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So the core in pilates, quite often people think of the core and they think of just their
stomach muscles. In actual fact it's the abdominal muscles, your stomach muscles, the diaphragm,
which is a muscle, the pelvic floor and the back muscles, multifidus and eretor spinae,
and they form a kind of cylinder around our trunk. And the idea is you have a strong centre,
everything else will be flowing and moving correctly.
So we're first going to look at the pelvic floor and how to contract the pelvic floor.
It's kind of like the pilot light on a boiler, really important to have a good functioning
pelvic floor.
So you're going to place your hands onto your hips, your fingertips nice and low, neutral
spine, neutral pelvis, lateral breathing, take a nice breath in and as you breathe out
contract the pelvic floor muscles in between the thighs and in between the *** bone and
the coccyx tailbone. You want to feel like it's gathering together and slightly up. Breath
in to release.
And you want to try and make sure it's nice and slow and controlled, like a sponge soaking
up water. And as you do this, quite common when people start out, they start to engage
other big global muscles like the buttocks, inner thighs, quads, maybe even their shoulders.
You've got to isolate and just try and find this area quite low down.
Again it might help you to close your eyes. So in this video you won't see me actually
contracting. You won't know that I'm doing it. Very much internal feeling.