A Beginners Guide To Pilates

a beginners guide to pilates

🎀 what is pilates?

pilates is a form of strength training exercise that focuses on low to medium impact movements to improve muscle tone, stability, endurance, and mobility. pilates also focuses more on the smaller muscles of the body compared to traditional strength or weight training.

🎀 benefits of pilates

including the benefits that exercise generally brings, pilates:

improves mind-body connection and body control

improves active flexibility and mobility

works the core, improving stability

improves coordination and balance

reduces mental and physical stress

works muscles that can be neglected in our daily lives

treats and prevents body pain, including menstrual pain

teaches you how to pair your breath with your body

keeps the joints healthy without putting pressure on them

🎀 where to start

while you can absolutely start with studio or reformer classes, you can also do pilates routines on youtube! i recommend move with nicole and dansique fitness. if you want to get your cardio in as well, i absolutely recommend eleni fit. her workouts are some of the best i’ve ever tried!

🎀 personal tips

keep your core in mind. core strength is a major benefit of pilates because each movement requires at least a mild amount of core work to keep your body stable, so do your best to keep the engagement throughout.

start slow. pilates movements can take a while to fully understand and it can take a while to build the mind-body connection, so don’t push yourself too far in the beginning. your coordination will improve over time!

don’t underestimate it! while the movements are generally slower than other types of exercise, you will work your muscles just as much and in a way they may not have been worked before. sometimes i even find pilates more difficult than hiit or weights!

When I first started to really work on improving myself I thought, “at x weight, x income, once I travel here, once I graduate, once I get married, once I have kids, once I buy this item/get this nice car, THEN I’ll be happy” but it really doesn’t work like that. If you have any amount of ambition, once you reach that level you’ll already be thinking about what’s next. That’s why you have to work on being happy with where you are now in this present moment and acknowledge and celebrate what you have already done and then keep it moving.

Study while others are sleeping.

Decide while others are delaying.

Prepare while others are daydreaming.

Begin while others are procastinating.

Work while others are wishing.

Save while others are wasting.

Listen while others are talking.

Persist while others are quitting.

via @//thewonyoungism on instagram

daily habits that are making me feel much better this 2024

waking up very early

if you are a person who finds it difficult to get up early you can achieve this by getting up an hour earlier than usual, you'll notice the difference.

journaling

it's my favorite habit and i do it every morning and before going to sleep, it also helps me in moments when I'm not feeling well to feel better and see things from a different perspective. on amazon there are many journals with questions already formulated to answer every morning and every night, highly recommended! i've been doing this since october last year and i noticed a big difference.

listen/watch personal growth videos/podcasts every day

it's not necessary to spend all day consuming this content but every day i like to learn something new or just reaffirm something i already know to make it stronger. watching content like this helps to replace old beliefs with new ones that are more beneficial and healthy. plus the people who make this content usually have a really good vibe. i love listening to this while i'm at the gym.

break with the routine once or twice a week

i mean do something different from what you can normally do, for example, I love to go out to a coffee shop have my favorite drink while listening to music, and spend some time on pinterest looking for inspiration, not only pictures but i also find very interesting things that i can apply in my day to day life!

listening to frequencies to raise my vibration

i have realized that this is very powerful and it is very important to have a high vibration, one of the most important reasons for me is that i have realized that besides having more mental calm and fewer worries is that low vibrational thoughts do not enter my mind, so to speak. examples of frequencies: 528hz, 432hz, 111hz. on youtube there are many. crystal bowls are also one of my favorites.

getting out of my comfort zone

the first week of this new year didn't make much difference to me and sometimes we expect things to change suddenly, and this can happen but it doesn't always happen right away. this week i have been much less resistant to making changes in my life and having a new schedule with an improved routine has made me feel much better.

be more present. think/act as my best version would act

this is very powerful. it is typical to act on autopilot and many times i was not fully aware of some habits i had that were harming me to a greater or lesser extent or of the things i was thinking. this doesn't mean that sometimes you have to do something you don't like, it's just another experience at the end of the day, but i mean to stop consuming content or doing things that don't help me to be the version i want to be and also to be more present, enjoying my day no matter what happens tomorrow.

besides all this, exercise, healthy and balanced eating, meditation are also important to me, but these are things that i always mention because they are part of my life and i wanted to contribute something new to serve as inspiration for others.

you don't have to do everything on the list but maybe something of what I have written catches your attention, you implement it in your life and it starts to improve significantly. that has happened to me.