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Pilates Fundamentals: The Five Principles
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Kim has a beautiful way of clearly describing the five principles of pilates. In this class she will take you through each one, teaching you how to incorporate each into your life and showing an exercise you can do to practice them and strengthen the key core muscles.
Comments
This class really promotes awareness of essential muscles that we usually neglect when we exercise!
Aside from the fact that it does have a slight gender bias, I feel that this video is a great introduction to the world of Pilates.
Below is a paraphrased summary of the five principles and what Kim Wilson mentioned.
Feel free to correct me where I'm wrong or may have missed out on anything important.
Hope that this will help those who need it.
1. Lateral Breathing
- Engage the deep core muscles, pelvic floor.
- Breathe to expand chest and abdominals laterally.
- Purse lips while exhaling to engage core.
2. Neutral Hips
- Midway between flat lower spine and fully tense lower back.
- Engage pelvic floor and transverse abdominals (deep core) to stabilise.
3. Ribcage Engagement
- Ribcage stabilises and protects thoracic spine (mid-spine).
- Engage ribcage during arm-raising activities by preventing the ribcage from popping-up.
4. Scapular Retraction
- Neutral Position at midway between fully extending arms forward and fully retracting shoulder blades.
- Relaxes upper traps, increases engagement of lower traps.
- Opens up chest, expands body laterally through collar bone.
5. Cervical Placement
- Tuck chin until eyesight perpendicular to body, imagine string pulling from top of skull.
- Protects the neck, prevents over-engagement during activities such as crunches.
In 2011-2012 I practiced Pilates consistently for over a year. Then a wedding, a move across town and a whole new life put me out of my regular routine and left me searching for a new Pilates studio. Out of practice for the past year, I've returned to Pilates and found this video. Though I was introduced to the five principles previously, I learned some new things from Kim about the positioning of my body in various exercises. Her description of the bungy cords pulling on the hip bones "clicked" with me and I was able to engage my muscles more effectively. Her explanations, instructions and examples are easy to follow and clear. Thanks, Kim!
This video seems like it can help you greatly improve your posture, and it is vital to learn this in order to reduce the likelihood of injury while doing yoga. (Not to mention, tucking your gut in makes you look skinnier!)