Benefits of Core Strengthening: Why you should do Pilates.

-An Article by Michaela Afford

There are lots of benefits to core strengthening but first, let’s understand what your core is.

The core muscles incorporate all of the muscles from your shoulders to your knees, the front and the back of your body. When we look at this area, with regards to the skeletal system, we see that these are all the muscles that support the spine, which is fundamental to our posture, balance and stability.

Breaking it down further, we start with the shoulders. As we get older, we will all discover wear and tear in the body. For the spine, this can be seen as kyphosis, a rounding of the upper back, which results in poor posture and sometime pain. In Pilates, we use back extension exercises to help strengthen the rhomboids and latissimus dorsi in the middle and upper back to help improve posture by drawing the shoulders back and lengthening the chest muscles.

The trunk muscles such as the abdominals and obliques also support good posture and are key to balance and stability. We use them every day to walk, lift and reach, allowing the spine move with rotation (twisting), flexion (forward fold), extension (back bending) and lateral flexion (side bending). So if you want to reach up to the top of the cupboard to grab that new packet of biscuits, you’ll want to strengthen your obliques.

Finally, the lower half of the core are your glutes and upper leg muscles. The spine connects into the hips at the sacroiliac joints and the biggest set of muscles here is your glutes (bottom) muscles. They support all the movement we do with our hips, such as walking, dancing and swimming. As well as the aforementioned trunk muscles, we need strong lower body muscles to help us balance, which is something we can struggle with as we get older.

In Pilates, we use our own body weight as resistance to build strength. But we also gain complete control of our bodies. Pilates draws on inspiration from martial arts, slow and controlled flowing movements that are performed with thoughtful awareness. Some of the principles that underpin our practice are concentration, relaxation, alignment, breathing, centring, coordination, flowing movements and stamina. These principles can help us in other areas of our life so by practicing Pilates regularly, we can feel strong, find clarity, focus and calm the mind.