How Pilates Can Improve Your Posture
Trainers Use Postural Assessments to Create Individualized Programs
Sep 10, 2009
Pilates is an exercise method developed in the early 1900s by Joseph Pilates. Its emphasis on muscular balance and restoring the natural curves of the spine helps exercisers relieve back pain and enjoy better posture.
The Four Types of Postural Alignment
There are four different categories of alignment. They are ideal alignment, kyphosis-lordosis, flat-back, and sway-back. Though people generally tend to fall in one of the four categories, everyone has unique characteristics. As a result, your posture may deviate slightly from the general postures mentioned here.
Ideal posture is posture that follows the normal curves of the spine. It is posture as it is intended to be. It consists of a slight extension of the neck, slight flexion of the upper back, and slight extension of the lower back. In this posture, the body works optimally. There is little stress or strain on it, and it can work efficiently.
Kyphosis-lordosis, flat-back, and sway back are all faulty postures. Each is characterized by a forward head. The kyphosis-lordosis posture describes an increased flexion of the upper spine. Forward shoulders and a sunken look in the chest result. The pelvis is also tilted forward. The flat-back and sway-back postures both have increased flexion in the upper spine and a pelvis that is tilted backward. The sway-back posture has a rib cage that is displaced behind the hips.
How Posture is Measured
Postural alignment is measured by a plumb line. When a Pilates trainer makes a postural assessment, he or she is assessing what your body looks like when an imaginary plumb line is dropped in front of it. Ideally, when a subject is standing to the side, that line would run up from just forward of the ankle bone. From there it would travel slightly in front of the knee joint, slightly behind the hip joint, up through the rib cage and the shoulder joint, and finally through the middle of the ear.
A good trainer will have you stand in front of her. She will look at your posture from both sides. Then she will confirm her findings by looking at you both from the back and the front.
When Posture is not Ideal
Unfortunately, very few people have ideal posture. Most of us have forward heads, and we probably fall into one of the faulty categories in one way or another. When the natural curves of the spine are disrupted, muscular imbalances result. Some muscles weaken. Others strengthen to compensate. Bony structures are pulled in one direction or another. The body is no longer working optimally, and stiffness or pain can result.
Pilates Exercises Realign the Spine
After your Pilates instructor has conducted an assessment, he or she can put together a program that will improve your posture. A good Pilates instructor uses the assessment as a guide, helping her understand which muscles you need to strengthen and which you may need to stretch. She has hundreds of exercises at her disposal to keep you engaged, challenged, and, most importantly, to get your body working optimally again.
You may also be interested in Is Pilates for Wimps? and Don't Get Bogged Down in Methods.
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