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Make posture your wellness priority
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
By Elaine Economou, Guest Writer
Your body is in use all day long. Whether you sit at a desk, work in the field, stand in a store or carry a baby around, your body is meant to work efficiently in functional alignment. This means that your head, shoulders, hips, knees and feet are basically aligned, and this upright stature gives you support and strength to face all of your daily activities.
What happens, though, when you start to put one part of your body out of alignment? What happens if you carry tension in your shoulders, have sore knees or a sore lower back? You might build compensatory patterns in your body, overusing muscles and causing misalignment. The tension in your shoulders may lead to chronic low back pain or shoulder discomfort and other chronic pain.
The work of Joseph Pilates in the early 20th century addressed building strength and flexibility of the spine to support healthy posture. Although fairly recently moving to the forefront of mainstream exercise culture, the method that Pilates created during World War I has been a part of our modern understanding of the body for most of the last century.
Recent methods of teaching his work have taken his foundation and applied modern anatomical research to present exercises that build strength in the deep muscles of the trunk (the “core”), flexibility and strength in the spine and stabilization of the ribcage, shoulders, head and neck. The key to this work as developed by the Stott Pilates method is the ability to modify exercises to support individual needs and the training to identify target areas of the body in clients.
The body works interdependently, and pilates exercises help you focus and build awareness on your own posture and how to sense your body in alignment. This awareness allows you to take these basic principles into the rest of your life, such as relieving pain and stiffness in your neck and shoulders while looking at a computer, avoiding low back pain while shoveling snow and maintaining good posture during your cardio of choice.
Once you have the strength to support functional alignment, pilates exercises challenge strength and flexibility by adding weights, changing leverage, modifying body position and creating ways for your spine to stabilize through a full range of movement. It is this process of moving through the repertoire that builds deep strength in your body.
Working with a trained pilates teacher is a great way to learn these basic principles of pilates and to learn about your own body. Many clients tell me that they tried a pilates video or dropped into a class once and either didn’t “feel any-thing” or worse, that they strained or injured themselves as a result of trying exercises when they did not have the awareness of their own alignment or how to access their deep core stabilizers.
For the folks who have tried pilates and have not felt anything, try again and tell your trainer about your prior experience. We have a saying in some classes that, “if you don’t feel it, you may not be doing it correctly.” This means that with some small adjustments by a trained pilates teacher, you will be able to access the muscles you need to support an exercise in class and then, in all your other activities.
Sometimes it takes some time for your body to access the muscular coordination necessary to do this. If you have a pattern that has been in your body for a long time or perhaps one that you have been born with, it will take some time to reorganize your body in this new way. Working with a trainer can offer knowledge about your own body and injury prevention that can be worth much more than the cost.
Locally, we have access to pilates exercise programs at the Chelsea Wellness Center including courses and private training that you can participate in without being a member. Group classes for all levels are available to members only. The Pilates Healthy Spine Program runs for six weeks and the next session starts in mid-April. There is a free introduction to the course at 7 p.m. March 23 at the Wellness Center.
Private training, which is the best way to meet this work, is available at the Wellness Center for both members and non-members. Even a few sessions can change the way you participate in all of your other exercise activities and help ensure a healthy participation in life.
Physical Therapy Services of Chelsea offers classes and training to current and past patients. Clients can get a physical therapy referral from a physician for access to their services.
Pilates exercises can help everyone at every mobility level. Most trainers are equipped to work with a physical therapist, orthopedic, or rehabilitation doctor to help support stated health goals. For the elite athlete, pilates can help address and inform postural issues as well as ensure that athletes remain injury free.
For golfers, there is a special two-hour workshop at the Chelsea Wellness Center on March 6 and another session on March 27.
The groups for this workshop are small, with a maximum of three people, and participants will learn a warm up for a golf game, do a workout designed to help mobilize the spine in rotation and the pelvis on the legs and create functional mobility in the shoulders, and learn a bit about his or her own posture.
Each attendee will leave with a toning ball and a copy of the workout to support a home practice. To register for a workshop, contact the Wellness Center at 1-734-214-0220 1-734-214-0220 . This is not a golf swing workshop though participants are asked to bring an iron to use as a prop in the class.
The Pilates for Golfers workshop will also be held at the Movement Center in Ann Arbor on March 20.
Elaine Economou has been teaching pilates for more than 10 years and movement and dance for more than 20 years. She can be reached at eecon13@gmail.com or 1-734-255-9110 1-734-255-9110 .
URL: http://www.heritage.com/articles/2010/03/03/chelsea_standard/news/doc4b8ea148b0e85806423266.prt
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