Benefits of Pilates for back pain
If you have back pain or other injuries Pilates is one of the best forms of exercise that you can do because it can work around the injury but also it can prevent future ones and it can help strengthen your entire body from the inside out. Here’s why.
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Hi, I’m Lesley Logan. I’ve been teaching Pilates since 2008. And one of the things that I have seen is how Pilates can work with all bodies, including ones that come with aches and pains and even injuries that they’ve had for a really long time.
Preventing and Alleviating Pain with Pilates
Here’s the deal, as a Pilates instructor, I’m not a physical therapist, so I am not someone who can rehab you. However, the reason why injuries happen is because of imbalances. And because Pilates balances your imbalances, that’s how it can prevent injuries. But also, it can reduce the pain you have with current injuries because your current pains and aches and injuries is often due to an imbalance that you have in your body. So by balancing those imbalances, pain can go away. One of my clients, she came in with just chronic low back pain, always had it for a really long time. And because we strengthened her core, I didn’t work on her lower back, we strengthened her entire core, the pain subsided and she was actually able to do things she hadn’t done any years. So here are the benefits of Pilates for lower back pain.
Is Pilates good for back pain?
Pilates for low back pain can benefit you if you have injuries, specifically back pain. Especially it works with that because it strengthens the muscles that support the spine. So here’s the deal. Every ache, pain, injury you have whether it’s at your wrist, your ankles, everything can start from the center outward. So we have to think about our center from our tailbone to the crown of our head and all the muscles around it. And because Pilates supports strengthening your core, your entire center the muscles from the front to the back, that is how pain is reduced or subsided.
Also, because Pilates has access to not just the Mat work, but all the equipment work as well, we can actually work around an ache, pain or injury. We have springs that can support limbs, we have straps, we have chairs and barrels and different pieces of equipment that we can put you on to avoid causing any more pain to what you’ve already got. And actually, strengthen the muscles around it.
Discovering Pilates: A Journey to Balance and Strength
There’s an amazing story about Romana and her first day going to see Joseph Pilates. She was a very professional, amazing dancer, and she had this ankle injury and she was sent to Joseph Pilates studio to be “fixed”. So here’s the deal. The story goes that she went and he actually worked around her ankle, he didn’t even touch her ankle, he didn’t even talked about her ankle. And that is because what we do as Pilates instructors, what Pilates can do is literally work everything out that is not to do with the injury. And what happens is it balances those imbalances so that you can actually start to feel supported in your spine. So if your imbalances are actually a weak core, the strengthening of your core will actually take away some of that back pain.
So another reason why you probably have an ache, pain or you might even get injured is because of lack of flexibility. Now here’s the deal. A lot of times people think of flexibility as just stretching. And if you’ve watched our video on The Truth About Pilates, no BS, I actually talk about how flexibility doesn’t come from just hanging out over your legs and hoping that it stretches it. It’s an active static stretch that you need to increase flexibility and improve your flexibility, which is what Pilates is in every single exercise.
Enhancing Strength, Flexibility, and Balance
So the cool thing is it doesn’t really matter if you’re on equipment or off equipment. When you’re doing Pilates correctly, you’re actively engaging a muscle while you stretch it, that flexibility improvement, what’s going to happen is it’s going to reduce pain or tightness in an area, which is probably causing stress-strain to that area and causing the pain to be there in the first place.
Pilates also improves balance. Many injuries happen, many aches and pains come from an imbalance of the body. And improving your balance also means less likely to fall. And this is so so important. Many injuries happen to our arms, our limbs, our legs or back because of a fall. And we fall for a variety of reasons. But we often fall because our body doesn’t know how to regain its balance. And there’s an amazing exercise that I love to do. It’s a marching exercise, you can find it in our standing Pilates workout. I also teach it all the time in my Mat classes on OnlinePilatesClasses.com™. But it’s a marching exercise that really does teach your body how to move your legs without shifting your weight from side to side to increase your balance and reduce your likelihood of falling.
The Unexpected Benefits of Pilates for Balance and Injury Prevention
I had this client back in Los Angeles that I loved to teach and I would make her do this exercise every single time I saw her and she hated it. She hated it. She was a little bit over 80. And she really did not like that this exercise existed in her practice and she wanted to know why she had to do it. And I said it’s because I’m here to help make sure you fall better in life. And the next day she was walking down some steps outside in LA and she missed one and instead of tumbling down cement steps, she actually her body naturally did the marching exercise and she made it down the steps. I have a mentee, someone who’s in my mentorship group for teachers, who’s a runner, she’s an avid runner, and she tripped while running on the sidewalk and her body was able to regain its balance because of the Pilates exercises that she does, that we can do with you, as you show up for yourself in your Pilates of practice. So the more you work on your balance, the less likely you are to have injury but also, the less likely you are to feel the pain of an existing ache or injury you have now.
Pilates for Injury Relief and Mental Wellness
And very importantly, when it comes to reducing injuries, or working on the injuries and aches and pains you currently have is a mind-body connection. Pilates really supports this mind-body connection, because every exercise requires you to focus on what’s moving, where and from where. And so you can’t be thinking about these other things going on, including the pain that you’re in, because you’re focusing on connecting to your center and moving from there outward. And this mind-body connection, reduces stress, and increases a calmness, like a movement meditation in your life that really does make you feel awesome when your workout is over. And so if you are currently working out and moving in life with bad back pain, or aches, pains and injuries, for all these reasons, and more Pilates can really help you in your daily life. If you want to learn even more reasons around why you should be doing Pilates, check out our video here.
Pilates: The Lifeline Through Injury and Beyond
So when I was already doing Pilates for many years I actually fractured my Tibial Plateau. And what I found was Pilates was on the only things that I could actually do without having to make massive modification. So I was allowed to bend my knee up to 90 degrees without weight bearing on that knee. And so what I was able to do with so many things in the Pilates world, whereas in weight training world and obviously cardio, I had a very difficult time making modifications on my own. So Pilates was really, really great and integral for me, because what happened is, I was able to maintain the balance and strength in my body, especially in my centers. When I was able to walk again, I still had strength in my hips to allow me to stand on my weaker leg. There’s a teacher who is part of our OPC membership who has several fusions in her body. And she actually has to do Pilates every single day to reduce the pain that she feels in her body.
Overcoming Aches, Pains, and Injuries with Pilates
So movement is this incredible thing, Joseph Pilates would say that movement heals, right? Movement heals. And oftentimes when we have an ache or a pain or an injury, there can be a fear of movement that’s happening. And also, there’s pain because we’re not moving. And so when you look into the Pilates method for yourself for your ache, pain or injury, first of all, if it is acute, you definitely want to make sure you’re working with a professional, you want to make sure that you have permission from your doctors to do particular movements. If it is a chronic pain you’ve had for a really long time, nothing has worked, then you’re going to want to just take notice of how you feel each day. And when in doubt, leave an exercise out.
Pilates for Back Pain Relief for Life
What’s really cool about Pilates is it works all five spine shapes: flexion, extension, tall, back, side bending and twisting. And so if one of those spine shapes is not available to you at all, or at least right now you just leave it out and you work the other ones. And over time, what you’ll realize is because you’ve reduced inflammation, that pain subsides because you’ve increased your flexibility. And you’ve increased the strength that support these bones on your body, you will notice a reduced in pain.
Also, if you’re wanting to nerd out a little bit more about how to do Mat Pilates or Reformer Pilates for your back. If you’ve got some back issues and you’re wanting to really nerd out about this, maybe you’re a teacher watching this and you’re wanting to educate yourself more on the OnlinePilatesClasses.com™ channel we actually have on our website, we actually have two workshops. One is for the Mat, and one is for Reformer and they’re led by Lori Watson, our in house go to expert when it comes to anything that has to do with the back. So you’re gonna want to check out those workshops to educate yourself.
Wall Pilates: Gentle Support for Injury Relief and Confidence
If you’re curious about moving, you have a little bit of fear because you have some injuries, I know that a lot of Pilates looks like it’s on the ground. So my wall Pilates workout is about 20 minutes, you can do all the stuff standing. The wall can be this amazing supportive tool for you to use. It’s not like other wall Pilates workouts, this one is actually injury-friendly, beginner-friendly, and super supportive for where you are in your practice.
And lastly, I just want to say look, if you’re dealing with any kind of pain right now, doing online classes can be a little fearful like maybe you’re not doing it right, you’re wondering if you could hurt yourself again. So over at OnlinePilatesClasses.com™ I think it’s really important that you know, on our actual platform, we have all very qualified teachers who have a variety of experience when it comes to different body types and also injuries.
OPC – Your Personalized Path to Strength and Support
What we do at OnlinePilatesClasses.com™ that’s different than any other online platform is if you have a question on an exercise for your body, we can give you feedback on that. You can actually film yourself doing an exercise and we can make sure that you have yourself in the right place in the proper form so that you do not injure yourself and that you are supporting yourself. You could also ask questions like ‘I have this fusion, should I be doing this exercise?’ And in our platform, we can actually provide substitute exercises for you so that you can make these workouts your own. Plenty of accountability, community and all that amazing good stuff.
Check out onlinepilatesclasses.com/free to try us out, to see what it’s like, to get feedback on your form, to be in a place where you feel safe and supported, where you can really improve your strength and flexibility, and have a fun community along the way. Thank you so much, until next time!