One among our favourite health specialists is Sean Vigue (bear in mind the awesome workouts he’s done for us?). And, guess what?! He has a brand new e book out!
Pilates for Athletes helps on a regular basis individuals (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 by Pilates.
Sean Vigue has taught hundreds of lessons world wide and has appeared in more than 2,000 health and fitness videos. He’s optimistic, he is aware of his stuff, and his exercises are FUN. Mainly, he’s one of the best!
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.
Prime 10 Causes Why Athletes Want Pilates Mat Coaching
By Sean Vigue
Pilates mat coaching is a bodyweight-only, whole physique conditioning program which options an exhaustive record 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 will not be many exercise applications 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 follow, take in and luxuriate in. The advantages are virtually too exhausting to record, and there’s no finish to the methods Pilates elevates your well being, health, motion, pace, energy, management, steadiness, endurance, breath management, focus, energy and adaptability.
That stated, listed below are 10 of the highest explanation why athletes want Pilates Mat Coaching.
1. Pilates constructs a powerful, sturdy, versatile and balanced core.
Joseph Pilates referred to the core as your “powerhouse” and “girdle of energy”. 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, energy, 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 individuals imply once they assume “abs”), transverse abdominis (the deepest of the stomach muscle tissues which wraps round your sides and backbone), erector spinae (a pair of muscle tissues in your decrease again), the inner and exterior obliques (the muscle tissues positioned on the edges 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 prepare the muscle tissues in your pelvis, decrease again, hips, glutes and stomach to work collectively, resulting in improved steadiness, stability and physique management. Each sport from basketball to tennis to throwing darts depends upon drive radiating out of your middle (core) outwards into the limbs.
2. Pilates builds a powerful, balanced and resilient physique.
Athletes of all ages and health ranges have been incorporating Pilates into their coaching for improved general energy, steadiness and resistance to harm. It’s because it’s troublesome to discover a extra complete and efficient program than a daily Pilates mat follow. Pilates helps athletes enhance their everchanging motion patterns with progressive destabilization, which 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 cell? How succesful are you of transferring your physique shortly with out pressure? Can you transfer freely by 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 talent?
How effectively you progress your physique by a number of planes of motion determines your athletic success. Pilates coaching strikes your physique by each angle and airplane of motion whereas specializing in constructing energy and adaptability in your core. Having a physique which might simply adapt to the unpredictable calls for of a sport—fast modifications of path in tennis, explosive pace in hockey, driving to the basket in basketball — provides you with an enormous edge over your opponents and lengthen your profession.
4. Pilates improves general flexibility.
Joseph Pilates as soon as stated, “True flexibility may be achieved solely when all muscle tissues are uniformly developed.” Because of this, Pilates doesn’t enhance flexibility (outlined because the vary of movement in a joint or group of joints and transferring them by a full vary of movement) simply primarily based on the favored “scorching spots” of the physique, such because the hamstrings and low again. Somewhat, Pilates works by fixed flows and actions which stretch, lengthen and develop the entire physique.
The place many exercises isolate muscle tissues and compress the physique and backbone, Pilates does simply the alternative: each Pilates train is designed to elongate and develop your physique by a myriad of flows and angles. It’s flowing, dynamic motion which stretches and strengthens the muscle tissues concurrently. You’ll easily and gracefully stream from one threshold to the following, transferring your physique with precision and management by as full a spread of movement as potential.
5. Pilates is a superb software for rehabbing your physique throughout harm and fixing issues related to muscular imbalance.
Pilates mat follow is low affect on the joints, making it the perfect train when rehabbing your physique and recovering from an harm. You may also construction your Pilates exercises to your particular person wants — there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all strategy to Pilates. You’re answerable 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 possibly can prepare 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 form means you possibly can rely completely on the best gymnasium you’ll ever have: your physique.
Your exercises can final from 10 to 60 minutes relying on how a lot energy, flexibility and focus you want at that second, and you’ll prepare every single day, mixing up your exercises so you might be persistently hitting new areas.
7. Pilates gives an everchanging, endless provide of workouts and sequences to maintain you continually 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 grow 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 “straightforward”, 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 transferring with correct postural alignment will lower pressure in your muscle tissues and ligaments and enhance your capacity to stream with extra effectivity and precision. For athletes, the muse 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 shouldn’t be aligned accurately, these actions might be compromised and weak.
Good posture, working in tandem with a powerful core, helps stabilize the physique and assist the athlete’s want for pace, energy, rotational drive and fast modifications of path. Pilates will assist reinforce good posture and alignment throughout each part of your sport.
9. Pilates improves your capacity to breathe.
Too usually, we breathe in a shallow methodology, draining our vitality and focus and crippling our posture. Deep Pilates respiration strengthens the core and lifts our our bodies into a powerful, aligned posture.
Pilates teaches deep lateral thoracic respiration, which attracts the breath upward out of the low stomach and convey it into the edges and the low again. This type of respiration drenches the lungs and muscle tissues in oxygen and will increase your capacity to herald and course of the breath with effectivity. It helps you benefit from each breath cycle, drawing contemporary oxygen into the lungs and squeezing each atom of breath out, filling and emptying the lungs with each breath.
Bettering your capacity to breathe will drastically enhance your athletic efficiency and talents. Efficient respiration requires thoracic mobility, core energy 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 vitality, extra blood stream, sharper focus, and enchancment when going through hectic and unpredictable conditions. Pilates additionally teaches the athlete find out how to breathe into the motion, which helps the workouts stream smoother by the complete vary of movement and with extra management. Deeper respiration and elevated consciousness of the breath interprets into higher kind 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 enhance your explosive pace and energy.
The Pilates combo of deep, expanded respiration, a stronger core, improved flexibility in all the physique, elevated energy and environment friendly motion mix to create a physique which might transfer faster, sooner and with extra drive behind it. It’s fairly simple: the looser and extra in management you might be of your physique, the sooner your pace and extra purposeful your energy.
Whether or not it means transferring faster with extra precision when rolling out for a soccer cross, maneuvering across the protection en path to the purpose in hockey, or planting, leaping and spiking the ball in volleyball with explosive energy, Pilates gives 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 due to Sean for letting us share this gem of an excerpt! You’ll want to decide up his newest e book here! —Jenn
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