What is Pilates (pronounced pil-ahh-teez)?

Whether you are getting in shape, rehabilitating from an injury or chronic pain, training for an athletic competition, improving your sports technique, or just looking for an interesting, new physical challenge, the Pilates Method is for you.

• Pilates is a system of movement and exercise created and developed by German born athlete and physical therapy pioneer, Joseph Hubertus Pilates. Utilizing his specially designed equipment, this innovative method educates, re-patterns, realigns and balances the body. It promotes maximum muscle strength while increasing flexibility, coordination and stamina.



• Pilates decompresses joints and, and consequently, stimulates and improves circulation. This enhanced circulation, combined with increased strength, range of motion, and a more balanced musculature, promotes healthy tissue and precise, efficient movement patterns.



• Pilates strengthens and stretches, frees you from poor postural habits, helps heal back, neck and other joint problems while alleviating tension and fatigue. Doctors, physical therapists, dancers, and athletes have long revered Pilates as a powerful healing and educational physical training system.

How Does Pilates Work?

The primary goal of the Pilates Method is to enhance functional stability and movement throughout the body. The body itself is always treated as an integrated and whole system, rather than of a collection of independent muscle groups and parts. Key emphasis is placed on identifying faulty postural and movement patterns, and then correcting these by working with both the skeletal and muscular systems.

So often when we exercise we concentrate almost exclusively on the muscular system. What Pilates helps us remember is that muscles only work efficiently and properly when our skeletons and all our joints move freely and smoothly. All Pilates exercises focus on building functional strength and endurance in "core" postural muscles to create what Joseph Pilates called a "girdle of support" for the spine and pelvis. Attention to correct positioning and diaphragmatic breathing are integral components of each exercise. Above all though, clients are encouraged to sharpen their mental focus, and keep their minds on what their bodies are doing. After all, Joe liked to remind people, "it is the mind itself which builds the body".

As clients work on core postural muscles and joints, their bodies begin to change shape and move differently. Their abdominal area strengthens and flattens, their lower backs become better supported, and overall posture improves. Time and again clients tell us they have never felt their abdominals work as hard as they do in a Pilates session. In addition, they begin to integrate what they learn about posture and alignment into other exercise routines, sports activities, and even daily activities like driving and sitting at a computer. People often comment that they look and feel longer, leaner, and more graceful. Many even say they feel taller!