STOTT PILATES® is an exercise method that can help you achieve a variety of goals; whether you’d like to improve your performance in other sports, prevent injuries, build a lean and healthy body, relieve pain and tension or regain strength after an injury; Whether you are young or old, an athlete or unfit, Pilates will help you to progress in whatever physical goal you have set for yourself.
STOTT PILATES® COMBINED WITH OTHER SPORTS
Whether you swim, run, row, cycle or do Crossfit, you want to do it right, and you want to get better. STOTT PILATES® can help you improve your technique, by teaching you how to use your body in a more optimal way; because stabilised shoulders and an aligned spine create more strength in your movements. Rotating from your abdominal muscles will make those movements more efficient. And stabilised joints will support the effort of your muscles, resulting in direction and speed. As a bonus, STOTT PILATES® like no other exercise method will help you to prevent injuries. Because there is nothing so frustrating, as an injury that keeps you from doing your favourite thing.
PAIN RELIEF
Pain restricts us in our daily life. It can keep you awake at night, and it can even make it difficult for you to relax at all. Chronic pain will often results in lower levels of physical activity, leaving you unfit, tired and frustrated. The most common of chronic pains is back pain, be it lower back pain, neck and shoulder tension or (literally) a pain in the butt. And a lot of this pain is a direct result of poor posture. Weak abs, overworked gluteus, shoulders that are rounded forward, hyperextended knees, just to name a few. These are all signs that your body is not properly balanced and aligned. This will cause some muscles to loose strength and others to tighten up, aggravating the posture in the process! STOTT PILATES® instructors are trained to do a posture analysis and focus your work-out based on their findings. So that you will understand which areas you will have to work on to get the full benefit of the method.
REHABILITATION AFTER AN INJURY
Rehabilitation after an injury is often a long process. Even when treatment by a medical specialist (e.g. your physiotherapist) is finalized, and your joint, muscle or tendon has regained most of it’s function, it is not yet as strong as before (let alone stronger) and still prone to injury. This is why at this stage you are often advised to start Pilates classes that will help you to get back not only full function but a stronger function that will prevent injury from happening again.
A HEALTHY BODY IS A BEAUTIFUL BODY
Will Pilates help me to look better? Yes. Will it make me loose weight? That depends. A Pilates workout will obviously burn calories and therefor contribute to a healthy metabolism. However, it is not a cardio work-out. So you will still have to watch your calorie intake and general level of activity. However, Pilates works your body from the inside out. It will lead you to (re)discover the beauty and genius of the body’s design, it teaches you how to use your body properly and by doing so you are likely to respect and love your body more. The appreciation of your body can be an enormous drive to loose weight. And when you do loose weight, Pilates will tone your muscles. It will not build bulk muscle or a six-pack, but it will increase your percentage of muscle tissue visibly. An improved posture does wonders for your looks too and last but not least, feeling better about your body will make you look better in it.
FIVE BASIC PRINCIPLES
STOTT PILATES® can have multiple goals, depending on the individual.There are two central ideas though, that guide whichever journey you are taking:
- restoring and maintaining the natural curve of the spine
- building endurance as well as strength in all three levels of muscle-fibre; local stabilisers, global stabilisers and global mobilisers.
The variety and sequence of the exercises, as well as cues and corrections from the instructor, will help the client to address all levels of muscle.
To restore and maintain the natural curve of the spine, STOTT PILATES® aims te perform as many exercises as possible in a neutral spine. To help the client and instructor establish neutral, STOTT PILATES® embraces a simple set of five basic principles:
- BREATHING
- PELVIC PLACEMENT
- RIB CAGE PLACEMENT
- SCAPULA (SHOULDER) STABILISATION
- NECK AND HEAD PLACEMENT
Understanding these principles and being able to execute them is vital to get the essence of each exercise and experience the full benefit of the method. Studio C offers special introduction packages to those that are new to Pilates, to ensure that they master these basics.