Pilates key principles: Flow

This is the point where we take everything we have learned over the past 5 months and combine it together.

Breath: The fuel for your power house Pilates key principles: Breathing

Concentration: Connecting your mind and your body Pilates key principles: Concentration

Centre: Your core, connecting to it and letting it power your movement Pilates key principles: Centre

Control: Using the exact alignment, avoiding excess tension, isolating muscles and Pilates key principles: Control

Precision: The exact way the action is executed. Pilates key principles: Precision

We then add Flow so that the movement can flow smoothly and gracefully.

Combining all these essential elements into my Pilates practice is something that I am still working on. I'm not sure I will ever hit the perfection target. It is really important that everyone knows that their best is good enough. However Pilates is bigger than turning up and waving your limbs around by copying the person next to you. If you can, try in your next lesson to focus on one of the key principles. Really build it into every movement. In each lesson add another element, until you feel the deep connection from your core into every movement you make in a class.

By adding these principles into your practice you will find that a simple exercise increases in difficulty. Your core will strengthen, improving your ability to bring flow into your practice.

See you in class

Katie

Comments

Pilates key principles: Concentration

In a world of attention grabbing, Pilates is a 55 minute window of calm. As a teacher of small group and solo Pilates I can tell if my clients are having a busy mind day. When the mind is elsewhere, movements are not as exact and clients ability to complete a challenging move is compromised. It is OK to have a busy mind, we are not robots, however letting go of your thoughts and concentrating on the movements your body is making will help your Pilate practice to develop. These are my top tips for concentration: 1) Be present, use the repetitive nature of the warm up to connect with every part of your body. Try to visualize each part of your body, be selfish and only focus on yourself. 2) Pay attention to the alignment of your body. The beautiful line from your toe, through your ankle, knee and then into your hip. Maintaining correct alignment will increase the difficulty of an exercise. Why not challenge yourself to completing level ...

Glutes, min, med and max. Which one is one is working?

Glutes, you have three glute muscles on each side of your body, which make up your bottom. The glute minimus, glute medius and the glute maximum. They do different jobs, so they need to be exercises in different ways. Closest to the skin is the glute maximus. If you press into the soft tissue of your bottom, you are pressing into your glute maximus. This huge muscles covers up most of the other two glute muscles. The glute maximus is the most powerful hip extensor muscles. This muscle is responsible for taking the thigh behind your body line. (Hip flexion the thigh raises towards your tummy, hip extension the thigh is behind the body line, this happens when the back foot pushes off the ground when we walk). The glute maximus also helps the body with the movement of hip adduction (stand on one leg and raise the other leg out the the side of your body up towards your hand/arm. Adduction is the movement of this leg back in towards...

Pilates key principles: Breathing

Breathing, or the way you breathe is an important part of the development of your Pilates practice. As a Pilates teacher I meet lots of clients, all at different stages of their Pilates journey. When your journey starts, your focus is on core activation and generally just getting through a lesson trying to understand and translate the instructions from your teacher into movement. Once your core strength begins to develop and all your concentration is not used up in surviving your Pilates class, it is time to start thinking about your breathing. In Pilates we use a technique called lateral breathing. When you take in a breath to power movement we ask that you breathe into your ribs raising your chest up and out. But why? To take a large breath in you can either breathe into your tummy, or breathe into your ribs expanding them up and out. It is very difficult (possibly impossible) to breathe into your tummy and engage your ...

Katie Leaver Pilates

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