It seems that many Pilates students struggle with doing a great Roll Up during their Mat workouts. Whether you’re a brand new beginner, or have been doing Pilates for years, coordinating the timing, breath, ab muscles working, and back releasing all at the right time for an easy, smooth Roll Up can be a challenge, but it’s not an impossible task. Everybody can have a strong & flexible center that easily articulates for a great Roll Up!
If you’re participating in Matwork classes and doing Private or Group Training on the Pilates equipment, there are many Pilates equipment exercises that can help you find the right muscles and improve your technique to make your Roll Up easier. But what if you’re only doing Matwork?
“True flexibility can be achieved only when all muscles are uniformly developed.”
Joseph H. Pilates
As I was chatting with a gal in my triathlon training program today, she began asking me questions about Pilates, and the difference between Pilates and Yoga. As a triathlete, she made the comment that she runs, bikes, swims, and does some weight training, but had never really worked much on her flexibility, and is now realizing that she needs to do something to improve it. She wondered which would be better to do for improving flexibility – Yoga or Pilates?
A Quick & Easy Pilates Exercise Tip for Improving ROM for the Arms & Shoulders
Do you or your Pilates clients ever struggle with shoulder pain or limited range of motion to lift the arms overhead? Is it a challenge to keep the back or ribs from popping up off the mat when the arms go overhead on exercises like Ribcage Arms, or the Roll Up in Pilates Matwork? Are you interested in discovering an amazingly simple cue/secret to help reduce shoulder pain and increase your range of motion to more easily lift the arms overhead?
Today I want to share some fitness tips on the Pilates Intermediate Matwork Exercise Swimming. Swimming is a lot of fun in a pool, and a little more of a challenge out of the water on the mat in Pilates class. But practicing this exercise on the mat can really help improve strength in the back of the whole body from your arms, shoulders, and upper back, through the lower back and into the hips and legs.
One of the biggest challenges with the Pilates Matwork Side Leg Series exercises is keeping the body still. All of the Pilates Mat exercises that lead up to this point (with your back on the mat) are to prepare you to lay on your side and still be able to hold things together!
The Pilates side leg series exercises have many great benefits!
Increased Hip Strength
Improved Hip Joint Mobility
Leg Flexibility
Improved Core Stability
Increased Body Awareness
Improved Gait Mechanics
Here are 5 things you can practice to help keep your body still and improve the free swing of your legs on all of the hip and leg exercises in this series:
Enjoy Whole-Body Strengthening Without Any Fancy Equipment!
A great body position on push-ups, makes the exercise so much easier to do! And with great technique you’ll be getting a lot more bang for your buck from every repetition to improve your upper body strength and fitness.
Push-ups in Pilates normally are done at the end of a Mat workout, but they’re a great exercise that you can do anytime, anywhere without any fancy equipment to maintain your fitness.
To Start the Exercise:
Stand with your feet in a V-position, arms extended over your head.
Walk your hands down the front of your body while you bend forward to reach the floor.
Walk your hands out on the mat taking 3-5 steps to get into a long and strong push-up position.
While you are getting into your push-up position…the following things should happen in this order:
Heels lengthen away from the head
Tailbone tucks under and reaches towards the heels
Lower abdominals lift up and in
Glutes & Inner thighs squeeze
Shoulder blades pull down the back
Spine lengthens through the top of the head
To do a Push-Up and keep a great body position, the sequence of what happens is really important.
Inhale to lower the whole-body, exhale, pull the low belly up, shoulders down, then engage the muscles under the shoulders, around the ribcage and into the belly to help lift the body up while straightening the arms.
Here’s a video clip with my fitness tips and a Push-Up demo to help you improve your body position and Push-Up power.
I posted a blog article related to the topic of reducing neck strain during Pilates matwork and ab training few weeks ago. Here’s a new video post in my Core Training series to discuss the same issue.
Neck strain, and occasionally pain, is something that is common during Pilates Matwork and general abdominal conditioning programs. And while feeling some work in the neck while those muscles are getting stronger, might be a good thing… When you’re really wanting to work on strengthening your abs, it’s a challenge to focus when you’ve got more pain in your neck than work in your belly!
Discover a very important tip that can help you reduce neck pain and improve core fitness for all your Pilates exercises and general fitness abdominal training workouts in this third video from my Core Training Tips series:
One of the biggest challenges for beginner (and sometimes) experienced Pilates students is being able to easily execute a full straight legged sit-up on the Pilates Mat exercises the Roll-Up and Neck Pull.
This modified ½ sit-back exercise is a great one to help gain strength and mobility to roll backwards to the mat with control, AND be able to efficiently roll back up to a sit – articulating through the spine and using the abs.
Discover fitness tips on how to execute a great half-sit back, and how this exercise can help strengthen your abs and improve your core fitness with this second video in my Core Training Tips series:
The KG Curl exercises is a wonderful warm-up exercise for any Pilates or fitness workout. It can really help you learn how to get more bend out of your body to achieve a good curled up position. The result… more work in your abdominal muscles, and less strain in your neck!
Use the exercise tips on this video to help you improve your ab curl position for Pilates Matwork exercises like the Hundred, Roll Up, Neck Pull, and Teaser. And at the gym, this easy-to-do KG Curl exercise can help improve your technique for sit-ups on an incline bench, crunches on a ball, and with all your ab training exercises during aerobics class.
Have Fun Improving your Ab Strength with the KG Curl!
I’ve been focusing a bit more on my own Pilates workouts lately – and it’s such fun to discover new things about the same old exercises I’ve been doing and teaching now for fifteen years! It’s never boring, and regardless of whether I’m teaching a client, or giving myself a workout – I’m amazed at what I continue to learn about the benefits and subtleties of the Pilates system.
Here’s my revelation for the week! (or perhaps it’s just today’s revelation – and something else will pop up eager for me to share tomorrow.)
I’ve always cued my clients to begin learning their exercises with the awareness of working within the framework of the Pilates “Box.” Think about the torso from shoulder to shoulder, and hip to hip. Every exercise starts from the center of the box, moves away from, and back to center. The farther away from center you move, the stronger you have to be to maintain balance, control, and core support for your exercise or movement. Feeling where the corners of the “box” are help create an awareness of being evenly distributing your weight and staying centered. Great concept!
So when the knees bend in towards the chest on any exercise where should they go?
It seems that many Pilates students struggle with doing a great Roll Up during their Mat workouts. Whether you’re a brand new beginner, or have been doing Pilates for years, coordinating the timing, breath, ab muscles working, and back releasing all at the right time for an easy, smooth Roll Up can be a challenge, but it’s not an impossible task. Everybody can have a strong & flexible center that easily articulates for a great Roll Up!
I’ve been focusing a bit more on my own Pilates workouts lately – and it’s such fun to discover new things about the same old exercises I’ve been doing and teaching now for fifteen years! It’s never boring, and regardless of whether I’m teaching a client, or giving myself a workout – I’m amazed at what I continue to learn about the benefits and subtleties of the Pilates system.
