One in every of our favourite health specialists is Sean Vigue (bear 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 (regardless 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 means of Pilates.
Sean Vigue has taught 1000’s of lessons around the globe 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 the explanation why athletes ought to add Pilates into 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 workouts, sequenced collectively to raise your thoughts, physique, spirit and athletic means. 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 nearly too exhausting to checklist, and there’s no finish to the methods Pilates elevates your well being, health, motion, velocity, energy, management, stability, endurance, breath management, focus, energy and suppleness.
That stated, listed here are 10 of the highest the explanation why athletes want Pilates Mat Coaching.
1. Pilates constructs a powerful, sturdy, versatile and balanced core.
Joseph Pilates referred to the core as your “powerhouse” and “girdle of energy”. 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, energy, and management. It begins on the base of the pelvic ground 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 assume “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 edges 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 turning into simply fatigued from failing posture. Pilates core workouts practice the muscle groups in your pelvis, decrease again, hips, glutes and stomach to work collectively, resulting in improved stability, stability and physique management. Each sport from basketball to tennis to throwing darts depends upon power radiating out of your heart (core) outwards into the limbs.
2. Pilates builds a powerful, balanced and resilient physique.
Athletes of all ages and health ranges have been incorporating Pilates into their coaching for improved general energy, stability and resistance to harm. 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, which means the additional you journey into your exercises, the extra the workouts will work to problem and power 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 each side of the physique to counteract the imbalances seen in sports activities equivalent to tennis, golf or baseball, the place the dominant aspect is favored and strengthened whereas the opposite aspect 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 workouts emphasize wholesome, flowing and proper motion. Is your physique cell? How succesful are you of shifting your physique rapidly with out pressure? Can you transfer freely by means of the day with out tightness and discomfort in your physique? How effectively do you progress as an athlete? Is your mobility serving to or hurting your athletic talent?
How effectively you progress your physique by means of a number of planes of motion determines your athletic success. Pilates coaching strikes your physique by means of each angle and airplane of motion whereas specializing in constructing energy and suppleness in your core. Having a physique which may simply adapt to the unpredictable calls for of a sport—fast adjustments of route in tennis, explosive velocity in hockey, driving to the basket in basketball — offers you an enormous edge over your opponents and extend your profession.
4. Pilates improves general flexibility.
Joseph Pilates as soon as stated, “True flexibility will be achieved solely when all muscle groups are uniformly developed.” For that reason, Pilates doesn’t improve flexibility (outlined because the vary of movement in a joint or group of joints and shifting them by means of a full vary of movement) simply primarily based on the favored “scorching spots” of the physique, such because the hamstrings and low again. Fairly, Pilates works by means of fixed flows and actions which stretch, lengthen and broaden 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 broaden your physique by means of a myriad of flows and angles. It’s flowing, dynamic motion which stretches and strengthens the muscle groups concurrently. You’ll easily and gracefully stream from one threshold to the following, shifting your physique with precision and management by means of as full a spread of movement as attainable.
5. Pilates is a good instrument for rehabbing your physique throughout harm and fixing issues related to muscular imbalance.
Pilates mat follow is low impression on the joints, making it the perfect train when rehabbing your physique and recovering from an harm. You may as well construction your Pilates exercises to your particular person wants — there isn’t any one-size-fits-all method to Pilates. You might be accountable for your coaching, not the workouts. 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 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 type means you may rely solely on the best health club you’ll ever have: your physique.
Your exercises can final from 10 to 60 minutes relying on how a lot energy, flexibility and focus you want at that second, and you may practice daily, mixing up your exercises so you’re constantly hitting new areas.
7. Pilates gives an everchanging, unending provide of workouts and sequences to maintain you continually challenged.
Athletes must be challenged to power their our bodies to adapt and enhance. Pilates coaching is a journey of progressive destabilization with each exercise. The workouts change into 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 shifting with correct postural alignment will lower pressure in your muscle groups and ligaments and improve your means to stream with extra effectivity and precision. For athletes, the muse of management begins with good posture. From this basis comes the large actions equivalent to leaping, tackling, swinging, throwing, catching and sprinting … but when your physique shouldn’t be aligned accurately, these actions can be compromised and weak.
Good posture, working in tandem with a powerful core, helps stabilize the physique and help the athlete’s want for velocity, energy, rotational power and fast adjustments of route. Pilates will assist reinforce good posture and alignment throughout each section of your sport.
9. Pilates improves your means to breathe.
Too usually, 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 powerful, aligned posture.
Pilates teaches deep lateral thoracic respiratory, which pulls the breath upward out of the low stomach and produce it into the edges and the low again. This model of respiratory drenches the lungs and muscle groups in oxygen and will increase your means to usher in and course of the breath with effectivity. It helps you make the most 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.
Bettering your means to breathe will drastically improve your athletic efficiency and skills. Efficient respiratory requires thoracic mobility, core energy 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 stream, sharper focus, and enchancment when dealing with aggravating and unpredictable conditions. Pilates additionally teaches the athlete the way to breathe into the motion, which helps the workouts stream smoother by means of the complete vary of movement and with extra management. Deeper respiratory and elevated consciousness of the breath interprets into higher type and energy with swings, jumps, sprints, adjustments of instructions and throws. Join your breath with motion and reduce the damage and tear whereas elevating your means to maneuver — a win-win-win.
10. Pilates improve your explosive velocity and energy.
The Pilates combo of deep, expanded respiratory, a stronger core, improved flexibility in your complete physique, elevated energy and environment friendly motion mix to create a physique which may transfer faster, sooner and with extra power behind it. It’s fairly easy: the looser and extra in management you’re of your physique, the sooner your velocity and extra purposeful your energy.
Whether or not it means shifting faster with extra precision when rolling out for a soccer cross, maneuvering across the protection en path to the aim in hockey, or planting, leaping and spiking the ball in volleyball with explosive energy, Pilates gives 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 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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