Jyoti Pilates Blog

Saturday 15th Oct 2022, 11am - 1pm £22

Studio G25, St Margarets House, 151 London Road, Edinburgh, EH7 6AE

The role of Pilates in a strength training programme 

As we age, we lose strength and muscle mass, along with bone density. Each decade after the age of 30 we can lose up to 8% of strength, and bone loss begins from age 35-40. Simultaneously, our fat burning mechanisms are less efficient. 

Therefore, it becomes increasingly important to exercise in a way that will not only maintain bone, muscle and strength, but also help to build them; such as a programme that includes properly performed strength and resistance training, alongside movements that build bone density. 

You can’t lift weights without stability, mobility and “core” strength. Proprioception, the ability to sense where your limbs are in space and in relation to each other, is also key, and finally you need correct alignment and technique. These are all fundamental principles of Pilates, and are essential when adding weight to a movement in order to work effectively and avoid injury. 

If you are new to resistance training, and adding weight, you need to build up to it slowly, and this 2-hour workshop will be an introduction as to how to do this safely.  

We will begin with joint mobility and tissue prep work, which are essential to warm up, and then look at alignment and technique. 

We will then explore adding load to exercises with resistance bands and light weights, and learn exercise techniques that help to build bone. We will finish with a stretching sequence, essential after resistance work to ease muscle aches and keep tissues healthy. 

This workshop is suitable for all levels of Pilates experience, and whether you are already familiar with, or new to working with weights. Note we will NOT be lifting heavy weights! 

Workshop Saturday 25th November 11am - 1pm

St. Margarets House, £20

Fresh. Whole. Varied.  All words you might associate with a healthy food diet, but they also apply to healthy movement.  So if your daily movement diet involved walking, running, squatting, climbing, swimming, carrying loads, swinging, fighting, always facing the unpredictable and centred around finding your next meal, Pilates was probably not so essential! Although I’m sure Fred would have loved a Spine Curl…

To achieve and maintain your full movement potential, what you do outside your weekly Pilates class  - your daily habits - are fundamental.  For example, sitting on the ground in different positions, a natural human thing to do, may have become uncomfortable and difficult if it is no longer one of your habits.  This is where Pilates can help.

This 2 hour workshop will explore exercises that enable you to gain the stability, control, strength, awareness and flexibility to move more fully, in lots of different, and new ways.  We will release and stretch areas of tension that might be inhibiting full range of movement.  Alongside some Pilates favourites, expect the unexpected as we put our Pilates to functional practice with movements that are fun, sometimes challenging and very different to your usual class. (Making flints not compulsory!)  This workshop is suitable for all levels.

This 2 hour workshop will explain what good alignment is, look at how you can assess and check it in your own body, and learn how to recognise when you are in (and out!) of it.  We will look at some of the exercises we frequently do in Pilates, and see how these movements are also excellent tools to help you find good alignment and set yourself up in the correct starting position for other exercises (particularly useful if you practise at home). Then we will work on releases and gentle stretches for areas of commonly held tension in the body, that may be keeping you out of good alignment, such as in the neck, shoulders, back, hip flexors, hamstrings, calves and feet.  The workshop is suitable for everyone, whether you have done one Pilates class or 1000!

Cost: £20

Book through booking link on website.

Alignment is one of the key principles of Pilates, and correct alignment is not only fundamental to gaining results from your Pilates class or other exercise routine, but is essential to the optimal functioning of all of the systems of the body.