As any sports expert will tell you, warming up is one of the most important parts of your training. By warming up, you prepare your body to face the physical activity you are about to do. Today, almost all of us follow a sedentary lifestyle. This means that most of the time is spent sitting and that we move rather little. When we go from practically no activity to physical activity, our body undergoes a great effort. What you need to understand is that most of our muscles are cold and haven’t done any work all day. In this way, through the warm-up we manage to activate each and every one of the parts of our body. When our muscles have warmed up correctly, they are much more flexible and less rigid and this helps us not to hurt ourselves even if we force them during the training of our favorite sport.
Warm-ups before Pilates are very important. Most Pilates exercises involve a lot of endurance and flexibility work. When we work on our flexibility with cold muscles, two pretty negative things happen. The first is that we are less flexible. In this way, you will notice that it is more difficult for you to do the work and you will feel very rigid. On the other hand, when you try to force your muscles to become more flexible, you may end up injuring yourself. For both reasons, it is important to warm up and stretch very well before our Pilates training.
If you wish, you can access our main Pilates category and if you want to know more about how to warm up before doing Pilates, pay close attention to the instructions below.
What do you need to warm up before doing Pilates?
- Yoga mat
- Comfortable sportswear
Instructions for warming up before Pilates
- The first thing you should do is try to mobilize your whole body. In this way, it is advisable that before doing your Pilates practice you walk for a while at a brisk pace. This will get your blood circulation moving and reaching all parts of your body. With an exercise as simple as this, you will notice how your body temperature rises slightly.
- Once you’ve managed to activate your blood circulation and wake up your body, it’s a good idea to start working all your joints. The best thing to do is to start by making small rotational movements that involve the various parts of your body. If you don’t want to forget anywhere, you can start from the highest point and work your way down. This will start by warming up your neck while making gentle turns with your head. Then you will go on to perform them with your shoulders, elbows and wrists, then with your hips and finally with your legs, knees and ankles. If you’ve noticed, what you’ve done so far is to mobilize all parts of your body. Right now, you should feel warmth in all of your extremities.
- Now that you have managed to mobilize and involve all parts of your body in the warm-up, it is advisable to do a few stretches. You don’t need to insist too much on this point because throughout your Pilates session you will go deeper into the practice of flexibility. Therefore, do some very gentle stretches that prepare your body for what it is going to do next.
- Finally, you should remember not to push yourself too hard during your warm-up. You don’t need to be out of breath, in fact this would even be counterproductive.
Tips for warming up before Pilates
- Don’t neglect stretching. There is a belief, totally wrong, that Pilates is a very gentle sport that requires little effort. Pilates, as you will undoubtedly know if you have tried the sport on any occasion, is a sport that requires great physical preparation. Relaxation and flexibility are two of the most important points in Pilates. If you try to push your flexibility limits without warming up and stretching beforehand, you’ll most likely end up hurting yourself. Remember that a good warm-up doesn’t have to take you more than ten. You won’t waste too much time and your training will be much more efficient and effective.