Female weightlifter here, 5’6″, about 150 pounds. Weights have been my constant companion for a few years now, and I isolated myself from other types of exercising thinking them as “inferior” and “less effective”.
Enter Pilates. The stretching, the different foot placement, the tiny changes in the movements, the constant core tension, the INTERNAL core tension. Let’s all throw our heads back now and laugh at how stupid I was before, but then again maybe we shouldn’t because we might strain our necks and you definitely want to stay away from that.
I’ll be completely honest. Pilates is not the only way I would exercise, but it’s IMPERATIVE to keeping your posture perfect, keeping you limber, and aligning your entire body properly. EVERYBODY NEEDS THIS. I NEED IT. YOU NEED IT.
I’m not yelling at you, I’m yelling TO you. After only a few weeks of training and constant reminders to brace my core, and to keep my shoulders down and back, I feel better DURING lifting. Certain exercises are automatically smoother, and there is a lot less tension in my traps (which for me is huge because that happens to be my biggest problem area).
Imagine this: you’re a male bodybuilder, maybe 6 feet tall, 240 pounds or so and your lats and arms are too big for elbows to touch behind your back, and you can barely touch your toes. Maybe you do RDL’s and you can bend lower, maybe you can’t. We will physically stretch you, we put you in straps so you can assist your own stretches and we do exercises that lengthen your body and spine. I can’t stress how much looser you will feel, how much lighter (you’re not losing muscle mass so calm down)and how much better overall you will feel afterwards.