Pregnancy Pilates
During pregnancy, your core requires greater stabilisation due to the changes in your posture, weight, and center of balance. Creating strength in your core muscles, transverse abdominis (deep abdominal muscles), pelvic floor, and multifidus will help to reduce some of the excessive pressure on surrounding joints, muscles, and bones.
In Pregnancy Pilates we concentrate more on the deeper core muscles. Pilates workouts uses a sequence of exercises to work with these deep core muscles.
As your pregnancy progresses, the muscles that make-up your core become stressed and extremely challenged. During and after pregnancy there is a great need to strengthen and retrain these areas.
You can start Pilates at any piont in your pregnancy and it doesn't matter if you've never done it before. It's never too late to join.
As a qualified prenatal Pilates instructor, pregnant ladies are more than welcome to join any of my classes. All exercises can be modified and adpated to suit you through each stage of your pregnancy.
The benefits
Abdominal strength
Helps to reduce abdominal seperation
Abdominal strength
Pregnancy Pilates increases abdominal strength, thus providing support for the weight of the uterus and baby, and acting as a splint for the spine, by helping to keep it in a neutral position.
Aids childbirth
Helps to reduce abdominal seperation
Abdominal strength
Pregnancy Pilates aids childbirth by making the pelvic floor muscles stronger and giving you the mum, greater body awarness so that you can focus on this area.
Helps to reduce abdominal seperation
Helps to reduce abdominal seperation
Helps to reduce abdominal seperation
Pilates workouts creates stronger, toned abdominal muscles that are less likely to separate severely. Also, in stronger abdominals, if separation occurs, muscles will realign more quickly. Severe seperation means less support for the spine and probable back pain.
Good posture
Breathing in labour
Helps to reduce abdominal seperation
Pilates promotes good posture and strong core strength, which help to control the amount of pelvic tilt. Excessive pelvic tilt can create posture problems and lower back pain, so pregnancy pilates will help.
Relaxation
Breathing in labour
Breathing in labour
Regular pregnancy Pilates can aid relaxation, improve sleep, and help to increase energy levels. Pilates workouts will help circulation and help prevent varicose veins and leg cramps.
Breathing in labour
Breathing in labour
Breathing in labour
The emphasis on breathing in Pilates can help with breathing in labour and can reduce shortness of breath during pregnancy.
Postnatal Pilates
Pilates during pregnancy is important to help sustain a healthy lifestyle, help prepare for labour and delivery, and help reduce some of the negative side effects that can come with pregnancy. But, you Pilates journey shouldn't end once baby has been worn. There are loads of benefits of postnatal Pilates that can help you in your role as a mum.
Pilates is a great exercise type to help ease you back into exercise. It also targets the weakened abdomen and mobilises the spine to help with posture.
Pilates helps to strengthen the pelvic floor muscles. Your midwife will tell you to do your pelvic floor exercise, but they never teach you HOW to do them or WHY you should them.
The pelvic floor muscles is a collection of muscles that sits in the base of your pelvis and suppports your uterus, bladder and bowel. The pelvic floor muscle oftern loosed during pregnancy and birth due to the hormonal changes in the body and the increased pressure on the muscles from the growning baby. Having a weak pelvic floor can cause women to leak urine when they cough, sneeze, laugh and exercise.
Postnatal Pilates can help to strength the pelvic floor by teaching you how to reconnect and engage your pelvic floor in the correct way. Your pelvic floor is a muscle and its important to learn how to contract it and to fully release it.
Postnatal Pilates can help with Diastasis Recti, which is when the linea alba seperates the sides of your rectus abdominis, or 6 pack muscles, due to the force of a growing womb. This is completely normal. More often than not, the stomach muscles and tone around the linea alba returns to normal after you have given birth. Postnatal PIlates can help prevent and recover from Diastasis Recti.
