Pilates Fires You Up!
Pilates, because small muscles need ❤️too!
Pilates forces you to fire up deep intrinsic muscles like the multifidi, which runs the length of and surrounds your spine, and the transverse abdominis, which is essentially your body's natural girdle. Stabiliser muscles do just that: stabilise. They stabilise your spine, your pelvis, your knees, your ankles, your hips, your shoulders, and your core.
One of the hardest parts of Pilates is getting the smaller stabilising muscles working, particularly if you have an injury. In fact sometimes when you are injured, the smaller stabilising muscles switch off! Like the VMO in the knee as part of the quadriceps muscle group. So often if you sustain a knee injury you can end up with a secondary tracking injury as the VMO which works to assist in stabilising the knee switches off!
The stabiliser muscles hold us upright and in good alignment. These muscles are much smaller and are to some degree working all the time. An example is the rotator cuff, a group of four muscles, which help to hold the shoulder joint in a good position.
This is one thing I really love about Pilates is how these muscles are all coached to work together to create fluid movement and a well functioning body: strong, stable and balanced.
