Pilates Perks

I'll say it. I'm a yogi — a Pilates Person — but recently, this hype around "the other core workout" has gotten me curious. I just went through yoga teacher training while a good friend of mine went through Pilates Plus instructor training and all this talk of reformers, rings and the infamous hundreds has inspired me to do some digging. So here we are to uncover the truth about this workout people swear by, from one Pilates virgin to another.

Again, to preface, I know nothing about Pilates so forgive me if I post incorrectly. I thought it might be interesting though to take you with me along my journey as I research, then actually do Pilates, and then report my findings.

And so it starts: What is Pilates?

Pilates is a form of exercise, developed by Joseph Pilates, which emphasizes the balanced development of the body through core strength, flexibility, and awareness in order to support efficient, graceful movement.

What kinds of Pilates are there?

As it turns out, all Pilates forms derive from the form of exercise developed by Joseph Pilates, who passed away over 40 years ago and only now is reaching his height of fame. I also found out that there are SO many types of Pilates. After doing my research I still don't know what kind uses the reformer, the rings etc but there is Classical Pilates (recommended to start), Winsor Pilates (remember those infomercials back in the day?), Stott Pilates, Power Pilates, the list goes on. There's also Yogalattes, which they offer at my studio so I'll blog about that soon.

The long and the short of this ambiguous blog post is that there's a lot of Pilates out there and I'm going to uncover this mystery ... even if it means I force my Pilates instructor friend Kristen to guest blog. Until next time.