Pilates is an increasingly-popular form of exercise designed to strengthen the “core,” or abdominal and back muscles, which many fitness-wannabes forget in their focus on fitter hearts and bigger biceps.
First introduced to this country in the 1920s by its inventor, Joseph Pilates, a German boxer, the technique involves working out on mats or on specially-designed equipment. It’s kind of a combination of the deep, focused breathing and meditative focus of yoga plus the challenge of doing abdominal exercises over and over.
“It’s excellent. It really strengthens the core,” said Miriam Nelson, an exercise physiologist at Tufts University. “It focuses more on strength and muscular endurance than aerobics. It’s also a good complement to weight training.”
But finding a good Pilates teacher can be tricky.
“There are huge injury issues from poorly-trained instructors who don’t know what they don’t know,” said Kevin Bowen, chief executive officer of the Pilates Method Alliance, a non-profit group based in Miami.
There are many different schools of Pilates and vastly different levels of training – in some cases, just a weekend workshop. So far, there is no national certification system, although Bowen’s group is trying to do just that.
In the meantime, it pays to ask your potential Pilates teacher how long they have trained and how much teaching experience they have. You should also shop around for a teacher, said Kathy Van Patten [cq], a Pilates teacher who runs BodyWorks Studios in Boston. “Go to different classes and different studios and see which teacher you connect with.”