Get those legs ready to rock ‘n roll that summer wardrobe!!
Posts Tagged ‘pilates’
Butt Bra? 7Live Appearance 4.25.12
Saturday, April 28th, 2012 by KarenaDesk Workout for Strong Summertime Legs: Healthy Your Way to Sexy Series
Saturday, March 24th, 2012 by KarenaAnother desk workout for you. This one is for getting your legs ready for all those itty bitties that we love to wear when the weather turns steaming hot. Short Shorts?? HA! Bring ‘em on!
Better Butt Desk Workout: Healthy Your Way to Sexy Series.
Wednesday, March 21st, 2012 by KarenaFilmed this the other day in a friend’s kitchen. Do it now, it’s only five minutes. AND your short shorts will thank YOU!
Mary Bowen Interview
Wednesday, March 21st, 2012 by KarenaJungian Psychoanalyst and Pilates elder, Mary Bowen, joined us on March 14th to share her wisdom and joy of 82 years. Listen to the entire show or enjoy a few of the quotes from the show below.
I want to hear the entire show>
Quotes from Mary during the show:
“Happy habitation in the body.”
“More spine, less mind; more experience, less performance.”
“Things that are wrong with the body challenge us to change them.”
“You have to be your own true self, you can’t be a clone. That’s your journey.”
“Sensations teach us. The things that are wrong with us teach us cause we’re challenged to change that”
Quotes about the show:
“It was marvellous,could have listened for hours! Thank you!”– @HartPilates
“OMG awesome 
I was scribbling notes, but can we listen again?”–@DianeMulholland
“I heard a few minutes. Amazing!! I can’t wait to hear the entire thing.”– @PolasPilates
“This is like when u go to church and u r sure the message was just for you”–@PilatesLounge
How to do Pilates exercise for Multiple Sclerosis and Muscular Dystrophy
Monday, August 22nd, 2011 by KarenaIt’s funny how certain types of problems show up in the studio in waves. My most recent wave has been severe muscular degeneration in the form of multiple sclerosis and muscular dystrophy. With both scenarios it was, first, important for me to explain to my clients that exercise is not going to return strength to the muscles that have been affected by the disease. What we can do is strengthen the muscles that are not affected and increase coordination in those muscles as well.
And the coordination will be key. Coordination in the small musculature so that the body’s muscles can work together synergistically and effectively is a component that is lost whenever there is an injury. To return coordination to some of those small muscles in the case of severe muscular degeneration will be even more valuable.
Here’s the video with one of my favorite exercises for muscle loss. Let me know if you have any questions. Karena
How to do Pilates exercise for Multiple Sclerosis and Muscular Dystrophy
Back Hurts When You Sit?
Thursday, September 16th, 2010 by KarenaAs far as I can tell that is the best kind of back pain to have. Lucky you!
In very broad terms, I see two
Many happy hours sitting at the computer can make for a very sad spine.
types of back pain clients: The first has increased pain when they are still, especially sitting, and the second group has increased pain when they are moving. In both scenarios great improvement can be made to pain levels but, generally, the first responds most quickly to therapeutic exercise or pilates exercise.
If you feel pain when you are sitting but feel relief when you get up and walk around the fix is pretty obvious: Move more. As a rule, even painful joints have pain-free ranges of motion. Maybe your back hurts when you do ‘X’ but you can still do ‘Y’ and ‘Z’. That’s very common, so be sure to continue to do ‘Y’ and ‘Z’. The importance of moving, moving, moving is in this short little note. Take a peek if you haven’t seen it already.
I had a frustrated client today. He said: ‘Exercise isn’t going to change the fact that I have a bone spur or how the bone spur pushes on the nerve and hurts like heck.’ I agree on Part I: Your bone spur will not be affected by exercise except that it may not get larger if your alignment is corrected. I don’t agree with Part II: That exercise won’t change the pain you feel from the bone spur pressing on a nerve. When did your pain get bad? Six months or 2 years ago? And when did you develop that bone spur? Probably long before that. If we age inactively then the muscles supporting the area around the injury (the bone spur, in this example) become weak and offer less support in a position of great compression (sitting).
Get exercising. Get stronger. Lose the pain. If you can walk without limping, take short walks that don’t flare up your back muscles and then find a few toning exercises to take care of your weak spine muscles and butt muscles.
Use the navigating tabs to the left to go to find free exercises for back pain: Look up Back Pain Series 1-8. Also, our DVD for exactly the issue of weak spines can be found under the store tab on this site. Please let me know if you have any questions!
Stand Up Straight! It’s Better than the Gym
Tuesday, September 14th, 2010 by KarenaI had two new clients today. I spent almost the entire hour with each of them working on standing up
Typical Sway Back Posture
straight. Both of them are post-rehabilitative clients that are coming to me for pain relief so there is no way of moving them forward without getting their alignment pretty close to perfect.
It is impossible to retrain any muscle if it is already too long or too short because of poor posture. For example, using the picture of a typical sway back posture to the right, the pectorals (chest muscles), the gluteals (tushie muscles) and the upper trapezius (back of the neck) are all going to be tight. And even though they are tight, they won’t be strong.
Also, using the picture can you determine which muscles are going to be over-stretched? The hip flexors (fronts of the hips), the abdominals, the lower trapezius and rhomboids (mid-back muscles) and the scalenes or the muscles at the front of the neck will all be over-stretched and saggy and weak.
So what is working to keep this woman vertical? This posture, along with other poor postures, pretty much allows one body structure to rest on top of the next without much muscular support. What happens to the muscles if you pull the alignment back where it should be? The short, tight muscles are lengthened and stretched. The over-stretched, weak muscles strengthen. In fact, the two women I worked with today had this sway back posture that we are talking about and after working on the improved alignment for just 5 minutes they both complained of muscles fatigue in their spinal muscles. Very normal. Those muscles will strengthen quickly and they won’t feel that muscle fatigue for long.
A quick word about the abs before I have to exit to wrangle a couple of dogs… In all poor postures, the abdominals are generally saggy and weak. While we have a nice bony structure towards the back of our torsos, the abdominal muscles are entirely responsible for keeping the fronts of our torsos intact (read: holding your guts in). Your tummy will be flatter with better posture because you actually made room for your organs by standing up straight. If you aren’t standing up straight, there is nothing holding your guts in.
The moral of the story? Stand up straight. When facing side to the mirror your ear should be in line with your shoulder, which is in line with the hip, which is in line with the ankle. No crazy curves with hips and spine and chin breaking that nice straight alignment. And then…. Suck in your guts. Literally.