Pilates - Exercise Therapy

Written by Julie Taylor

Pilates and your injury recovery

How does Pilates help you recover from injury?

Pilates exercises also increase core strength and stability - which is also the aim of many of the physiotherapy sessions that get you up and moving in hospital. This is a Pilates for Older Adults DVD for $12.99 with free shipping - this will last you a while and is both gentle and powerful.  ReBuildingYou depends on your support to grow - BUY HERE - the prices are exactly the same and you'll be supporting your RBY at the same time.

Pilates was developed by a man named Joseph Pilates to help World War I veterans ReBuild strength and function in their bodies after war mutilations and injuries in the trenches. The most common reason for using Pilates today is to ease back injury and to increase fitness as we age - healthy aging.

I found that these are perfect exercises to help with recovery from most forms of trauma and a good first step would be to watch the basic DVD, perhaps with your caregiver, and learn a little about the safe way to do these exercises and then actually try one or two.  Eventually you might enjoy to find a class in your neighbourhood but right now to be able to start some simple Pilates in the privacy of your own home may suit you best?   Some of the exercises are very similar to those that were taught to me by my own physiotherapist.

Read on to find out a little about simple back injury, which is often one of our challenges.  There are two types of back injury - one that seems to happen suddenly as the result of some sort of incident and the sort of decreasing function that creeps up on you gradually. Either way most of these result from loss of strength or flexibility that goes unnoticed until it becomes critical and your back can no longer cope.

Your spine is an amazing piece of precision engineering. To be strong and supple it needs all its segments (vertebrae) to move together in exactly the right way. This movement is only as effective as the core muscles that support it and when you injure your back it is often because these core muscles do not have the strength to do this. If your core strength is below par additional mechanical strain is placed on the discs that pad and connect the vertebrae whether you have an injury or not. This can in turn cause them to be compressed, bulged or torn and result in pain from pressure on nerves or inflammation from leaking disc fluids.

This forms what we call the viscous circle of back injury events:

Pilates can help you break and reverse this cycle:



Flexibility can be improved but not without improving your core stability slightly in advance of this as flexibility needs to be supported by strength if you are to avoid reinjury.  

Pilates exercises also increase core strength and stability - which is also the aim of many of the physiotherapy sessions that get you up and moving in hospital.

Happy stretching!