Best Pilates Warm up

I’d like to share with all of you the breakdown of the warm-up exercises each student gets before heading onto the workout at the studio.  I absolutely love this warm-up.  It’s a wonderful wake-up call to the whole body.  And it covers all the bases: flexion, extension, twisting, glut and hamstring work, long back muscle work and, of course, ab work.

There are seven exercises in total. TAKE YOUR TIME AND READ THROUGH ALL THE TEXT BEFORE YOU BEGIN EACH EXERCISE.  Like reading a recipe for the first time – you want to read through it before you start the process of cooking.

START WITH THE FIRST EXERCISE AND WORK YOUR WAY THROUGH EACH ONE SLOWLY.  You don’t have to do all seven right off the bat.  Take your time with each one and learn each one fully.

I’ll post each exercise, in it’s order, one by one.  So, here’s the first exercise:

THE PLANKS – side plank and front plank

I do the planks first because I want the WHOLE body to work in a unified way.

Let’s begin:

SIDE PLANK: laying on your right side, come up onto your elbow, making sure shoulder and elbow are aligned, and elbow and wrist aligned –  palm facing up.

Feet actively flexed, one on top of the other, raise side body up into a diagonal alignment (meaning ankle, hip, shoulder and ear should be in one long diagonal line).  Hold the position for 10 seconds.  Think of your body as long, holding your core muscles in and thinking of your back muscles as lengthening.  Make sure your head stays in line with your spine.  Breathe naturally.

side plank

From there, without letting your hips come down (if you can), roll to the  FRONT PLANK.  Again, make sure your shoulders and elbows and wrists are in alignment with palms facing up (this is helpful in recruiting your shoulder blades back).  Make sure your ankles, hips and shoulder girth are in alignment.  Heels together, toes apart.  Squeeze the inner thighs. Watch that your hips don’t rise higher then the rest of the body.  Hold the position for 10 seconds.  Breathe naturally.

front plank

Then simply turn to the left side plank and hold that position for 10 seconds. Breathe naturally.

Here’s a modified version if the the original version is a bit difficult:

modified version of side plank

INSIDE SCOOP:  The Plank exercises effectively fire up the transverse abdominal muscles and the all important multifidus muscles.  Think of a corset around the waist.