Pilates helps increase an individuals awareness about their own body and emphasises the importance of central core stability in normal functional movement. When performed regularly, Pilates positively changes the body. It combines awareness of the deep postural and stability muscles, breathing sequence , postural correction with suppleness and flexibility.
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Founder, Joseph Pilates believed by concentrating on the flow and precision of a movement coupled with controlled breathing that abnormal movement patterns could be rectified.
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Matwork based Pilates consists of strengthening, mobility and stretching exercises to help resolve weaknesses, compensations and overdevelopment thus correct malalignment and re-educate the body. Pilates is a mind body conditioning exercise programme that targets the deep postural muscles of the abdomen and spine to improve overall core stability and posture. The mind and body are brought together to achieve these aims through eight sound principles of concentration, centring, breathing, isolation, routine, precision, control and flowing.
Pilates
Joseph Pilates
Joseph Pilates was born in Germany in 1880 and throughout his childhood he suffered from rickets, asthma and rheumatic fever. Joe was determined to become physically immune to the effects of these conditions and began to study the effects of exercise.
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In 1912, when WW1 broke out, Joe was remanded in a POW camp. It was then that Joe was trained as an orderly in the hospital and was appalled to see so many people in bed doing no exercise. He devised gentle bed based exercises and progressed to using resistance, weight bearing exercises to partial load muscles, tendons and ligaments to aid tissue healing.
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After the War, Joe developed his ideas within the dance world and moved to America. Together with his wife Clara they opened the first ‘Pilates Studio’ in New York.
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By the 1950s, Joe had a solid reputation and was training young ballerinas in the Pilates technique. Several of Joe’s students went on to open their own Pilates studios and brought innovations and advancements to Joe’s original work. Joe died in 1967 but his Pilates legacy lives on and continues to evolve in order to benefit thousands round the world.
