Pilates

Pilates helps build core strength and enhancse your overall fitness level and flexibility. It’s about strength with control -- being long, limber and strong. Pilates is more of a cardiovascular workout than yoga.

Unlike conventional weight training, which emphasizes repetition on one muscle group at a time, Pilates focuses on a series of precise, controlled movements that work muscles in several positions. The low-impact exercises concentrate on strengthening the abdomen, lower back and buttocks. They are done on floor mats or by using several pieces of equipment that look like medieval torture devices but are actually gentle on the body.

Whereas weight lifters typically do a dozen or more repetitions, the Pilates workout comprises more kinds of resistance work, but only three to eight repeats. The heart rate is elevated during the roughly hour-long workouts.

The Pilates technique has several core concepts:

• Concentration. You have to think about what you are doing. You're working your whole body in every single exercise.
• Centering. Focus your energy on the physiological center of your body—the abdominals. It's your power source, the place where you need to be connected.
• Precision. Focus on doing the work correctly—quality over quantity.   
• Flow. Eventually you go through your mat and apparatus work with a sense of flow and connection.
• Breathing. The breath is not extraneous; it supports the movement. It also helps you connect deeper in your abdominals.
• Control. Whether it's on the mat or the apparatus, there is always some part of your body that serves as the stabilization point, allowing the rest of the body to be in motion while getting the most out of the exercise.

The Pilates method teaches you to stabilize your spine, and once you isometrically stabilize the spine, you're eccentrically and concentrically working the extremities. Seventy to 80 percent of the exercises are isometric, intended to build endurance to hold the torso in good posture.