One among 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 ebook 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 1000’s of lessons 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. Mainly, he’s the very best!
And, we’re tremendous pumped that he’s letting us share an excerpt from his new ebook. Learn on for the highest 10 the 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 observe, take in and revel 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 suppleness.
That stated, listed below are 10 of the highest the 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 middle and assist 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 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 once 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 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 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 power 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, stability and resistance to damage. It is 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 workouts will work to problem and power your physique to adapt and enhance. As soon as your physique adapts you purchase a better stage of ability.
Every train is equally balanced on each side of the physique to counteract the imbalances seen in sports activities resembling 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 via 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 ability?
How effectively 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 suppleness in your core. Having a physique which may simply adapt to the unpredictable calls for of a sport—fast adjustments of path in tennis, explosive velocity in hockey, driving to the basket in basketball — provides you with an enormous edge over your opponents and extend your profession.
4. Pilates improves total flexibility.
Joseph Pilates as soon as stated, “True flexibility will 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. Reasonably, Pilates works via fixed flows and actions which stretch, lengthen and increase 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 increase 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 instrument 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 perfect 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 any one-size-fits-all method to Pilates. You might be in charge of 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, gear or machines of any type means you may rely completely 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 power, flexibility and focus you want at that second, and you may practice daily, mixing up your exercises so you might be constantly hitting new areas.
7. Pilates supplies an everchanging, unending provide of workouts and sequences to maintain you consistently 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 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 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 tissue and ligaments and improve your capacity to circulation with extra effectivity and precision. For athletes, the muse of management begins with good posture. From this basis comes the massive actions resembling leaping, tackling, swinging, throwing, catching and sprinting … but when your physique just isn’t aligned appropriately, these actions shall be compromised and weak.
Good posture, working in tandem with a robust core, helps stabilize the physique and assist the athlete’s want for velocity, energy, rotational power and fast adjustments of path. Pilates will assist reinforce good posture and alignment throughout each section of your sport.
9. Pilates improves your capacity to breathe.
Too typically, we breathe in a shallow methodology, draining our power 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 pulls the breath upward out of the low stomach and produce it into the perimeters and the low again. This fashion of respiration drenches the lungs and muscle tissue in oxygen and will increase your capacity to herald and course of the breath with effectivity. It helps you reap the benefits of 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 capacity 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 power, extra blood circulation, 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 workouts circulation smoother via the total 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, adjustments 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 respiration, a stronger core, improved flexibility in the whole physique, elevated power and environment friendly motion mix to create a physique which may transfer faster, quicker and with extra power behind it. It’s 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 shifting faster with extra precision when rolling out for a soccer go, maneuvering across the protection en path to the aim in hockey, or planting, leaping and spiking the ball in volleyball with explosive energy, Pilates supplies 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! Make sure to decide up his newest ebook right here! —Jenn
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