Just Girly Things

just girly things

beauty sleep, wash hair, make tea, journal, bubble bath 🎀

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!

Estaregrams

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.

Sylvia Plath, from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath