Looking for a good Pilates instructor is like finding a craftsman in any other profession: You have to do your homework to find someone qualified and experienced. Unfortunately, these days you can hang out your shingle–Pilates Studio–without any teaching experience or education whatsoever. This is why it is good to ask a few questions of your local studio before you jump into privates or classes.

What is your background? This is a good first question. If you are talking to someone with experience, they may first tell you how they found Pilates; what it is about Pilates that attracted them to become an instructor; and (here’s the most important part) where they did their training.

What is the name of the Teacher Training program you did and how extensive was your study? There are a handful of quality Teacher Training programs out there. Some require a touch of anatomy, while some require passing anatomy tests and lectures with anatomy experts. Some programs encompass 250 hours of study, while some require a much greater commitment of 1000 hours of study. All of these thing make a difference. Ask about each of them.

Do you have training to work with special populations? This question is asking whether or not your prospective instructor has the background to work with people who are taking Pilates for more than general fitness purposes. Even if you are uninjured, it is nice to work with someone who is accustomed to rehabilitation work because they understand the body on a different level than someone who is just teaching the choreography of an exercise. And everyone has something going on in their body. Everyone.

If you don’t check up on what kind of experience your local Pilates studio has, don’t be surprised when you don’t get the results that you are looking for. You wouldn’t pay someone with no training to fix your car, right? Why would you trust your health to someone with a weekend “certification?”

Functional Strength is offering a client workshop series designed to take your pilates to the next level. Learn why its so important to be well-versed in the fundamentals and learn how perfecting those movements can catapult you to the next level of pilates training. Discover the building blocks of the work, figure out how to conquer your own body’s perceived limitations, and have a great time doing it.

Check out our schedule on the website. And even if you can’t make it to one of our workshops, talk to your pilates instructor and find out why working on the fundamentals can take you from an intermediate to an advanced level in your practice!

I always get asked by people, “If I start doing Pilates, how often should I come in to the studio?”

 Well, it’s like training for a 10K or a bike race. You need to start building strength and stamina and only after you’ve done that can you back off and just maintain the new-found Pilates muscles that you’ve trained. So, I usually tell people to come at least twice-a-week, if you want to see results, and three-times-a-week if you can. Then, after a few months, you can back off a bit, and come just once or twice a week. If you don’t take the time at the beginning to learn how to do it correctly for your body, with an instructor who knows more than just the choreography of the work, then you really won’t get to the point where you feel the difference that Pilates can make.

Also, remember that Pilates gains, in terms of understanding and strength, can be plotted on a graph as a staircase and not a flat incline. This means that you will have some periods of time where you are really questioning if you understand the work at all. You aren’t sure what you are doing wrong and you aren’t sure how to make it right. And then, after a bit of a struggle, you will make a breakthrough and your Pilates practice will transform. And so will your body.

Keeping up with your training and dropping in for private lessons to focus on your individual issues will help minimize your vertical climb on the graph. But keep in mind that you aren’t alone. Everyone’s been there.

In our new, larger Lone Tree Colorado space we are now offering Spin-lates, which is 1/2 hour of spin class and 1/2 hour of Pilates. I took Melanie’s Friday morning class last week and thought that I would get a good cardio workout and then just a touch of core strengthening. I was SOOO wrong!

The cardio is interval training. Making your heart rate go up, then down, then up again. This really got my lungs working, much harder than a nice steady jog, and it got my muscles pumping too. That was the part that I didn’t really anticipate.

By the time the Spin portion of class was over, my main muscle groups were so taxed that I didn’t really have any option but to engage my stabilizers and deep core muscles. I was so surprised that just 1/2 hour of Pilates worked my muscles much differently (for me it was a deeper engagement) than a regular hour long class.

Spin-lates is also fantastic for keeping your body guessing. Without constantly changing up your workouts, your body begins to guess what’s coming. Its harder to re-educate muscles without continually adding to and changing up a workout. So Spin-lates is a nice shock to the system.

Try it, and see for yourself!

I am often asked what is the difference between Pilates and Yoga. And I tell them that the greatest difference is how they are taught. Both Yoga and Pilates create length and strength in muscles. Although Yoga focuses on a deeper stretch than Pilates at the beginner levels, they both provide similar benefits when taught and done correctly.

And that is the key, when taught and done correctly. At Functional Strength in Lone Tree Colorado, our classes are small and we require some private instruction for new clients. This ensures that when a client is doing the work, he or she is doing it correctly for what they have going on in their body. Because almost all Yoga is done in large classes, a client may not have any previous interaction with an instructor and the class may be so large that the client can get no personal attention. This means that a client may or may not be doing the exercise correctly. Moreover, the exercise may be contra-indicated for something that they have going on in their body. Meaning that the exercise may actually be hurting them. Bad Yoga and bad Pilates can injure you.

Another problem with some local Colorado Yoga studios is the level of training of their instructors. Just as with Pilates instructors, it is important to make sure that the people you are studying with know what they are doing and have more than a weekend course under their belt.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Yoga. I practice Yoga. But I take the principles that I have learned in Pilates into my Yoga practice and that is why I can do Yoga without injuring myself. Otherwise, I would be just like many other people in the class, going for the deepest stretch without engaging my core or stabilizing muscles to hold me in an extreme position.

In this circumstance, just as with other activities, Pilates can make you better understand what Yoga is really about and it can help you to excel at it. More to the point, studying Pilates and taking that knowledge with you into your Yoga study can help you NOT to get injured in a Yoga class with 30 other people in it.

Most individuals have a total hip replacement due to pain associated with arthritis in the hip joint. Once the hip is replaced, it is imperative to strengthen the small, supporting muscles in the joint so that the hip joint has the strength to move safely in all ranges of motion. Because these muscles are most likely not strong, thus leading to the condition where arthritis was originally created in the joint, a hip replacement patient must not simply work on the large muscle groups.

Pilates focuses on the engagement and strengthening of these small supporting muscles by doing exercises such as leg circles. In this exercise, the practitioner holds the pelvis completely stable while moving the head of the femur in the cup of the hip. It sounds simple, but because most of us recruit our larger muscles for movement, keeping the pelvis stable will force the practitioner to allow those overused muscles to release. This takes some time to master but is very important in the creation of a stable, supported joint.

This principal applies to other joint operation patients, as well. Pilates is an excellent form of rehabilitation and on-going exercise.  Visit our new studio in Lone Tree, Colorado.

All of the work is complimentary. What this means is that it is good to work on both the equipment and on the mat. While the equipment may appear harder upon first try, the mat work is very difficult in that you do not have the support of any equipment and you can only rely upon your own strength to do the exercise.

Often, when one is struggling with an exercise or a concept on one piece of equipment or on the mat, trying the same or a similar exercise on another piece of equipment may enable a better understanding and allow for success. Or, it may be that with the support of one piece of equipment you are able to build the strength necessary to do the exercise on another piece of equipment or on the mat.

So, although there is a difference between the equipment and the mat work, it is best to work on everything so that you can develop a well rounded practice.

Visit our Lone Tree Colorado Studio.

At it’s most basic level, Pilates is about alignment. Try this… Stand up. Just stand there for a few minutes and notice what’s going on in your body. Where your weight is. If you are rolling to the outsides of your feet, for example. If you are slumping, and your shoulders are rolling forward. Check everything out from your feet to the top of your head.

Now, plant your feet, as if you are creating two perfect footprints in the sand, with equal pressure on your big toes, your little toes, and your heel. Keep those perfect footprints and add this: Pretend that you are a puppet and someone is pulling on a string that’s attached directly to the top of your head. With just changing these two things (contacting you feet with the ground and reaching the top of your head to the sky), you’d be surprised at how many things will happen.

You will probably lose your slump. Your shoulders may settle a bit back on to your ribcage and alleviate some of pain that you may have in between your shoulder blades. Your knees may feel better. Like you just lost a few pounds. Your low back may feel a bit less tight. Freer.

All you did was two things… See what a difference it made in your alignment and how many other secondary effects those two things had on your body.

Now imagine if you came in for a full hour of Pilates and you learned what you needed specifically for your body. Don’t you deserve to feel better?

Chiropratic work, with a good chiropractor, aligns your spine through manipulation of the skeleton. Unfortunately, without a good aftercare program, the skeleton will continue to be pulled out of alignment if the muscles are themselves out of balance.

This is where Pilates comes in… Pilates and Chiropractic can work well together if, first, the practitioners are communicating about what each of them are finding while working with a specific client. With communication, the period of trial and error, if any, is minimized and both the Pilates instructor and the Chiropractor can focus on the same issues for complimentary treatment.

Second, where Chiropractic requires manual manipulation to realign the spine, Pilates strengthens, lengthens and balances the muscle groups so that they aren’t continually pulling the spine back out of alignment. Without aftercare, such as Pilates, you will be doomed to seeing the Chiropractor on a weekly basis because your muscles are not helping you to maintain the alignment.

Any good Chiropractor will recommend aftercare and Pilates is the #1 recommended form of aftercare for helping to keep your spine healthy and in alignment.

In Pilates, we target specific muscle groups and strengthen them, thereby balancing the weak and the strong muscle groups. During pregnancy, in addition to many other changes, a woman’s spine changes its curvature in order to support the weight of the baby.  The muscles in the body adjust to these changes by lengthening or shortening depending on how the baby is affecting the spine’s curvature. These changes can contribute to back pain and leg pain. Pilates can help alleviate such pain during pregnancy by stretching and strengthening the muscles tightening and working the muscles that are being overstretched by the spine’s changes.

After pregnancy, in addition to reconditioning torso and stomach muscles that were stretched by the pregnancy, Pilates can help a woman to reconnect with her pelvic floor. Without such focus after pregnancy, women can experience everything from continued back pain to incontinence issues. Furthermore, the better conditioned a woman’s body is before pregnancy, the easier it is to deliver the baby, and the easier it is get back into shape after pregnancy. Therefore, if you are planning on becoming pregnant, it is a good idea to start a Pilates program, maintain it throughout the pregnancy, and come back to the studio (our is in Highlands Ranch, Colorado) as soon as your doctor clears you for activity after your baby is born.