Strengthen Arms and Fix Posture
Are you looking for exercises to help posture and also strengthen your arms? This is a video for you. Today’s day and age has us pulling our shoulders forward and our head forward, and also we start to pull and grab things from the front of our body. So in this video, we’re going to talk about how you can strengthen your posture and your arms with not a lot of equipment. So let’s get started.
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Hi. I’m Lesley Logan, co-founder of onlinepilatesclasses.com and even though I might not sit at a desk all day or chase after children like you might be, I do actually have to look down at my clients all the time, and so my shoulders are going forward, because today’s life is actually pulling our head and shoulders forward. And the problem with that is doesn’t help us have stronger arms. Just allows us to pick up our heavy bags, pick up our friends, pick up our kids. And also we need to get our shoulders on our back so that we’re working from a place of strength, right? And your posture is very important because it has a lot to do with your digestive system, with your hormone production, with how you’re going to feel in your day. So let’s talk about exercises you can do that you don’t need any equipment for, and then some you will.
Importance of Strong Arms and Good Posture
Alright so, here’s the deal. You already know that strength matters. You also know you have to have good posture. Your mom’s been telling you since you were a child. But the reality is that life is lifeing, and it can be really difficult to make time for strengthening your arms and focus on good posture, and also who has the time to think about their posture all the time? And that is why Pilates is so essential and integral for you and the strength of your arms and the posture that you want to have, because the goal of Pilates is it actually improves your posture, improves the strength of your arms, so you don’t actually have to think about these things, right? My favorite thing when I started teaching Pilates is that someone came up to me and he was like “you have the most amazing posture”. And I was like, you have to be kidding. My mother never said that about me. And so what I noticed is, by doing Pilates, my posture got better on its own. These exercises to help posture naturally work into your routine, so you don’t have to think about it all the time.
Unlock Strength and Posture for a Better Life
The thing about having strength in your arms is if you don’t have it in the right places, so some people only focus on the front, if you don’t have it in the back, you actually are going to have a hard time picking up heavier things or grabbing heavier things. And having that disconnect is going to create injuries or just make things inaccessible to you. The importance of having really amazing posture in your life is not only does it make you feel super awesome, and there are many TED talks on why having amazing posture makes you more confident, makes people think you’re more confident, but the actual digestive system needs amazing posture. Your mental health needs amazing posture. The more forward your head gets, the more forward your shoulders get, the harder it is for you to see people coming at you as support, help, a good friend. We start to see that those people coming at us as a potential attack, we go into that lizard brain. Pilates for posture and mental health is key to maintaining alignment, reducing stress, and improving overall well-being. Adding easy Pilates moves for better posture to your routine can help strengthen your arms and back, improving alignment and allowing you to fully enjoy the life that you have.
Key Pilates Principles for Arm Strength and Posture
So let’s talk about those key principles you need when you are going into a Pilates class, or when you’re chewing Pilates on your own, here is the deal. A lot of times we pull our shoulders forward in order to make ourselves feel like we’re rounding for Pilates, or we lift our shoulders up in order to make ourselves feel like we’re tall, or we pinch our shoulder blades together in order to feel like we’re making our shoulders wide. Those three things are really easy to do, and they’re big mistakes in your practice, because none of them are actually helping you connect your arms to your back. And I have an amazing workshop on the arm back connection. I do it oftentimes when we’re on tour, and it’s something that we talk about a lot in our classes on OPC and in my elevate mentorship.
But what you need to think about is your shoulders being wide on your back, okay? So not pinch back, because that makes your upper traps work, not coming forward, but just wide, right? One of the ways you can get more width in your back and have an arm back connection is to make sure that when you’re doing your Pilates, you’re breathing in to your lowest ribs back here. We actually talk about how to breathe in Pilates here on this YouTube channel, so you can check it out. But you want to have breath that’s breathing way down here into the lowest part of your lungs, because that allows the front of your chest to soften a lot of times in life, we’re breathing up into here, and that’s actually stressing our brain out a lot, and it’s not helping you get your arms onto your back. So we want those arms on our back, our shoulders wide, breathing into our back so that we don’t cause our shoulders to come up.
Connect Your Arms and Back for Stronger Pilates
Another thing you want to think about is, how can you, when you’re doing your Pilates practice, close the chain? I love to use a Dowel for the Roll up for anytime your the Thigh Stretch. That’s going to help you get your arms to connect to your back. I also love when you’re using handles to make sure that the pinky side of your hand is connected to the handle. These principles, when applied to a Pilates class that you’re doing or one that you’re doing on your own at home, are going to help you get your shoulders on your back. And when your shoulders are on your back, not only are you improving your posture, yay, but you’re also improving the strength of your arms, and that’s going to allow you to push and pull the things you love in this life from a place of strength. So let’s take these principles and talk about some improving posture exercises we can do.
Pilates Exercises to Help Posture and Strengthen Your Arms
Before we get into that, if you are interested in the principles that are in Pilates, we actually have a wonderful video here for you that’s the six Pilates principles you can check it out. Alright, before we get into the equipment, I want to give you the exercises and Pilates that you can do on your own without any equipment. We’ve got six of them on the Mat for you, but I promise you, if you do a full Mat class, you are going to really, truly get your arms connected to your back if you follow those principles talked about before.
Pilates Exercises: Single and Double Leg Stretch
So Single Leg Stretch is one of my absolute favorites. It’s very easy for us to cheat this exercise and for when you pull to pull from your biceps and the front of your chest. But like any pulling-rowing exercise, you should be pulling from your back. So this exercise is going to actually strengthen where your arms meet your back and also help you widen your shoulders. If you look at the Double Leg Stretch, you also see it does the exact same thing. We’re just using two legs at the same time instead of one. So as long as you’re pulling two times from your upper back, and then look at that, your arms reach up overhead. So now you have an overhead reaching exercise. The Pull and the Reach are actually two amazing things we need to be able to do, from the strength of our back to not only strengthen our arms, but make things we want to do in life easier.
Pilates Workouts: Single and Double Leg Kick
Up next, I have the Single Leg Kick for you. This one allows you to prop yourself up on your forearms to help you use the floor to help widen your back, and it puts you in extension. It’s also really easy for us to sink into our shoulders like we’re at the beach. So make sure you feel like you’re pushing with your arms but pulling with your chest. So you get that pulling in your upper back feeling, and also you get to work against gravity. It’s really amazing. The Double Leg Kick is an essential exercise for strength in your arms, but also for posture. As you can see, your arms are behind your back. So there are different planes that we put our arms in, forward, upward, to the side, behind your back, right? And so, Double Leg Kick really helps you strengthen your upper back, stretch across your chest when done appropriately. When you watch this video, you’ll hear me talk about where to reach your arms from. Please pay attention to that. It’s going to make a huge difference. These are great workouts to improve posture, and they’ll help you feel stronger and more aligned.
Pilates Side Bend and Push Ups
Up next, we have the Side Bend. Now here’s the deal, standing on your arm in a side plane can be one of the hardest places to do it, because you’ve got one arm. So please be mindful that your arm is connected to your back, that your bicep is following your middle finger, and that your elbows not locked out. This is going to be essential for you to strengthen your arm back connection and also improve posture and upper arm strength. If being on the floor is too difficult, you can do this at a wall. And lastly, we have the Push Up. Push Ups are amazing. They’re obviously a full body exercise on their own, but in Pilates, there are tricep push ups. Your elbows go towards the back. So not only are you strengthening the back of your arms, you’re also strengthening your entire body, and you get to do a pushing action forward. And all these other exercises have pulling and reaching going on. So you’re welcome! A full range of strengthening your arms and improving your posture, all on the Mat in six exercises. What more could you want? If you’re interested in doing more of this on your own, and you’re not sure you want to do on the floor. We have here on this channel a wall Pilates workout, and it helps you find your head on your back, your shoulders wide on your back. This is great strength training for posture. And there’s even a Single Leg Stretch exercise for you to do.
Pilates Spine Corrector Exercise
Alright, so let’s get into the equipment. And here’s the deal. I know everyone loves Reformer, but I am a big proponent of everyone having a Spine Corrector at home. As you can see with the arm series here, it helps put your body in a supported back bend. It helps you keep your neck long. And you’re able to use one, maybe two pound light weights to help you connect your arms to your back in a variety of of motions. One is going to be drawing circles. One is going to be doing arms up and down. The other is going to be doing a nice hug. And these exercises actually strengthen your upper back, which improves your posture. Pilates workouts for posture correction are perfect for addressing the forward pull of daily life. Hello, as we mentioned earlier in the video, our life is pulling us forward. The Spine Corrector pulls you back. And in strengthening your arms from your back, you will feel your arms get stronger and feel like you have more power from them. If you have a spine corrector at home, we actually have a workout video here on this channel, and includes the arm series. So if you are like, oh, I want more than just arms, guess what? We got all of your full body happening in that video. So enjoy that class.
Pilates Reformer Exercises
Alright, Reformer lovers. You know you want to strengthen your arms on there, and there’s a ton of exercises I could have chose from but if you want to have the most effective strength in your arm-back connection, and then it will help every Reformer exercise you do, you want to do Pulling Straps and T-pull. So Pulling Straps is the arms reaching forward, overhead and pulling down past your hips. A lot of people actually ride the springs home. You don’t want to do that, or they don’t choke up high enough on the straps. So make sure your arms are as straight as they can be, reaching up on those ropes or your leather straps from a place of strength (your lower ribs), and then pulling from that space to your hips without flipping those wrists around. It’s really easy to do choreography in Pilates, and we don’t want to do that. On T-Pull the thing you want to be thinking about is the palms are facing down. They do start in a T. I see a lot of people starting in a Y. It’s called T pull for a reason. So make sure that your arms are in a T before you begin. And then also make sure that as you’re pulling your arms back, they also go up, because it’s so easy for you to pull them down while you lift your chest, and that’s just cheating your strength. Incorporating postural strengthening exercises like Pulling Straps and T-pull will not only enhance your posture but also improve your overall Reformer practice. If you love the reformer, we have an amazing four week challenge with the Reformer here on this channel, go to opc.me/challenge and each and every week, we’ll give you a new class to help you connect your arms to your back.
Pilates Tower/Cadillac Exercises
Alright, if you have a Cadillac or Tower, this part is for you. You obviously under your arm springs, hello, arms are in the name of the exercise, and it’s amazing for strengthening your arms, but more importantly, widening your shoulders, which makes it easier for your arms to connect to your back, and it improves your posture. The other thing you can do is Chest Expansion, which you can do kneeling or standing, depending on what if you’re in the middle of a workout or ending the workout. If you’re ending the workout, you want to do the standing one, because we always want to end standing up if we can. And if you are really interested in how Pilates can help your posture, we actually have a whole video only talking about posture and tips for making yours better here on this channel. So enjoy that.
Tips for Practicing at Home
So if you’re inspired, here’s the deal. I know you’re wanting to know how to practice this more on your own and at home, as one of the best places to do it. So one of the things you need to know about Pilates is consistency is key. And consistency doesn’t mean every single day. It means have a heartbeat, ideally, three to four times a week with your Pilates practice is essential. But if all you can do is once a week, that’s fine too. Just be consistent with that. Make sure that you are celebrating what you did do. That’s a really key thing for building habits, and ensure that you have a space that’s set up and easy for you to use. If you have to dig all these things out, it’s not going to be super fun and you’re going to procrastinate on it, so make sure you’re doing that. The other thing is, if you’re unsure if you’re doing your exercises correctly, if you’re an OPC member, at onlinepilatesclasses.com we actually give feedback on exercises you’re wondering about, so make sure you join us in the community, and you can submit a video of you doing the exercise to ensure you’re doing correctly. I will also share tips on other exercises to help posture, Pilates exercises to strengthen arms at home, or ways to better your practice overall. If you’re someone who wants to do this outside, I don’t blame you. It’s a beautiful day out. You want to move outside. Make sure you check our video out on tips for doing Pilates outside.
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