20 September 2011

Pilates

I went to the gym earlier today and did some pilates. Love it!
Pilates is probably one of the most underrated things to do in a gym. Many people seam to think pilates is for weak girls that are only looking for flexibility.
WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!

Pilates is actually super hard!
You use your whole body, and even though it's slow movements you get alot of neural messages through the body which makes you fatigue really quicky. And wooow how sweaty you get if your doing it right!! In the end I was shaking like a leaf!

So what exercises did I do?
I started of with an exercise which stretches the hamstring, and using adducturs to come back to the starting position. I went lower down than the girl on the picture to the right though, but used a stick for balance.

I did a superset with step ups on the trapeze table. I was holding on to the bars on the sida and had one foot on the table and the other foot on a connected bar below. Benefits of the exercise are flexibility, shoulder stability and strength in quads, gastoc, glutes, lats, lower traps and ofcourse core!
My quads were buring!

Superset: 2 x (2x5 extensions on reformer + 2x5 step ups on trapeze table)

After that I did a exersice for my adductur's and some more and shoulder stability.

Slide 2x5







"The gun" 3x5
That's the starting position . From there I brought my body back until my whole body was in a straight line.




The history behind pilates
Joseph Hubertus Pilates was born in the Germany in 1880. In 1912, Joseph travelled to England, some say to tour with a circus and others, to pursue a boxing career. In 1914, WW1 broke out and Joseph was interned in a POW camp in Lancaster. It was here that he began to develop his own exercise regime which he called 'Contrology'.
Inspired by the springs and pulleys of the hospital beds he began rehabilitating the sick and infirm.
Pilates and his wife began teaching in New York in 1926 at a gym and by the 1930's they had quite a diverse client base including famous people such as Vivien Leigh, Sir Laurence Olivier and Katherine Hepburn. Joseph Pilates’ skill of working with and healing injured clients became widely known and when American ballet movement began to grow ever more popular, so did he. Dancers and choreographers would go to "Uncle Joe" to "be fixed". It was among these dancers that the first generation of ‘Pilates’ teachers emerged.

What has become known simply as 'Pilates' is now an exercise regime that is recognized and practiced worldwide, with a count of more than 12 million practitioners.




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