Heads Up on Your Body

How Not to Stretch in Pilates

All pilates movements include stretching certain muscles while contracting others. Its this combination that causes your body to feel so amazing after a session- you worked out, and stretched, continuously for one hour.

Did you know there are certain stretches and ways of stretching that you should NOT do in pilates? We all know that doing any type of exercise improperly can cause injury. Its important to remember that stretching improperly can also cause serious injury!

Here are some positions and movements that you should not do in a pilates session, along with better alternatives.

Laying Over the Ladder Barrel
Does the Ladder Barrel just call out to you, “come stretch on me”?It seems like it would feel so good just to drape your tired bod over the barrel, face down, laying on your stomach. But this is a dangerous position to put yourself in and you could really hurt your back. Passive stretching of any kind should be avoided, but this particular position stretches out the ligaments in your back- not your muscles. When you begin stretching ligaments, the ligaments eventually begin to elongate and become weaker. Then, when you try to stand up again, your back will not have strong support to hold you upright, leading to back pain, your back “going out” and ultimately, possible arthritis.

This also goes for draping yourself face down over a physioball.

Instead, use the simple yoga position on the mat, Child’s Pose, to stretch your back safely. Or, mentally connect into all the ways your back stretches during every pilates exercise, and you won’t need to collapse over the barrel anymore.

Your Ankles Under the Foot Bar
In the last exercise of Foot Work, when you are lowering and lifting your heels, you must resist the urge to bounce your ankles under the foot bar. Bouncing while stretching anything, anywhere is never a good idea. Bouncing actually causes the muscles to tighten up more and can cause scar tissue to build up.

In archival footage of Joseph Pilates demonstrating his exercises, and in a few of his mat and Standing Mat exercises, he advocates a pulsing, similar to bouncing. This was before research proving that bouncing, or ballistic stretching, is not a good idea. But back in the day, it was done to increase flexibility and bring energy to the exercise.

These days, we know that bouncing the feet under the foot bar, or the spine during Push Through is never a good idea! Just stretch through these movements smoothly and let your breath take you further into a stretch. Don’t force it.

Hanging Back from the Electric Chair
There is a stretch on the Electric Chair that requires you to hold the handles, with toes on the peddle, then round the body back into a position similar to Elephant. In a way, you are hanging back from the chair, but you must keep this movement mindful.

You should be scooping your abdominals in to support this position, not just hanging all your dead weight back from where your hands hold the handles. The chair is not nailed down to the ground, and it will tip over onto you if you hang back from it!

Also, every exercise and stretch has an “in and up” quality to it, never just “hanging back” and forgetting the principles of pilates.

Stretching the Hamstrings with a Bent Knee or Rounded Back
Ballet Stretches on the barrel, specifically the Hamstring stretch, feel really great, but there is also proper form even for these moves. The idea is to make the leg straight, then fold your torso over the leg, with an elongated spine.

If you keep your knee bent while attempting to stretch your hamstring, you are not stretching the hamstring, you are stretching your low back.

If you simply cannot straighten your leg for this stretch on the barrel, standing on a Moon Box could be a big help. If you still cannot straighten the leg, stop the stretch. Here is a better option for you:

Stand behind the ladder of the barrel, facing it. Hold the handles and place one foot on the lowest rung of the ladder (not the wooden piece on the floor, I’m talking about the actually rung). Step the other leg back so both legs are straight and the standing leg is perpendicular. You can now fold over your straight legs, and stretch the belly of the hamstring, not its attachments or your back!

You can also check out my other post, “How to, and How Not to, Stretch Your Hamstrings”:
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=43496978541018660&postID=8790898563685073430

Use proper stretching to live a LONG and healthful life!

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