You spend all that time and money with your Pilates teacher weekly, right?  Whether privately, in a semi-private or in a group mat class.  You love how you feel when you leave the studio or class, right?    You believe in the work and see what it has done to your body, then why not take the principles of the workout with you onto the gym floor the next time you go there?

Who said Pilates could only be done on the floor on a mat?   What stops you from using your powerhouse everytime you sit at a piece of equipment?  what prevents you from “lifting in and up” everytime you use the Lat Pulldown or Cables for Tricep Presses?  Why can’t you breathe through the “back ribs” when you inhale and melt over that stability ball or when you are doing Lateral Shoulder Raises anyway?

Nothing stops you.  Nothing but the mindset that one activity belongs in one place and the other in another.

As a Pilates Instructor and a Personal Fitness Trainer/Instructor, I am concious of queing and coaching all my clients – whether they know Pilates or not – men and women alike – to use and engage their core structure, their powerhouse, the abdominals before making any movement with a piece of equipment, dumbbell weight, resistance band, etc.

Yes the specific exercises of the Pilates method are distinctive.  Yes, the names of the Pilates exercises, whether found on the mat or any of the studio apparatus are distinct and memorable and yes, they move the body through a set of fluid, flowing motions while resisting against a stable position.

In the case of Pilates, we refer to this stable position as the “powerhouse,” defined as the imaginary box drawn between your right and left shoulder and right and left hip points.

It is this stable position, from deep inside the abdominal core, that all the exercises inside the gym must and should also emante.  Generally, I find that newcomers to the gym, as well as many old “hardheads” approach the equipment just to move thru pushing or pulling the weights without giving any conscious attention  to abdominal engagement, stabililty, balance or even use of their breath to facilitate the movement of the body or the weights.

By employing the classic principles of Pilates,

• control - of the movement of the exercise, the muscle involved within the exercise and transitions to the next exercise.
• concentration – bringing full attention, focus and commitment to the exercise; eliminating the extraneous details and chatter, thus maximizing the value achieved with each rep and movement.
• centering – bringing a centered focus to the core powerhouse as well as one’s body in space.
• precision - focused attention to the precise placement, alignment and movement of the body.
• breath – use of the breath to faciliate and/or challenge the movement of the body.

I have noticed, as have many of my clients, (whether they know Pilates or not) a Pilates-inspired workout has slowed them down enough to bring a consciousness to their workout, their body and the results they want to achieve in the gym.

Applying Pilates grace and focus in the gym amounts to true integrated, functional core strength training.  But that is what Joseph was really developing anyway on very different apparatus when he created the Pilates method.

Summary

I have found, as have many of my clients, that an pilates-applied approach within the gym may completely eliminate the need for spending the last few minutes of the workout hour on the floor doing abdominal exercises.  For enagagement of the powerhouse with control, focus and stability throughout the entire gym workout will yield an hour long abdominal workout that is far more effective than a brief “hit it and quit it” generally used in the last 15 minutes for most of us on the floor.