The Complete Guide to Pilates

Chapter 1: What Is Pilates and Why People Love It

Let's clear something up right away: Pilates is not just \"ab exercises\" and it is not yoga with different branding. If you've seen photos of people on strange-looking beds with springs and straps, or videos of someone in a studio doing slow, precise movements on a mat, you've seen the two main forms of it. But the real Pilates is a method of moving your whole body that was developed about a hundred years ago by a man named Joseph Pilates, who believed that physical health came from controlled, deliberate movement rather than aggressive, high-intensity exercise.

Here's what that means for you, day-to-day. A Pilates session is a sequence of exercises that you do slowly and with very careful attention to how your body is positioned. You are not trying to sweat through a workout in twenty minutes. You are trying to move your body in ways that are precise, controlled, and often harder than they look. The classic starting point is mat Pilates, where you lie on a mat on the floor and do a series of exercises that look simple but make your muscles shake in ways you didn't know they could. The instructor will say things like \"lengthen through your spine\" and \"pull your navel toward your spine\" and \"keep your shoulders down away from your ears.\" You will spend a lot of time thinking about your pelvis and your ribs and where your head is resting.