Transform your flexibility: how Pilates can help you reach your goals
How does Pilates improve flexibility?
Pilates focuses on strengthening the core muscles of the body and overall physical fitness, with an emphasis on alignment, moving with control and improving body awareness. The exercises are designed to be low-impact and target specific muscle groups such as the abdominals, glutes and back muscles. The exercises are essentially a series of dynamic stretches that work wonders on lengthening your muscles – hence improving your flexibility.
Stretching: a series of stretching exercises that focus on elongating the muscles, improving range of motion and increasing flexibility.
Lengthening muscles: exercises are designed to lengthen and strengthen the muscles simultaneously. This approach can help to release tension and tightness in the muscles, which can lead to increased flexibility over time.
Targeted Muscle Groups: exercises target specific muscle groups, such as the hips, hamstrings and back, which are often tight for many people. By focusing on these areas, Pilates can help to improve overall flexibility.
Controlled Movements: the exercises involve slow and controlled movements, which allow you to fully engage your muscles and achieve a deeper stretch. This can help to improve flexibility more effectively than quick, jerky movements.
Mind-Body Connection: there is emphasis on the mind-body connection, which can help you to become more aware of your body, its abilities and its limitations. This increased awareness can help you to identify areas where you need to work on improving flexibility and can help you to achieve better results from your Pilates practice.
As your flexibility improves, helping you with many daily routine activities, you may also find you’re able to reach further or jump higher in your other workouts. A benefit of flexibility is an increased range of motion around the joints and muscles that are well-stretched can more easily reach a full range of motion.
It’s important to note that too much flexibility and not enough strength can lead to poor alignment, pain and even injury. So that’s why Pilates is an amazing balance of both flexibility and strength. And because exercises can be modified to suit individual needs and abilities, Pilates is suitable for people of all ages and fitness levels.
In The Pilates Angel mixed ability class, we have class members of varying ages and abilities, and during a recent class survey (Feb 2023), 88% of members said that improving flexibility and mobility was their main goal for coming to the class.
Overall, practicing Pilates can help to improve flexibility by targeting specific muscle groups, using controlled movements and improving your mind-body connection. With consistent practice, you can gradually increase your flexibility and achieve greater range of motion in your joints.
If your spine is stiff at 30, you are old. If it is flexible at 60, you are young
- Joseph Pilates
Learn why flexibility is important.