Pilates?

[Justin]

Well, I'm going to have to rethink my workout routines once I'm healed from my DSS surgery. Unfortunately, it's no longer an option to go into the gym and lift weights. I'm all for giving up the weights, but I want to stay healthy in some sort of fitness program.

My wife has some Pilates DVDs and I tried them with her once, but most of the moves were very difficult. A lot of the workouts look very demanding on the lumbar spine.

Does anyone on the forum do Pilates? If so, can you point me in the right direction regarding exercises that my surgically-altered body would be able to handle when I'm able to start working out again. I'd prefer to do them at home initially. I looked at a place in Philly that has Pilates instructors, but it's like $80/hr.

Thanks for any tips!

[Gilbert P]

Hi Justin

I have been doing pilates for five years with private sessions It helped tremendously for core strength.

If you are young and have a healthy spine Pilates is great if you are older and have a healthy spine still yes but not all the big moves.

If you have spine issues only do some of the stretches not the big bends and extensions.

I think pilates may of made my spine issues worse

Joe Pilates lived into his 80`s with no spine issues?

Be careful if you chose to go with Pilates and please go to a certified instructor

All the best

Gilbert P

[Gilbert P]

Hi Justin

Yes Pilates is expensive and sometimes very painful if done wrong

Be Careful

I do not do any pilates now with my spine issues just some streatches

Take Care

Gilbert P

[KBear]

I really like the Wii Fit Yoga and all the core stregnthing exercises that are included in the program. There are also lots of 'games' that help with balance. Since the board you stand on is a scale, it shows you where you are putting your weight and the games force you to do it correctly. I am not coordinated and horrible about posture and the Wii has really helped me and made me more conscious of it.

[Justin]

Thanks for the suggestions! The Wii Fit is awesome!

Keep the Pilates suggestions / recommendations coming!

[KBear]

I just read in a magazine about a 'Pilates Walk'; where basically you pull your abdomen in while you walk. Sounds like the therapy exercises they have me do, but you do it all the time, thus getting a constant workout.

[trkdoc714]

And all this time I thought pilates was a Greek philosopher........

[Gilbert P]

Here is some history on Pilates

Pilates Origins

Joseph Pilates and the History of Pilates

What's all the fuss about? Pilates seems to have burst on the scene out of nowhere in the last 10 years. After decades as the workout of the elite, Pilates has entered the fitness mainstream. What's the fascinating store behind how Pilates began, and why the recent “overnight success”? Here's a brief look at its history.
How Pilates Began

Joe went to England in 1912, where he worked as a self-defense instructor for detectives at Scotland Yard. At the outbreak of World War I, Joe was interned as an "enemy alien" with other German nationals. During his internment, Joe refined his ideas and trained other internees in his system of exercise. He rigged springs to hospital beds, enabling bedridden patients to exercise against resistance, an innovation that led to his later equipment designs. An influenza epidemic struck England in 1918, killing thousands of people, but not a single one of Joe's trainees died. This, he claimed, testified to the effectiveness of his system.
After his release, Joe returned to Germany. His exercise method gained favor in the dance community, primarily through Rudolf von Laban, who created the form of dance notation most widely used today. Hanya Holm adopted many of Joe's exercises for her modern dance curriculum, and they are still part of the "Holm Technique." When German officials asked Joe to teach his fitness system to the army, he decided to leave Germany for good.
The Pilates movement gains in popularity – from Europe to the U.S.

In 1926, Joe emigrated to the United States. During the voyage he met Clara, whom he later married. Joe and Clara opened a fitness studio in New York, sharing an address with the New York City Ballet.
By the early 1960s, Joe and Clara could count among their clients many New York dancers. George Balanchine studied "at Joe's," as he called it, and also invited Pilates to instruct his young ballerinas at the New York City Ballet.
"Pilates" was becoming popular outside of New York as well. As the New York Herald Tribune noted in 1964, "in dance classes around the United States, hundreds of young students limber up daily with an exercise they know as a pilates, without knowing that the word has a capital P, and a living, right-breathing namesake."
His students begin to teach

While Joe was still alive, only two of his students, Carola Trier and Bob Seed, are known to have opened their own studios. Trier, who had an extensive dance background, found her way to the United States by becoming a performing contortionist, after fleeing a Nazi holding camp in France. She found Joe Pilates in 1940, when a non-stage injury pre-empted her performing career. Joe Pilates assisted Trier in opening her own studio in the late 1950s. Joe and Clara remained close friends with Trier until their deaths.
Bob Seed was another story. A former hockey player turned "Pilates" enthusiast, Seed opened a studio across town from Joe and tried to take away some of Joe's clients by opening very early in the morning. According to John Steel, one day Joe visited Seed with a gun and warned Seed to get out of town. Seed went.
The second generation of Pilates teachers

When Joe passed away in 1967, he left no will and had designated no line of succession for the "Pilates" work to carry on. Nevertheless, his work would remain. Clara continued to operate what was known as the "Pilates" Studio on Eighth Avenue in New York, where Romana Kryzanowska became the director around 1970. Kryzanowska had studied with Joe and Clara in the early 1940s and then, after a 15-year hiatus spent in Peru, returned to renew her studies.
Several students of Joe and Clara went on to open their own studios. Ron Fletcher was a Martha Graham dancer who studied and consulted with Joe from the 1940s on, in connection with a chronic knee ailment. Fletcher opened his studio in Los Angeles in 1970 and attracted many Hollywood stars. Clara was particularly enamored with Ron and she gave her blessing to him to carry on the "Pilates" work and name. Like Carola Trier, Fletcher brought some innovations and advancements to the "Pilates" work. His evolving variations on "Pilates" were inspired both by his years as a Martha Graham dancer and by another mentor, Yeichi Imura.
Kathy Grant and Lolita San Miguel were also students of Joe and Clara who became teachers. Grant took over the direction at the Bendel's studio in 1972, while San Miguel went on to teach Pilates at Ballet Concierto de Puerto Rico in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 1967, just before Joe's death, both Grant and San Miguel were awarded degrees by the State University of New York to teach "Pilates." These two are believed to be the only "Pilates" practitioners ever certified officially by Joe.
Other students of Joe and Clara who opened their own studios include Eve Gentry, Bruce King, Mary Bowen and Robert Fitzgerald. Eve Gentry, a dancer who taught at the Pilates Studio in New York from 1938 through 1968, also taught "Pilates" in the early 1960s at New York University's Theater Department. After leaving New York, she opened her own studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A charter faculty member of the High School for the Performing Arts, Gentry was also a co-founder of the Dance Notation Bureau. In 1979, she was given the "Pioneer of Modern Dance Award" by Bennington College.
Bruce King trained for many years with Joseph and Clara Pilates and was a member of the Merce Cunningham Company, Alwyn Nikolais Company, and his own Bruce King Dance Company. In the mid-1970s King opened his own studio at 160 W. 73rd Street in New York City.
Mary Bowen, a Jungian analyst who studied with Joe in the mid-1960s, began teaching Pilates in 1975 and founded "Your Own Gym" in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Robert Fitzgerald opened his studio on West 56th Street in the 1960s, where he had a large clientele from the dance community.
Joe continued to train clients at his studio until his death in 1967, at the age of 87. In the 1970s, Hollywood celebrities discovered Pilates via Ron Fletcher's studio in Beverly Hills.
Where the stars go, the media follows. In the late 1980s, the media began to cover Pilates extensively. The public took note, and the Pilates business boomed. "I'm fifty years ahead of my time," Joe once claimed. He was right. No longer the workout of the elite, Pilates has entered the fitness mainstream. Today, over 10 million Americans practice Pilates, and the numbers continue to grow.


Go For it Be careful


Gilbert p

[Justin]

Thanks for the information Gil! :thumpup:

[rob wilson]

Justin,

Pilates made my condition a little worse. But that was probably some of my fault as I tend to overdo. Be very careful.