Great question. What is the difference between Pilates and yoga? While both are wonderful and have great benefits to them? There are definite differences with yoga, is more of a spiritual component, whereas, with Pilates. It's more of a conditioning program. The second thing is, what happens with the spine in Pilates. We have classic exercises like the role of where we do segmental articulation of the spine, whereas in yoga is more of a linear pattern with the spine, it would be, you're hinging a lot more from the hips like and On the third reason and why? I'm in the Pilates studio today is to show you that there is equipment with Pilates. There are what we call the reformer, and with the reformer, there's spring tension that you load the machine with. And what I find is that with spring tension, you can boost your strength much quicker than with bodyweight on the mat. So I hope that helps clear up what the differences are. Those are my three favorites.

Okay. The question is, what is the best way to buy bfr bands? So just in case you're not sure what bfr is Blood Flow. Restriction is what GFR is and we do Blood Flow Restriction Training here at my facility and Beverly Massachusetts, the best bands on the market I believe for Fitness are be strong and you can purchase the band's directly from be strong.com or you can get them from me. I'll just give you a quick glimpse of what they look like. So the band's come with both. And a lower body. If you're doing full body training and they come with a pump them up, then you do your workout, it's a great workout. If you have any questions about what the f are is just let me know and I can answer that for you.

Okay, great question. Do you need equipment to do Pilates? Well, you don't. However, the equipment does get you stronger so much quicker and it can actually make you stronger at the map based work that you do. In fact, Joseph Pilates designed the equipment so that his dancers his athletes could get stronger when they were doing their map based work or their functional work order their dance and performance so that they have Stephanie's show you what the differences are, okay? So maybe a couple of little demonstration, Striations today. Okay, Stephanie is going to show you the roll up so she's not using the equipment, although she is lying on the equipment's, which is going to articulate her spine and roll all the way up. So, show the roll up Stephanie. So she's rolling through the spine articulating, the spine coming all the way up and over. And then, as she starts to go down, you'll see she's going to roll through her spine articulating. Now, she's quite good at this. Maybe another person might have a little bit of a difficult time and that's where the equipment comes in. So roll all the way up again. Stephanie, and then she's going to show you. In What's called the Trap table, the trapeze table, or the Cadillac how she can use the roll down bar, on the table, to facilitate that articulation through the spine, social inhale to prepare press down, slightly through the bar and get that activation of the back of the body. And then she'll start to articulate and use the spring-loaded bar to help her control her rolling down now, what's really wonderful as she starts to come up? The spring tension is going to help her facilitate that articulation through the spine. And as she comes all the way up and over and then stack your spine, back up, beautiful. Another piece of equipment is the stability chair. So she's sitting on the top of the chair and she's going to press the pedal down, which is spring loaded. And this is going to strengthen her especially at the hip joints, the ankles, and the knees. And meanwhile, she's having to maintain really good upright posture while doing the exercise so you can see, she's doing a great job at that. But if she were new at this, it would be a real challenge for her to be able to To maintain that core stability so we utilize the breath for that beautifully done. Okay this is the classic piece of equipment called the reformer and now with Stephanie's doing this. She's doing footwork which is exactly what she was doing. While she was on the chair only now she's lying down so you can see that could help somebody who perhaps didn't have the core strength to stay seated and also her legs are able to now fully elongate

Okay, how do I get started doing Pilates? Should I do a group class or should I do a private one-on-one session? That's a great question. But my first suggestion would be to be sure that your instructor whomever's teaching. You has been trained by a reputable organization that they've done their pilates training by a reputable organization. That's the most important thing you want to be sure. You're in really good hands. When you're doing this work Group Training is a lot of fun, and it's a great entry point. Maybe it's where you start just to see if even Like Pilates. However, if you're looking to work on a particular goal, or you have some possible concerns or maybe even coming out of an injury than a private one-on-one session would be the way to go the instructor when they're well-trained, will put you through an analysis, perhaps a static analysis of your posture, a movement analysis of your movement of your body and then develop some programming specific to. You, whichever it is get started. It's a great way to get you that inner core strength. And to develop that mind-body connection.

Okay, so great question. I get these kinds of questions a lot. And this time of the year, what is the best way to gain muscle and lose weight, TRX or cycling? They're both very different TRX is using your body weight. It's the straps that hang from Anchor Point, that uses your body weight for for training, whether you were trying to build muscle or to gain Mobility to your ex's, absolute wonderful for that. And then some cycling is a great cardiovascular exercise and you do spill some his leg strength for that. Depending on how much resistance you have if you're climbing, or if you're spinning, right? So they're both very different ones more. Cardiovascular ones, more strength and Mobility oriented, and it takes a combination of that, plus diet. If you want to lose weight, you can't really just exercise to lose weight. Oftentimes, it's what you're putting in your body for fuel that will determine whether or not you're going to lose the calories or burn enough calories. To compensate for the amount of food that you eat the. So it's really not as simple as that. I think doing resistance training is super important and TRX is a wonderful tool for that and riding a bike is a lot of fun and it does build a solid heart and gets the calories burnt. So I hope that helps you and keep the questions coming.

Can I discuss the role of breath and pilates and how it can enhance the benefits of the practice? We use our breath to engage our deep core musculature, transversus abdominus. The deepest of our for abdominal muscles, generates its energy from oxygen. So we want to use that breath to get the right level of Engagement. Let's try that now, place your hands on your belly and just let it be very soft, won't you take a breath in through the nose and then exhale, through the mouth? a mouth and just start to draw the skin away from your And do that again, take a breath in through the nose as you exhale, like you're blowing out a birthday candle to start to feel that abdominal wall flat. Now test that, can you maintain that connection on your next? Inhale if you had trouble you may have been going to deepen your engagement of your muscles so that breath can allow us to have that understanding of what degree of Engagement we want to have. The thing I think about is the movement of the rib cage. When we have the best optimal movement of the ribcage, we get the best exchange of gases O2, in CO2 out. So imagine these bottom ribs, they're like the handles on the shopping baskets, the supermarkets or like bucket handles, you want them to lift and lower on your breath, place your hands on your bottom ribs here as you inhale, start to feel the ribs lift up and then exhale close down. And it now I'm not lifting and lowering my shoulders. I'm Just feeling that movement of the rib cage. Also, we never think about breathing. We take 20,000 breaths a day. We never think about them. Once we do, we're making that connection between mind and body. So asking yourself questions like, where does my breath originated from my shoulders, my belly. What is the quality of my breath? Is it flowing? Is it stuck when we can answer those questions and then make changes? We're going to enhance our practice. Yeah.