„Stretch your legs fully“

Why do I say this so often in the class?

  • Knee is an extremely important joint in our body and we want to maintain its mobility.
  • When leg muscles such as hamstrings and calfs are tight – because of disuse, sedentary lifestyles or poor posture —you’re not able to fully extend your leg and straighten your knee, and your walking (and running) stride may be shortened and less powerful
  • Further, inflexible hamstrings have been implicated in chronic low back pain, because they change the tilt of the pelvis
  • And for anyone who plays sports or works out, tight muscles may contribute to muscle strains, knee pain, and diminished performance because the muscles aren’t able to fully extend. 

Pilates exercises require you to stretch your knees (“extend your knees fully”). If you cannot do it yet, it does not mean you are not fit to do Pilates – what it means is that you have one extra thing to focus on: that is on elongating your hamstrings to be able to finally STRETCH YOUR KNEES.  

How Pilates exercises help back pain relief

Most physiotherapists recommend their back pain patients are recommended to try Pilates. After speaking with many clients referred this way, I see that even if they are sent to try Pilates, they are not explained why or how Pilates help their back pain rehab, or how they go about starting a Pilates training programme.

There is tons of resources on the internet these days about Pilates for back pain but only a few of them are trying to inform instead of selling something (or asking for more clicks from you). I have found a few pages that I consider helpful and practical – these are listed below:

a simple explanation about how Pilates help back pain

intro and some good exercises

a Telegraph article by a back pain patient cured by Pilates

Good luck and stay healthy!

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone

The first time I met Kit Laughlin was at a Stretch workshop in Hong Kong in 2015.  We were seating on our yoga mats waiting for our first stretching exercise when Kit stepped inside his mat and said, this mat is the territory that your body is living in at this moment. Any attempt to take a step outside that mat-territory would bring feelings: of PAIN, or FEAR, or both. However, if you persist with that little first step out until fear and pain goes away, the body’s ‘territory’ will then EXPAND to include that new spot.

I did not go to the Stretch workshop to stretch (even though I got a really good stretch out of it). What I really wanted was to learn to expand my body’s ‘territory’, and to stretch not only my body but my mind. And this is how it happened:

Continue reading “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone”