How Pilates Shapes the Body

Pilates is a very popular and interesting form exercise that focuses on strengthening the body with a concentration on a person’s core. Similar to Yoga, Pilates is based on posture, balance and flexibility, which helps to improve general fitness and overall well-being. The chance of injury is much lower in Pilates than it is with other more aggressive forms of exercise.

Shape Your Body with Pilates

Additionally, Pilates focuses on the connection of mind and body. Your mind is meant to be constantly aware of your breathing technique, paired with the way your body moves while doing the various exercises. What is even more interesting, however, is how Pilates shapes the body.

Pilates is meant to help make you lean. The exercises aren’t meant to bulk you up, rather, to help lengthen your body and tone small muscles in your body. Pilates exercises lessen the bulk that other methods help build you out. And instead of only targeting single muscle groups, like what is done in conventional forms of weight training, Pilates creates less stress or excessive-training of single muscle groups.

Pilates is also meant to lengthen your muscles and make you look and feel taller. This has to do with how your posture changes through the use of your core muscles. Pilates helps to create that long, lean look that many of us yearn to have.

Did you know stress affects the body, too? Another way how Pilates shapes the body is by reducing stress dramatically, which lowers the cortisol levels in your body and that translates to less belly fat that is stored in your waistline. When people are stressed, the cortisol, which is a hormone, is released through the body and stores fat in the abdomen. Pilates decreases cortisol in the body which means less is released into your system, and therefore, you’ll have less belly fat.

Pilates also focuses on using your core for most of the exercises. Again, Pilates isn’t intended to bulk you up, so this doesn’t mean you’ll develop a 12 pack stomach, but instead, it will help you with better posture, strengthen your back, give you amazing abs, and it will reshape your entire body.

Overall, Pilates is quite possibly one of the safest forms of exercise you can do that brings results. How Pilates shapes the body is by repairing muscles through the simple, easy, fluid movements it offers. This helps to reduce inflammation and stress to the muscles, and additionally, it prevents cramps as well!