How To Increase Your Flexibility With Pilates

Adding Pilates to your workout routine – or simply doing Pilates as your workout routine, will increase your body’s strength and flexibility. Allowing your body to become more flexible has several benefits including better health, more muscle tone and more stamina. The more flexible your body is, the less likely you are to suffer injury during physical activities. There are several Pilates stretches you can perform to increase your flexibility, these can also have many medical benefits as well.

Wall Roll Down

This Pilates stretch is considered a great “all over” stretch, which means it stretches your entire body. Begin the stretch by opening your chest and extending your back so that it is very straight and upright. Slowly allow your body to roll down. This will in turn stretch you back, lower back, arms, legs, hamstrings and calves. This is a very powerful stretch.

Spine Stretch

This is a stretch that will allow you a moment to clear your thoughts and get ready for your Pilates routine. It will also serve as an excellent stretch for the back and hamstrings. You can perform this stretch at the beginning of your routine, or use it after the routine to help stretch your worked muscles out during warm-down.

Saw

The saw stretch, otherwise known as a “trunk” stretch, allows you to achieve a very strong opposite body stretch. In a seated position reach for one foot, then gently stretch your opposite hand and arm towards the back of your body. This creates a motion that stretches you body’s core – or trunk, and will also perform a great stretch on the hamstrings.

Mermaid Side Stretch

This is a great stretch for those who want too open-up their rib cages and side muscles some. When you reach one arm up, make sure you keep your body torso straight, as this will achieve the most pressure and stretch on your side muscles. This is a perfect stretch for opening up the flexibility of your torso.

Swan

Swan is another “all over” stretch that provides excellent counter stretch to the muscles in your body. Swan will stretch your abdominals, hip flexors, back, shoulders, inner thighs and hamstrings. This is a very popular Plates stretch and should be performed before any intense Pilate’s workout.

These are some of the more popular Pilates stretches that are used to help increase flexibility. Perhaps working with a pilates mat dvd will help you ease into these positions and strengthen your flexibility. But remember, if you feel like you can’t do the stretch, then don’t do it. You want to work-up to the place that you want to be flexibility wise. Injuring yourself by pushing the stretches too far will only set you back.

By: Mackenzie Shawn

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medical benefits, pilates mat dvd