Clinical Pilates (or Clinical Exercise, as we call it at MD Health) is a fantastic, low-impact way of strengthening your body (whole body training).
Pilates is often marketed as targeting the core muscles, resulting in a ‘sculpted’, ‘toned’ body. These studios and centres that market this way often use high-repetition, low-load exercises over 30-45mins. This results in these muscles ‘feeling the burn’, particularly the abdominal muscles.
However, science tells us that this doesn’t actually promote improvements in muscle strength! At MD Health, we use higher loads and lower repetitions on our reformer pilates exercises.
These also often involve a holding component of 3-5 seconds. Although you may not feel the ‘burn’ as much, or might not get as puffed, you will feel muscles shaking and working hard! This is where the real change in muscle strength occurs.
We also don’t just target the abdominals! We target abdominals as well as your deeper spinal stabilising muscles, the erectors of your spine (erector spinae and multifidus muscles), and your gluteals and deeper hip stabilisers.
All these muscles, when strong and working well in co-ordination, make up the REAL ‘core’. They stabilise your spine and pelvis when the body is put through external loading, keeping it strong and safe from injury.
Taking it to the next level:
MD Health’s clinical exercise sessions also incorporate other exercises based on strength training principles. We utilise movements such as barbell squats, deadlifts and bench press to take your strength and stability to the next level! This means we don’t just spend 30 minutes on the pilates reformer – we use progressively heavier and heavier weights and equipment to continue your improvement.
What this does:
– Builds more strength, stability and resilience to injury than just pilates
– Further strengthens the whole core – not just the abdominals
– Helps you manage other conditions, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis and more!
– Help manage body weight and metabolism.
So, even through pilates can help the core, MD Health’s clinical exercise program (which includes pilates), actually targets the whole body, improving global body strength, and helping your overall health and wellbeing!
Join the discussion and have your say?
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- Call us on (03) 9857 0644 or (07) 3505 1494 (Paddington)
- Email us at admin@mdhealth.com.au
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Our clinical staff would be happy to have chat if you have any questions.
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*Please note only the Full Body Assessment is a FREE service. The Full Body Assessment is for new clients at MD Health or returning clients who haven’t been in for 6 months or longer who intend to particpiate in our 13 Week Clinical Pilates Program**.
For all new clients who wish to come in for a one-off, casual or adhoc basis for Physiotherapy or Exercise Physiology the Initial Physiotherapy or Initial Exercise Physiology appointment is a paid service.
** The 13 Week Clinical Pilates Program at MD Health is not a lock in contract and you are not required to attend for the full 13 weeks if you do not wish.
