Health Benefits of Pilates
Pilates can be extremely beneficial for everyone. It is a great way to improve your physical health, improve your flexibility, improve your muscle strength, improve your posture, and increase your muscle control and body awareness.
At Vivid Woman's Health, we combine pelvic floor therapy with Pilates-based exercises to help our clients decrease and eliminate their pelvic floor symptoms through movement.
What Is Pilates?
Pilates is a low-impact exercise that focuses on flexibility, core strength, and stability.
It is named after its founder, Joseph Pilates and there are many different types of Pilates that have developed since the inception of the traditional Pilates method.
Pilates can be a great way to strengthen and coordinate your core and pelvic floor with low impact to your joints.
How Pilates Can Help You
Core Strength and Stability
I feel like it's no question that most folks have heard of core strengthening.
Core strength is so important for pelvic floor health! It's also very important to help with posture and avoid symptoms such as low back pain, hip pain, and other joint issues.
Core strength is paramount for protecting the pelvic floor, pelvic organs, and overall pelvic girdle.
These areas tend to weaken as we age and during conditions such as pregnancy and the postpartum period.
Pilates can be a wonderful way to increase core strength and stability and to prevent conditions such as back and hip pain.
Posture and Alignment
Since the core is key to Pilates and posture, Pilates can help improve alignment.
Adding core stability and strengthening exercises can also improve posture.
Flexibility and Mobility
Since Pilates incorporates movements with a full range of motion, flexibility, and mobility can be improved with Pilates-based exercises.
Specifically, reformer-based Pilates can be a wonderful way to also add a little bit of assistance to increase flexibility and mobility in our joints and muscles.
Mental Health Benefits
Movement is wonderful for mental health, as is community. Pilates incorporates both things into its protocol.
Who Can Benefit From Pilates
To be honest with you, everyone can benefit from Pilates.
While we are big advocates of Pilates and movement in general, which can help with all of the above things listed, Pilates should be a piece of the puzzle, not the entire puzzle.
And although low impact exercise can protect our joints, it does not help to increase things like bone mineral density, which should be a part of every person's workout routine.
Therefore, Pilates is a wonderful adjunct to a diverse exercise program that should include cardiovascular, weight training, plyometric, and relaxation exercises, such as yoga.
Pilates exercises are great, and we love incorporating them, but we always recommend that they not be your only form of exercise.
Getting Started With Pilates
Whenever you want to start a new exercise routine, you should always seek the assistance of a physical therapist.
Physical therapists are movement-specialty experts who can help patients safely start an exercise routine.
Since physical therapists do a deep dive and understanding of your medical conditions, and current limitations with exercises, they can recommend the frequency of Pilates, and the other forms of exercise that should be incorporated into your routine.
My recommendation is that if you'd like to get started with a Pilates program, you should seek out help from a physical therapist who has a reformer and also has the knowledge to understand that based on Pilates.
If you do not have access to a physical therapist who has a reformer, we highly advise recommending a one-on-one session with a skilled Pilates instructor, someone who is certified.
Vivid Women’s Health is a pelvic floor therapy clinic with offices in Doylestown, PA and Newtown, PA and offers pelvic floor therapy with a pilates focus,
How to Get Started With Pilates-Based Treatment in Bucks County
At Vivid Women’s Health, we offer a blend of pelvic floor therapy and pilates-based treatment in Doylestown and Newtown and would love to help you.
We proudly put our patients first by offering one-on-one appointments for a full hour. You will have time to be heard and we will take time to listen to your whole story.
You won’t be passed between different professionals, and we will work to get you a holistic solution to your pelvic health concerns.
We choose to participate in a private pay model so that we can focus on putting patients first.
We’d love to work with you. Feel free to schedule online or reach out to us if you have questions before getting started.
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