?). And, guess what?! He has a brand new guide 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 via Pilates.
Sean Vigue has taught hundreds of courses world wide and has appeared in greater than 2,000 well being and health movies. He’s optimistic, he is aware of his stuff, and his exercises are FUN. Principally, he’s the perfect!
And, we’re tremendous pumped that he’s letting us share an excerpt from his new guide. Learn on for the highest 10 explanation why athletes ought to add Pilates into their coaching.
High 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 aren’t 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, soak up and revel 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 constructs a robust, sturdy, versatile and balanced core.
Joseph Pilates referred to the core as your “powerhouse” and “girdle of power”. It’s the heart 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 flooring 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 after they suppose “abs”), transverse abdominis (the deepest of the belly muscle groups which wraps round your sides and backbone), erector spinae (a pair of muscle groups in your decrease again), the inner and exterior obliques (the muscle groups 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 prepare the muscle groups 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 depends upon pressure 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 power, steadiness and resistance to damage. 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, that means the additional you journey into your exercises, the extra the workout routines will work to problem and pressure your physique to adapt and enhance. As soon as your physique adapts you purchase the next degree of talent.
Every train is equally balanced on either side of the physique to counteract the imbalances seen in sports activities reminiscent of 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 convey 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 cell? How succesful are you of transferring your physique rapidly with out pressure? Can you transfer freely via 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 talent?
How properly you progress your physique via a number of planes of motion determines your athletic success. Pilates coaching strikes your physique via each angle and aircraft of motion whereas specializing in constructing power and suppleness in your core. Having a physique which may simply adapt to the unpredictable calls for of a sport—fast modifications of course 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 will be achieved solely when all muscle groups are uniformly developed.” Because of this, Pilates doesn’t improve flexibility (outlined because the vary of movement in a joint or group of joints and transferring them via a full vary of movement) simply based mostly on the favored “scorching spots” of the physique, such because the hamstrings and low again. Quite, Pilates works via fixed flows and actions which stretch, lengthen and develop the entire physique.
The place many exercises isolate muscle groups and compress the physique and backbone, Pilates does simply the alternative: each Pilates train is designed to elongate and develop your physique via a myriad of flows and angles. It’s flowing, dynamic motion which stretches and strengthens the muscle groups concurrently. You’ll easily and gracefully move from one threshold to the subsequent, transferring your physique with precision and management via as full a spread of movement as doable.
5. Pilates is a good software for rehabbing your physique throughout damage and fixing issues related to muscular imbalance.
Pilates mat observe is low impression on the joints, making it the best train when rehabbing your physique and recovering from an damage. It’s also possible to construction your Pilates exercises to your particular person wants — there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all strategy to Pilates. You’re in command 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 body weight, so you may 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 form means you may 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 power, flexibility and focus you want at that second, and you may prepare day by day, mixing up your exercises so you might be constantly hitting new areas.
7. Pilates offers an everchanging, unending provide of workout routines and sequences to maintain you always challenged.
Athletes must be challenged to pressure their our bodies to adapt and enhance. Pilates coaching is a journey of progressive destabilization with each exercise. The workout routines grow to be tougher 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 groups and ligaments and improve your capability to move with extra effectivity and precision. For athletes, the muse of management begins with good posture. From this basis comes the large actions reminiscent of leaping, tackling, swinging, throwing, catching and sprinting … but when your physique shouldn’t be 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 pressure and fast modifications of course. Pilates will assist reinforce good posture and alignment throughout each part of your sport.
9. Pilates improves your capability to breathe.
Too typically, we breathe in a shallow methodology, draining our vitality and focus and crippling our posture. Deep Pilates respiration strengthens the core and lifts our our bodies into a robust, aligned posture.
Pilates teaches deep lateral thoracic respiration, which attracts the breath upward out of the low stomach and convey it into the perimeters and the low again. This fashion of respiration drenches the lungs and muscle groups in oxygen and will increase your capability to herald and course of the breath with effectivity. It helps you benefit from each breath cycle, drawing recent 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 improve your athletic efficiency and talents. Efficient respiration 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 respiration potential will expertise elevated vitality, extra blood move, sharper focus, and enchancment when dealing with annoying and unpredictable conditions. Pilates additionally teaches the athlete methods to breathe into the motion, which helps the workout routines move smoother via the complete vary of movement and with extra management. Deeper respiration 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 damage and tear whereas elevating your capability to maneuver — a win-win-win.
10. Pilates improve your explosive velocity and energy.
The Pilates combo of deep, expanded respiration, a stronger core, improved flexibility in all the physique, elevated power and environment friendly motion mix to create a physique which may transfer faster, sooner and with extra pressure behind it. It’s fairly easy: the looser and extra in management you might be of your physique, the sooner your velocity and extra purposeful 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 aim 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’re 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! Remember to choose up his newest guide right here! —Jenn
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