Do you need equipment to do Pilates?
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
Intl. Master Pilates, Mind Body Educator & Author