Pilates is a method of body conditioning that utilizes a unique apparatus called the reformer to perform stretching and strengthening exercises that promote postural awareness and core abdominal strength. The reformer can be used to rehabilitate any patient population as various resistances are created through a spring system.

What Are the Benefits of Pilates Reformer Training?

• Development of deep abdominal muscles and core control while integrating the trunk, pelvis and shoulder girdle.
• Improves flexibility by promoting muscle lengthening and joint mobility.
• Promotes integrated body conditioning to identify the muscles that are prone to weakness or tightness and the ability to address these muscle imbalances on one apparatus.
• Ability to train muscles to fire in appropriate and efficient firing patterns contributing to faster rehabilitation, and less chance of re-injury.
• Improves mind-body connection by emphasizing postural/body awareness through proper breathing, correct spinal/pelvic alignment, and movement control.

JOSEPH H. PILATES

 The Pilates Method was developed in 1926 by Joseph Hubertus Pilates (pronounced Puh-LAH-tees). It combines the mental focus of Eastern disciplines such as Yoga and Tai Chi with Western emphasis on strength and  stamina.

Born near Dusseldorf, Germany, in 1880, Joseph Pilates suffered from asthma, rickets and rheumatic fever as a child. Looking for a way to improve his health and condition, he studied various forms of exercise and developed a special regimen which allows practitioners to strengthen and elongate their muscles.

Joseph Pilates was a gymnast and pugilist who had creative, indeed brilliant, ideas about physical fitness and rehabilitation following physical injury. In a British internment camp in World War I, he rigged a hospital bed so that patients could begin their recovery while still flat on their backs. That idea evolved into the Trapeze Table (Cadillac), one of the main components of what was to become a whole method of exercise, which Mr. Pilates called "Contrology". He also invented, for this  purpose, the Universal Reformer, which is equipped with straps and springs to provide resistance.

His method of exercise later became known as the "Pilates Method". For more than 70 years the Pilates Method has been utilized in studios and physical therapy centers around the world. The primary focus of the Pilates Method is the process itself, experiencing movement from the inside out. It is a series of sequential and carefully performed core movements, each designed to stretch and strengthen the muscles involved. It increases tone, flexibility, postural alignment, coordination and endurance.