One of our favourite health specialists is Sean Vigue (keep in mind the awesome workouts he’s done for us?). And, guess what?! He has a brand new ebook out!
Pilates for Athletes helps on a regular basis individuals (regardless 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 means of Pilates.
Sean Vigue has taught 1000’s of courses around the globe 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. Basically, he’s one of the best!
And, we’re tremendous pumped that he’s letting us share an excerpt from his new ebook. Read on for the highest 10 the explanation why athletes ought to add Pilates into their coaching.
Top 10 Reasons Why Athletes Need Pilates Mat Training
By Sean Vigue
Pilates mat coaching is a bodyweight-only, whole physique conditioning program which options an exhaustive checklist of core centered workout routines, sequenced collectively to raise your thoughts, physique, spirit and athletic skill. Only a Pilates (or yoga) mat is required to take part. No weights. No machines. Just you and the mat.
Strictly talking, there should not many exercise applications that may ship to an athlete the huge quantity of advantages that Pilates mat can. It is a lifelong program for the well-rounded athlete to follow, take up 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, energy, management, steadiness, endurance, breath management, focus, energy and suppleness.
That mentioned, listed below are 10 of the highest the explanation why athletes want Pilates Mat Training.
1. Pilates constructs a powerful, sturdy, versatile and balanced core.
Joseph Pilates referred to the core as your “powerhouse” and “girdle of strength”. It is 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 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 individuals imply once they suppose “abs”), transverse abdominis (the deepest of the stomach muscular tissues which wraps round your sides and backbone), erector spinae (a pair of muscular tissues in your decrease again), the inner and exterior obliques (the muscular tissues 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 turning into simply fatigued from failing posture. Pilates core workout routines practice the muscular tissues in your pelvis, decrease again, hips, glutes and stomach to work collectively, resulting in improved steadiness, stability and physique management. Every sport from basketball to tennis to throwing darts will depend on 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 damage. This is as a result of 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 workout routines will work to problem and drive your physique to adapt and enhance. Once your physique adapts you purchase a better stage of talent.
Each train is equally balanced on either side of the physique to counteract the imbalances seen in sports activities comparable 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 produce symmetry to the physique, bringing with it optimum bodily achievement.
3. Pilates improves mobility and ease of motion.
Pilates workout routines emphasize wholesome, flowing and proper motion. Is your physique cell? How succesful are you of shifting your physique rapidly with out pressure? Are you in a position to transfer freely by means of the day with out tightness and discomfort in your physique? How properly do you progress as an athlete? Is your mobility serving to or hurting your athletic talent?
How properly you progress your physique by means of a number of planes of motion determines your athletic success. Pilates coaching strikes your physique by means of each angle and aircraft of motion whereas specializing in constructing energy and suppleness in your core. Having a physique which might 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 — will provide you with an enormous edge over your opponents and lengthen your profession.
4. Pilates improves general flexibility.
Joseph Pilates as soon as mentioned, “True flexibility can be achieved only when all muscles are uniformly developed.” For this cause, Pilates doesn’t improve flexibility (outlined because the vary of movement in a joint or group of joints and shifting them by means of a full vary of movement) simply based mostly on the favored “hot spots” of the physique, such because the hamstrings and low again. Rather, Pilates works by means of fixed flows and actions which stretch, lengthen and develop the entire physique.
Where many exercises isolate muscular tissues and compress the physique and backbone, Pilates does simply the other: each Pilates train is designed to elongate and develop your physique by means of a myriad of flows and angles. It is flowing, dynamic motion which stretches and strengthens the muscular tissues concurrently. You will easily and gracefully circulate from one threshold to the following, shifting your physique with precision and management by means of as full a variety of movement as attainable.
5. Pilates is a superb device for rehabbing your physique throughout damage and fixing issues related to muscular imbalance.
Pilates mat follow is low influence on the joints, making it the best 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 a one-size-fits-all strategy to Pilates. You are accountable for your coaching, not the workout routines. 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 wherever and anytime.
Efficient and simply adaptable to your present coaching program, Pilates can match into the busiest of schedules. No weights, tools or machines of any sort 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 energy, flexibility and focus you want at that second, and you’ll practice day-after-day, mixing up your exercises so you might be persistently hitting new areas.
7. Pilates offers an everchanging, unending provide of workout routines and sequences to maintain you continuously 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 workout routines grow to be tougher and integrative as you progress, and with every new train, you combine new components of your physique into the actions. Once the train turns into too “easy”, we add a motion which forces your physique to adapt and enhance in actual time. No 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 shifting with correct postural alignment will lower pressure in your muscular tissues and ligaments and improve your skill to circulate with extra effectivity and precision. For athletes, the inspiration of management begins with good posture. From this basis comes the large actions comparable to leaping, tackling, swinging, throwing, catching and sprinting … but when your physique is just not aligned accurately, these actions will likely be compromised and weak.
Good posture, working in tandem with a powerful core, helps stabilize the physique and assist the athlete’s want for velocity, energy, rotational drive and fast adjustments of path. Pilates will assist reinforce good posture and alignment throughout each part of your sport.
9. Pilates improves your skill to breathe.
Too usually, we breathe in a shallow technique, draining our vitality and focus and crippling our posture. Deep Pilates respiratory strengthens the core and lifts our our bodies into a powerful, aligned posture.
Pilates teaches deep lateral thoracic respiratory, which attracts the breath upward out of the low stomach and produce it into the perimeters and the low again. This model of respiratory drenches the lungs and muscular tissues in oxygen and will increase your skill to usher in 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.
Improving your skill to breathe will drastically improve your athletic efficiency and skills. Effective respiratory 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 respiratory potential will expertise elevated vitality, extra blood circulate, sharper focus, and enchancment when going through disturbing and unpredictable conditions. Pilates additionally teaches the athlete how you can breathe into the motion, which helps the workout routines circulate smoother by means of the total vary of movement and with extra management. Deeper respiratory and elevated consciousness of the breath interprets into higher type and energy with swings, jumps, sprints, adjustments of instructions and throws. Connect your breath with motion and reduce the wear and tear and tear whereas elevating your skill to maneuver — a win-win-win.
10. Pilates improve your explosive velocity and energy.
The Pilates combo of deep, expanded respiratory, a stronger core, improved flexibility in all the physique, elevated energy and environment friendly motion mix to create a physique which might transfer faster, quicker and with extra drive behind it. It’s fairly simple: the looser and extra in management you might be of your physique, the quicker your velocity and extra useful your energy.
Whether it means shifting faster with extra precision when rolling out for a soccer go, maneuvering across the protection en path to the purpose in hockey, or planting, leaping and spiking the ball in volleyball with explosive energy, Pilates offers the instruments to do it.
Bottom line: the advantages of Pilates are highly effective and transcend all sports activities. Every breath you’re 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. In this, Pilates is a continuing and devoted companion. Try 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! Be certain to choose up his newest ebook here! —Jenn