Lift, tone, sculpt and shape--"core exercises "--we love 'em and there are so many options. This week IE will be looking at several flavors of "barre." We'll investigate pure barre marin, bar method marin, dailey method and stack them up against each other, along with our old favorite, Pilates reformer at body kinetics pilates novato.
In addition to IE’s class review, we are also going to ask and attempt to
answer the question Elle’s Virginia Sole Smith looks at in her article, why
we exercise--really??
IE will be looking at this fascinating article in a future post. But for
now, consider this thought provoking quote from Michele Segar, PHD, a motivation
psychologist at the University of Michigan and Associate Director of the Sport
Health and Activity Research and Policy Center for Women and Girls.
“Most of us exercise because we want to lose weight, but we give up when the
pounds fail to come off quickly enough…This negative message frames exercise as
something we force our bodies to do whether we like it or not to meet an
impossible standard.It’s fitness as the
modern corset.”
Imagine, showing up at some incredible sports medicine facility and having someone clip some sticky wires onto you that could tell
you what is going on in there! Of course, this contraption would then send magical charges
to heal/change those difficult/injured areas.
Well instead of that IE has taken up
Pilates to tackle a hardly debilitating, but still irritating, knee
injury.
IE has finished up two weeks of
Pilates, three times a week, coupled with swimming, elliptical, or hiking.(no Piloxing, running, or other high impact
exercise)
Over the course, IE has improved physically, but the greatest change is mental. It's realizing that injury and recovery is really about
learning to see and use your body differently. As we age we get a longing for what
we remember about our bodies. Remember when you woke up and nothing hurt?
However, as our bodies’ age and change, they
acquire injury and information. So we are left with the conundrum of a larger
body of knowledge, and yet a somewhat limited ability in certain parts. So we
accept that we must learn to use our bodies wisely, with specificity, and
precision.
At the heart of this realization for
IE and ID is a growing sense of wonder to uncover something new. This is the
“ahaa moment” the “that’s what she means, that’s how it works.”
Pilates
exercises develop this awareness by challenging you to use the smaller internal not-so-easy-to-access parts of the body to do the work. And also and by asking your body to do this in unfamiliar ways.
In class we did leg exercises
standing next to the spring board, putting our foot in the strap and
"soccer kicking" it across the body. Interestingly, the standing leg
and the rotator muscle inside the glute started to ache, it felt like rubber bands stretching. Yikes, not easy to
complete the three sets of eight.
Then went to the floor with legs
hooked over the bar like a trapeze, and we were to lift from the lower
abdominals. It’s easier to feel using the springboard bar. IE was able to transfer
this feeling of "separating" from the hip flexors and lifting over
the bottom ribs much better when we did the "hundreds" the classic
Pilates mat exercise:
The arm exercises
were challenging because IE has a lot of strength and not as much flexibility. It
was difficult to stay engaged at the core and not allow the ribs to
flare.
Like the video below after about 10
classes IE was getting the hang of using her body more efficiently and with
some precision. The challenge is to work deeper and smarter: to think about
what you are doing as you are doing it. Not glamorous, but essential.
In dancing we call these moments,
"movement revelations"-- the times when what you have been hearing
forever, suddenly becomes clear in your body. Something changes in your body
and mind: a shift that propels you in another direction.
