Reaching middle age often acts as a wake-up call for many people, triggering them to want to take better care of their health and reduce their age-related discomfort and health problems down the road. If you're starting to experience common age-related ailments like insomnia, joint pain or a slowed metabolism, there's one exercise than can help with it all: Pilates.
Improve Sleep & Lower Stress
A study has shown that people who attended two one-hour Pilates classes per week for 12 weeks experienced better sleep. This can be attributed to both the exercise and the mindfulness that's required when practicing Pilates.
Pilates is often described as mindful movement or meditation. Life often creates a myriad of distractions and leaves you running on auto-pilot, which can be exhausting and stressful over an extended period of time. Pilates at places like Sculpt New York LLC requires thought and concentration on everything you do while performing the exercises: your posture, movement, breathing, and how all of it makes you feel.
While many people think that meditation is something you do by sitting quietly and thinking of nothing, another form exists where you focus only on what you're doing right at that moment. You don't think about what you have to do next, pending deadlines, or other stressors. Pilates achieves this same focus while you exercise, and can reduce stress, helping you to sleep better at night.
Lose Weight & Raise Your Metabolism
A common complaint of growing older is that your metabolism slows down, resulting in weight gain, and it becomes harder to maintain muscle mass. Pilates revolves around the concept of building long, lean muscle mass that doesn't look bulky. While you're maintaining and strengthening your muscles, you'll also raise your resting metabolism, which means you'll be burning extra calories even when you're not exercising.
Pilates also trains you to be mindful of how use your muscles no matter what you're doing: by maintaining better posture, you'll be actively using your muscles all day long and helping to keep them strong.
Reduce Pain
Joseph Pilates, the founder of Pilates, once said he had never needed to take an aspirin in his life after creating his exercise program. Pilates can potentially reduce your pain and lower or eliminate your need for pain-relieving medication.
Pilates is a low-impact method of exercise that's great for staying in shape if you're already experiencing joint pain. In addition, it can actually help to potentially reduce your joint pain and inflammation.
As you continue your Pilates practice, it'll tone the muscles and tendons surrounding your joints, which will help to support the joint. It can also potentially help to reduce the pain associated with osteoarthritis: as the muscles supporting the joint become stronger, they gently pull the bones apart from each other, reducing friction and pain.
Pilates is a natural, gentle way to strengthen your body and improve your quality of life no matter what your age. Whether you want to reduce pain, increase strength or maintain a sleek physique, a regular Pilates exercise program can help.
Share