How Pilates Prevents Injury and Improves Tissue Health

Joseph Pilates said in his 1945 book Return to Life that we should not “devote ourselves only to the mere development of any particular pet set of muscles…” The term “pet muscles” is exactly right, even 85 years later. We do have muscles we love more than others, and requests to work the abs, glutes, and triceps are abundant. But what about iliacus, quadratus femoris, or supraspinatus?

Rather than training specific muscles with intensity while completing neglecting others, Joseph Pilates believed we should work towards the uniform development of our whole body. And here are two important reasons why.

Injury Prevention

When you develop your big gross motor movers, like the quads and glutes and lats, without training the smaller muscles that stabilize the spine or support the joint, you create an imbalance. The big muscle is likely already stronger, relatively speaking, then the smaller, supporting muscles. And by focusing your training on it, you exacerbate that imbalance. Now when the bigger, stronger muscle pulls on your bones, the smaller muscles will struggle to balance its pull—and voila, the risk of injury increases. It’s like hanging a really heavy painting on a very thin wall. The wall just can’t support it. And your spine, or your shoulder, or whatever other joint you want to think of, can’t always support the strong pull of your gym-developed big muscles.

Improved Circulation is Specific

As if injury prevention wasn’t a strong enough motivation to work all your muscles in an even, balanced way, there’s more. We tend to think that exercise of any kind increases health to the whole body. But not exactly. When you use your muscles, the contraction of that muscle helps pulls blood to the area from the capillaries—bringing oxygen and nutrients to the tissues and removing waste products. However, when you exercise your legs, this affect does not occur in your upper body. Only the areas of the body you use get the improved circulation, nutrition, and waste removal. If you want that kind of health for all your tissues, you have to work all your tissues. That includes your feet, your hands, and your neck. Definitely not the pet muscles you were hoping to strengthen, but ones that need strength, range of motion, movement, and circulation just as much as your six-pack abs.

Multi-tasking Exercise

Joseph Pilates wanted you to work your whole body in every exercise. First of all, that’s highly efficient. We don’t really have time to isolate each muscle and work it effectively every day. But Pilates exercises are also multi-tasking exercises—rather than an isolating clamshell for your deep six rotators, you’re going to do side kicks, which works not only your hip’s external rotators, but also your hip abductors, flexors, extensors, as well as your knee extensors and foot dorsi and plantar flexors, and depending on your form, even your stabilizing shoulder, obliques, and your non-active or standing legs abductors too. Phew! That’s a lot of muscles to work in a single exercise. If you’re aware of your whole body in every Pilates exercise, you can benefit multiple areas at once, ensuring more parts of your body benefit from improved circulation and waste removal, and ensuring a better chance of uniform development of your body that will help prevent injury.

So don’t play favorites. Work everything. Give every muscle some love and attention, and better yet, do it in whole body exercise!

Bye bye butts?

Do you ever people watch and notice the details of their anatomy? Sure you notice their hair, clothes, shoes. But what about their body—how they walk, how they hold their head, the shape of their backside?

In being a keen observer of human bodies and in teaching movement for thousands of hours, a trend becomes clear—as a whole, the people of sedentary cultures like ours have lost their butts. Where have they gone?!

Tilted vs. Neutral Pelvis

When you stand on your legs, ideally the pelvis is perched atop them in what we call a “neutral pelvis.” To see if yours is neutral, place the palms of your hands on the top front of the pelvic bones (anatomically referred to as the ASIS—anterior superior iliac spine) and your finger tips onto your pubic bone making a triangle with your hands. If this triangle is perpendicular to the floor, your pelvis is neutral. If the pubic bone is forward in relation to the top of the pelvis, we call this a pelvic tilt. In this case, a posterior pelvic tilt, or what you might call a tuck. We can tilt the pelvis when standing, sitting, laying down. And when the top of the pelvis tilts back while the base of the pelvis tilts forward, the butt and all its muscles are somewhat tucked under and likely clenched. The majority of people who come to our studio lay on the reformer on day one in such a position.

Triangle hands can help you notice whether your pelvis is tipped or “neutral.”

But people haven’t just tucked their butts out of the way. They’ve pushed their pelvis forward in space and essentially hung all its weight onto the ligaments in the front of the hip and the hip flexor muscles. This alignment of the bones makes the quads grip eccentrically to keep you upright and renders the hamstrings and gluteal muscles unable to participate in keeping you up. You’ve found a way to stand without using your backside. Yay for energy conservation, bummer for the function of your joints and development of the muscles that support them.

Sitting behind the sitz bones in a posterior pelvic tilt.

Sitting Pelvis

We reinforce this pattern in the way we sit. Rather than perch atop our sitz bones, many of us roll back behind them. Again a posterior pelvic tilt, this time putting pressure and stretch on the low back as well as the hip flexors to keep us upright. We sure are fans of sagging and hanging because let’s face it, it’s easier. Until the structures of your back start to wear out (discs!), your body signals pain, and then you head to the Pilates studio for help.

Walking Pelvis

The result of the way we align our bones is that we don’t use our glutes well. If we don’t use them to stand, then when we start moving from standing to walking, we aren’t going to use them either. Rather than truly extend our hips with each step, we shuffle by pulling forward with our quads and hip flexors. I used to stand and walk this way myself. And when I touched my backside, it was always cold. Cold because I wasn’t using it and bringing blood, circulation and warmth via muscle contraction.

So where did all the butts go? We aligned our bones so that we don’t use the muscles of our backside properly. We clench them to tilt our pelvis rather than use them to extend our hips. Or said another way, we use them to shove the pelvis onto the femur, rather than hold the pelvis up and move the femur in the pelvis.

Can glute exercises solve this?

When you notice the disappearance of your backside, you may head to the gym to try to train these muscles into a nice shapely rear. Yet your biomechanical habits remain and as soon as you leave, you’re back to using them as you always have. A movement coach like a Pilates teacher may point out that your pelvis is posteriorly tilted or tucked, but unless you unwind these patterns well, you may arch your lumbar to pull your pelvis into neutral, which ultimately is very tiring for the low back.

Get Your Butt Back

First we need to align the bones, release the clench that shoved the pelvis under, find the core stability to keep the pelvis neutral, and use the hamstrings and glutes to extend the hips as intended. And voila, before you know it, you may find your butt resuming its shape (and along with it, happier, less tight hamstrings and a pelvic floor that is aligned to do its job).

But don’t come complaining to us when you need new jeans. Or better yet, toss the tight jeans for clothes you can actually move in so that you can continue to use your new strong butt to get you from here to there.

I Don't Exercise Anymore

I started exercising when I was 14.  I subscribed to Shape magazine, did their exercises at home, took aerobics classes, and as soon as I could drive, spent every week at the gym or kickboxing studio.  In college, I majored in Sports Medicine, regularly taught Tae Bo and Kickboxing classes, and sometimes spent as much as 6 days/week in the weight room for up to two hours at a time.  

First photo is from my early 20s, when I spent 6 days/week for 1-2 hours in the gym. Second photo is from my late 30s after 3 kids when all I did was Pilates and regular movement like walking and biking for transportation.

My love affair with the gym continued into my early 30s, when increasing hip and SI joint pain eventually forced me to accept that high impact exercise was hurting me more than helping me.  Desperate to keep moving somehow, I tried barre, yoga, Pilates.  Pilates proved to be the most rehabilitative and mentally stimulating with the greatest results.  I trained to become a Pilates teacher and replaced all former indoor exercise with Pilates.  I was still active outdoors, but my gym days were over.

Five years later, another shift occurred.  Slowly I had realized that Pilates wasn't exercise.  I wasn't using it the way I had used exercise before--to change the shape of my body (although it had), to burn calories, to feel healthy.  Pilates was doing something for my mind and spirit that was effectively becoming critical to my existence, my mental peace, my spirit.  The movement and attention to every joint in my body, to every breath I took, to every tissue I compressed, stretched, and twisted, was becoming part of what I needed daily to get through the challenges of my life.  Movement was like an essential amino acid--I always had to get some.  

And then I realized it.  I don't exercise anymore.  I don't tell my family that I'm going to go workout.  I tell them, "I'm going to move."  The mental shift was subtle but profound.  I didn't feel like I had to get in my quota of exercise for the day.  I felt the craving of my body to move and I listened to it.  It didn't have to be fast or hard or burn.  I just followed what my body wanted—some days that was simple prone head lifts while others I craved back bends.

This isn’t a “Pilates exercise” but my body craved it.

I have a newfound respect for the body and what it can do.  Now that I just move daily, multiple times a day, following the joints that are quietly asking for attention, I can't believe the results.  My body is awakened and ever changing, my spine is straighter and more flexible than at any time in my life I can recall, my posture is more upright without conscious thought,  I feel strong and capable, my mind is patient and at peace, my spirit satisfied.  When challenges--physical, emotional, social--present themselves, I feel resilient.  I know I have my movement practice to center me and I feel equipped to handle what life throws at me.

I now leave pieces of Pilates equipment around my house.  A small barrel rests in the center of my living room floor, a magic circle sits on a barstool in my kitchen, a foam roller is propped next to the TV.  And when I pass them, they invite me to use them.  I often do, resulting in a day filled with little bits of extra movement sprinkled throughout my waking hours.  I'm no longer exercising, but I'm moving more than I ever have in my life. And I feel healthier and fitter than ever.

What motivates you

Which of these describe why you exercise?

• You like competition and trying to win.

• You want to change the shape or performance of your body.

• You feel guilty about what you ate, or are about to eat, and are trying to “earn” it.

• You feel like it’s necessary to be healthy.

• You like movement for movement’s sake.

Depending on your motivation for exercise, you might gravitate towards different fitness options. Like competition? Sports or sports-like programs with measurable metrics. Trying to change your body? Probably something with high pain (lots of soreness the next day so you know it’s working) in hopes of high gain. Performance? Perhaps gymnastics or dance, or again a sport. Guilty about what you ate? Cardio, HIIT, something to burn lots of calories fast. Want to feel healthy? Probably a combination of modalities, likely including a mindful movement practice like that found in Pilates and Yoga.

It’s rare to find people who are moving just because they want to have a movement practice. We like to engage our mental side with books and learning. We like to engage our social side by talking to friends on the phone or going out for dinner. Some of us engage our spiritual side by attending services or reading religious books. But how do we approach our physical selves? Do we engage with our bodies in a fulfilling, meaningful way? Or are we always frustrated by it, trying to change it, and forcing ourselves through the requisite hours of exercise that we think we need to reach our goals?

One of the most fulfilling things about Pilates is that it helps you develop an intimate relationship with your body. If all other motivations fall aside, you’re left with exploring the realm of possibility with your body. What is the range of that joint? How many of these can I execute before my form changes? Look how my right side does this but my left side does that? What does it feel like in my spine when I bend this way? Can I breathe into a new part of my ribcage? Our bodies are often neglected and ignored. But a movement practice means you connect to it, pay attention to it, and therefore are better able to work with it.

As we begin a new decade, I encourage you to change the focus of your Pilates sessions. You’re not in class to whittle your core, burn off calories, or fit into that outfit. You are there to hang out with your best friend—your body—who you can’t wait to get to know better.