[00:00:00] Welcome to Pilates Students' Manual, everything you want to know about Pilates in one place. I'm Olivia, and I'll be your host. Jump in the conversation on Instagram @pilatesstudentsmanual. And be sure to subscribe for updates on new episodes. Let's learn something new together.

Hello, hello everybody. We are jumping right in today to answer all those big questions that you have about Pilates. And before we get started, go ahead and subscribe or follow the podcast so you can get all the good stuff right when it comes out. Just like Pilates itself, this podcast is good for your mind and good for [00:01:00] your body.

So, what is Pilates? This is for your Lyft driver. If you like me have ever left a Pilates studio, gotten into a ride share and Hey, you know, what, what were you doing? I was doing Pilates and they're like, Oh, was it like yoga? Short answer: it was not like yoga, but thank you. There's like some awareness about Pilates. Pilates is getting more mainstream, but not totally mainstream, kind of like yoga in the nineties. Right? 

So borrowing from Rael's Pilates Anatomy, which is a textbook that if you are a Pilates nerd, I highly recommend that you invest in because it's dense, but in all the good ways. So Pilates is a system of physical and mental conditioning that can enhance physical strength, flexibility, and coordination, improve your mental focus, reduce stress, and increase overall wellbeing. And anyone can do it. Like sign me up, right? How are we all not doing Pilates right now? That sounds brilliant. 

There are six [00:02:00] principles of Pilates. And six is a number we're going to use loosely. Joseph Pilates never enumerated his principles, but if you read his books, definitely there are some principles that emerge. The exact six, I would be like, yeah, we're all kind of still talking about that. 

Big ones, however, our breath concentration centering, control, precision, and flow. Those are the biggies, but I've also heard whispers of whole body movement and balanced muscle development. And you could argue that those fall under their own categories or whatever, but those are some general ideas that if you're doing Pilates, you need to be focusing on these things.

I had a student who once said that Pilates is like the grammar of movement. In a lot of ways, it is, especially when you're talking about that precision, that control, the focus on breath. There's a mind body element, which is, I think why people kind of conflate it with yoga [00:03:00] sometimes, because there is that same mind, body connection.

I'll talk a little bit more in a second about why Pilates is not yoga, but that's the general idea that it's this system of exercises developed by Joseph Pilates, but in a lot of ways, it has also gone off a little bit from the system. And I'll tell you a little bit more about the system. 

This idea that you need to have a concentration. You need to have an element of awareness of your breath, that the movements are controlled. There's a mental focus aspect. You're working from the center, which means we start from the core and work outward towards our limbs. That you're moving precisely. And that there is an element of rhythm, or it's also called flow. That's how you know it's Pilates. 

I just mentioned him, but in case you aren't familiar, who was Pilates? Pilates was a person. His name was Joe. I call him Joe, Joseph, and he was born in Germany [00:04:00] in 1883. So like not the super distant past, right. He was a gymnast and a bodybuilder. And he, as a child, was sick a lot. He had asthma and rickets and rheumatic fever, and he was able to heal himself through exercise and become a gymnast and bodybuilder. Right? So like that's pretty impressive. 

He believed that bad posture and overall sickness just general sickness could be attributed to a lack of movement, lack of muscle development, lack of mental engagement in movement. So he developed a movement system that would address that and cure all ills. Like baller, dude. Good work. 

Dropping more historical knowledge on you. He was interned as a prisoner of war on the Isle of Man in England during world war one, because he was a German citizen and it was World War one in England. So while he was there, he developed a movement system where he would lead exercise. Like he would be the PE [00:05:00] teacher of this internment camp. And he was really able to refine his method of mat exercises there and able to work with bedridden prisoners, using resistance and exercises to help them get their strength and their health back.

Joseph had a crazy life. He immigrated to the United States in 1925 and he lived in New York City where he opened a studio that showcased his movement system. And also the equipment that he patented and developed himself. He has crazy equipment patents. Like he was a cool guy. 

He didn't call it Pilates. That would be weird. Maybe it wouldn't be weird. I think it would be weird. So he didn't call it Pilates. He called it contrology. So you might see contrologist on places or your Pilates teacher might have a tee shirt that says contrologist, or you might see something like the contrology reformer, something like that.

He called his system contrology, which is [00:06:00] the study of control. He was able to rehabilitate a lot of dancers from Broadway in New York City using his exercises and using his method of thinking about exercise as well. Several of his students became first-generation teachers of the Pilates system, including Mary Bowen, Ron Fletcher, Romana, Eve Gentry, and others.

Those are called the Pilates elders, depending on how deep you dove into the Pilates world, you may have seen mention of the elders. Those are those first-generation teachers. I actually got to meet Mary Bowen in 2018 at the PMA conference in Las Vegas and she is amazing. She is brilliant. And her stories about Joe are also hilarious and poignant and very interesting.

Joseph  died in 1967 in his eighties. He didn't get to see Pilates go mainstream the way it is going right now, but he really firmly believed that his system could [00:07:00] heal people. And if you talk to any Pilates teacher or any inspired Pilates student, you are going to hear how much Pilates has helped heal their injuries and keep them strong and flexible.

I'm going to do another episode on Joe. So if you're interested in the man, the myth, the legend, there will be more content about him coming up shortly. He's complicated. He did a lot of great things. He had a lot of great ideas. He got some things really right, but he didn't get everything really right. I don't know.  We'll talk about it though. 

There are two, possibly three, different schools of Pilates. I have talked about his method and that's referred to now as classical Pilates. So there is a classical mat Pilates sequence that is 34 exercises performed in order in a very specific way. And there is classical reformer Pilates. There is a system, a series of movements that you do on the reformer and you do them in the same order and they are the classical exercises as developed by Joe. 

The [00:08:00] classical school exists. There's also a contemporary school of Pilates that builds on that classical framework. I am a contemporary trained Pilates teacher, which means that I know all of the classical work, I respect all of the classical work, but I also teach non-classical exercises. I teach, you know, derivatives of exercises or I use the equipment in a different way, or I do exercises that weren't necessarily taught by Joe that are honoring those principles of Pilates, but are not the exercises that Joe taught.

The possible third school of Pilates that you see as maybe a branch of contemporary Pilates is rehabilitative Pilates. And you're seeing that in a lot of ways in like physical therapist's office. There are almost pre Pilates exercises that are building the strength, building the mobility, building the centering, the precision, working towards those Pilates exercises. So rehabilitative may also be a school. 

[00:09:00] All schools of Pilates learn classical Pilates. In order to become a certified teacher in Pilates, you need to know classical Pilates, what you do with it kind of determines what school you're going to fall into. 

There are also different types of Pilates classes. So you may have seen mat Pilates, especially right now while everyone is working at home. There is a lot of mat Pilates happening out there. For mat Pilates exercises you do not need any props other than a mat and your body. You can add props to those exercises. You may have seen people working with yoga blocks or straps or resistance bands or stability balls, but the main idea is that you're doing Pilates on the mat.

There are also equipment classes or reformer classes that are going to incorporate the pieces of equipment that Joe designed to go with his exercises, notably the reformer, which it's difficult to describe. [00:10:00] It's kind of like a bed. It has Springs so that the carriage, which is the part that you lied down on moves. Your feet rest on a foot bar. And as you press your legs straight, when you're lying down, it's going to go out and in there. 

Is that the best description? It is not the best description, but you can Google it. I believe in you. If you Google "reformer," you'll be like, yeah, it is kind of a bed. It's a fun time.

You can do lots of stuff on it besides lying down. You can do infinite things on it actually, but that is his big piece of equipment. He also designed the Cadillac, which that's like an elevated mat. And then it has a metal frame that goes around it so that you can do exercises standing on it. It has lots of hooks where you can attach springs.

Springs are huge in Pilates equipment. All of his exercises are working with spring resistance. He also designed the Wundachair also called the chair in Pilates. And that is a kind of a chair-like thing that has a pedal that you press down and it comes back up. It returns with, again, that spring [00:11:00] resistance. 

Highly recommend that you Google all of these things if you're not familiar with them. They are difficult to describe, which is usually the wall that I run into when I'm talking to my ride share driver. And I'm like, it's like Google, right? 

He also created some other pieces of equipment that you may or may not have seen in your studio. Things like the Ped-O-Pull, the foot and toe corrector, the ladder barrel. These are all additional pieces of equipment that Joe developed to help his students progress in their strength and their mobility dreams. 

There are also other props or pieces of equipment that weren't developed by Pilates, but really work well within the Pilates system. Things like balance trainers, like the Bosu, or suspension trainers, like the TRX, those might be in your Pilates studio as well. We also use things like stability, balls, resistance bands, the springboard, or the tower, which is kind of like the metal frame of the [00:12:00] Cadillac, but just on the wall or attached to the reformer, also foam rollers, and much more, the world of things that you can do with Pilates has really expanded.

Hey there. Enjoying the episode? Me too. You should definitely subscribe so you get notifications about new episodes, and if you love it, maybe leave me a review. That would be awesome. Thanks for sharing the Pilates love. Now back to the show.

Revisiting that question: Is Pilates like yoga? Some ways yes. In some ways, no. I would argue, totally my opinion here, that the focus of the exercises are different in Pilates and yoga. [00:13:00] The movement is the same in a lot of ways, because all movement is the same, right? You can flex your spine, you can extend your spine. You can do a side bend, you can do a rotation, you can bend your knee or straighten your knee. Right. All of those movements are the same, but the way you do them in Pilates is different from the way you do them in yoga. 

If you're going to get real spiritual into yoga, and I might do another episode specifically on Pilates and yoga because there is overlap, but when we're talking about the focus of yoga, if you're going to the eight limbs of yoga, the goal of yoga is to achieve oneness with universal consciousness. That is not exactly what we're trying to do in Pilates, not to discount that goal, but that is not the goal in Pilates. 

In my mind, Pilates is using your mind to control your body and its movement. There is still a mind body connection, but in yoga, you're trying to almost go beyond that. And in Pilates, you're trying to well [00:14:00] develop your mind and your body so that Joe says that you are in control of your body and not at its mercy. And when you have a healthy body, you have a healthy mind. Your overall joy in life is increased.

As I mentioned before, Pilates is like the grammar of movement. A lot of the exercises are dynamic. Whereas in yoga, you're holding poses .In Pilates, it's more about how you get where you're going then going there, if that makes sense. You're going to move a little bit differently, even if you think like, well, what about flow yoga or what about Vinyasa yoga?

 Pilates is still different. There's a little bit more precision in the movement that you're doing. And you're also repeating that movement several times and to become aware of what's moving and how it's moving. There will be another episode discussing this specifically because there's a lot to dive into.

Pilates sounds amazing though. Right? It gets more amazing. There are so many benefits to doing Pilates. I was going to call this an [00:15:00] exhaustive list, but that would be a joke. There's nothing exhaustive about this list. Every time I do Pilates, I realize something amazing that happened as a result of me doing Pilates, it just keeps getting better. And the better you get at Pilates, the more benefits you see and then more nuanced benefits you see really. 

Some benefits of Pilates is that because it's a slower movement system, it's not a high intensity impact adventure. You move slowly and you're able to build that brain, body connection. You're really able to get into your body and see how it works and sometimes how it doesn't work and get curious about that.

Pilates targets your stabilizing muscles instead of your vanity muscles. So you're not doing a bunch of bicep curls, which is, I mean, biceps are a good muscle to have strong, but we're talking about like the stabilizers in your shoulder a lot so that when you do that bicep curl you're have the best form and the best support from all of the muscles in your body.

Pilates meets you [00:16:00] where you are, your ability level, your price point. When we're talking about the different types of classes, mat classes are much less expensive than equipment classes. So if you aren't able to afford group equipment classes or private equipment classes, you're still able to do Pilates and you're still able to get those benefits, whether or not you're working with the equipment, whether or not you're working one on one with an instructor. 

Pilates focuses on functional movement. It is movement for your life. We don't do Pilates to be good at Pilates. Although that does happen, you do Pilates because then when you bend over and pick something up your back doesn't hurt so that when you get out of bed in the morning, you aren't in pain, you know, it's really for life and not just to be good at the thing.

Pilates focuses on those postural muscles as well. That's one of the first things that my students have noticed is that they're sitting up straight or they have more awareness about their body in space and they adjust the way they move almost [00:17:00] subconsciously as a result of doing Pilates. So we're increasing that body awareness.

Your core is getting stronger. There will be an episode about what is the Pilates core, because it is so important. In short, when you're able to use your abdominal muscles and your powerhouse muscles correctly, your back muscles, your hip flexors, your neck muscles don't have to work as hard. And as a result, you feel better, your posture gets better and a lot of pain goes away because your body is working as a cohesive unit instead of overloading certain muscles and underloading other muscles.

When you do Pilates, your performance in all forms of exercise improves, it really does. You become a better swimmer, a better runner, a better soccer player, because you're again, using all of those muscles and the most efficient way. 

It boosts your self esteem. It feels good to move your body and to get stronger. And to have that laser focus, you become so aware of these little milestones that you hit. And it just [00:18:00] is amazing. You're building strength, you're building flexibility. That's almost a given. 

Also surprise benefit. It's not always a sweaty mess of a workout. You can do Pilates and you don't feel like a puddle at the end of it. You feel taller, you feel stronger, you feel lengthened, you don't feel like a mess at the end of your workout. You feel fantastic and better at the end of your workout. 

For the active aging community Pilates is so important for fall prevention because it increases that body awareness of not just how your body moves, but also your body in space, right, your proprioception that allows you to be independent as you age. If you're able to put your shoes on, if you're able to take care of yourself, you're able to be independent longer, which is amazing and incredible. And what you want. And that's only the tip of the iceberg friends. Pilates has so many ways-

I was speaking with a friend of mine who had chronic back pain and doing Pilates. [00:19:00] She's almost entirely pain-free. There are so many success stories like that, of people who came with injuries, who came with imbalances, who came from physical therapy and they were just able to move more, move better and enjoy their life as a result of Pilates.

So if that hasn't convinced you that you should be doing Pilates right now, I don't know what else to tell you, man. It's amazing. We are just getting started with all this Pilates goodness. There is so much to cover, more to cover than I can in one episode. 

As I mentioned, we're going to be diving deeper into some of these topics in episodes to come. So stay tuned for that. I'm glad you're here coming on this adventure with me.

Thanks for stopping by for today's episode of Pilates Students' Manual. Subscribe to follow the podcast and join the community of [00:20:00] Pilates lovers on Instagram @pilatesstudentsmanual. You can reach out to me there with questions, comments, or feedback, or send me an emailat pilatesstudentsmanual@oliviabioni.com.

If you learned something new today, share this episode and the Pilates love. The adventure continues. Until next time.