One operating belief of the Pilates exercise system is that you cannot have perfect health if your body is out of alignment, as reflected by poor posture. This tends to impede the function of your inner organs by squashing them together, and reducing your breathing which reduces your supply of oxygen and restricts circulation of your blood, again denying your organs the oxygen they need to function well.
The first component is your skeletal system. The key sections are the spine, shoulder girdle and pelvis. Pilates helps bring them into their natural, functional alignment. It also helps keep your joints mobilized. It also helps to increase bone density, reducing your risk of osteoporosis, which helps to reduce your chances of breaking a bone even if you did fall.
Your spine is made up of separate bones -- thirty-four of them -- called vertebrae. They form a column through which goes your spinal cord, your body's main branch of the nervous system, essential for communication between your body and your brain.
The vertebrae are separated by disks of cartilage, and held together by ligaments. This structure is solid, but not stiff -- or shouldn't be. The spinal column tends to feel straight, but it isn't. As an engineering design to better absorb shock, it contains four natural curves. When you stand up "straight," your spine should be in its natural position. That's not standing too stiff, to straighten the curves out, but also not exaggerating the curves by slouching down.
Where your arms join your shoulders, are three bones: the collar bone (clavicle), shoulder blade (scapula) and upper arm bone. Trying to pull our shoulders back too far can cause strain across the collar bone. Many of us sit slumped in front of computers, causing back strain. Also, we also carry habitual tension in our shoulders, which hunches them up toward our ears.
The lower spine joins the pelvis. This gets thrown out of whack by how we often stand with most of our weight on one foot or the other rather than evenly distributed, and through poor walking habits.
With good posture, all of our skeletal system remains in natural alignment. Although we're too used to slouching down, we can feel the difference.
Our muscles move us by contracting and relaxing, using the bones they're attached to as leverage. Therefore, our muscles must work in tandem. The muscles that are contracting must pull against something, and the opposing muscles must relax.
(If you've ever seen a stage hypnosis show where the subject was told they were too weak to pick up a pencil, but to try as hard as they good, and you could see them strain but they didn't pick up the pencil... you've seen a demonstration of how the opposing muscles can work against the contracting muscles to nullify movement.)
Muscles should be well-toned. Not tensed and overcontracted, but not too loose either. Pilates exercises aim to tone the muscles, and to do so in an even way. Many exercises overtrain one group of muscles while ignoring the opposing set of muscles, thus creating unbalanced strength and instability.
Richard Stooker is a freelance writer with a long time interest in health, nutrition, fitness and anti-aging. Recently he discovered the Pilates rebounder and prenatal Pilates for pregnant women.
