One in every of our favourite health specialists is Sean Vigue (keep in mind the superior exercises he’s 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 via Pilates.
Sean Vigue has taught hundreds of courses all over the world 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. Mainly, he’s the most effective!
And, we’re tremendous pumped that he’s letting us share an excerpt from his new e-book. 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 workouts, sequenced collectively to raise your thoughts, physique, spirit and athletic capacity. Solely a Pilates (or yoga) mat is required to take part. No weights. No machines. Simply you and the mat.
Strictly talking, there should not 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 apply, take in 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, power, management, stability, endurance, breath management, focus, energy and adaptability.
That mentioned, listed below 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 assume “abs”), transverse abdominis (the deepest of the stomach 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 situated 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 turning into simply fatigued from failing posture. Pilates core workouts practice the muscle tissue 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 relies on drive 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 general power, stability and resistance to harm. It’s because it’s tough to discover a extra complete and efficient program than an everyday Pilates mat apply. Pilates helps athletes enhance their everchanging motion patterns with progressive destabilization, that means the additional you journey into your exercises, the extra the workouts will work to problem and drive your physique to adapt and enhance. As soon as your physique adapts you purchase a better stage 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 convey 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 cellular? How succesful are you of shifting 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 airplane of motion whereas specializing in constructing power and adaptability 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 lengthen your profession.
4. Pilates improves general flexibility.
Joseph Pilates as soon as mentioned, “True flexibility might be achieved solely when all muscle tissue 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 via 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 via fixed flows and actions which stretch, lengthen and develop 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 develop your physique via a myriad of flows and angles. It’s flowing, dynamic motion which stretches and strengthens the muscle tissue concurrently. You’ll easily and gracefully circulation from one threshold to the following, shifting your physique with precision and management via as full a variety of movement as attainable.
5. Pilates is a superb device for rehabbing your physique throughout harm and fixing issues related to muscular imbalance.
Pilates mat apply is low influence on the joints, making it the best train when rehabbing your physique and recovering from an harm. You can too construction your Pilates exercises to your particular person wants — there isn’t a one-size-fits-all method to Pilates. You’re 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 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 sort means you may rely solely 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’ll practice every single day, mixing up your exercises so you’re persistently hitting new areas.
7. Pilates offers an everchanging, unending provide of workouts and sequences to maintain you continuously challenged.
Athletes must be challenged to drive their our bodies to adapt and enhance. Pilates coaching is a journey of progressive destabilization with each exercise. The workouts turn out to be 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 shifting with correct postural alignment will lower pressure in your muscle tissue and ligaments and improve your capacity to circulation with extra effectivity and precision. For athletes, the inspiration of management begins with good posture. From this basis comes the massive actions equivalent to leaping, tackling, swinging, throwing, catching and sprinting … but when your physique will not be aligned accurately, these actions can 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 capacity 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 robust, aligned posture.
Pilates teaches deep lateral thoracic respiratory, which pulls the breath upward out of the low stomach and convey it into the perimeters and the low again. This type of respiratory drenches the lungs and muscle tissue in oxygen and will increase your capacity 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.
Enhancing your capacity to breathe will drastically improve your athletic efficiency and talents. 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 circulation, sharper focus, and enchancment when dealing with aggravating and unpredictable conditions. Pilates additionally teaches the athlete the best way to breathe into the motion, which helps the workouts circulation smoother via 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, modifications of instructions and throws. Join your breath with motion and reduce the damage and tear whereas elevating your capacity 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 the complete physique, elevated power and environment friendly motion mix to create a physique which might transfer faster, sooner and with extra drive behind it. It’s fairly easy: the looser and extra in management you’re of your physique, the sooner your velocity and extra useful your power.
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 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 bettering 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 due to Sean for letting us share this gem of an excerpt! Make sure to decide up his newest e-book right here! —Jenn
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