Pilates for rehabilitation.
A lot of factors contribute to muscle imbalance in your body: posture, the way you walk, sit, bend, sleep, run or work out. All of these play a huge role in muscle imbalance. Our muscles tend to weaken over a span of time due to inefficient movement or due to a sudden change to the body. Ultimately this inefficient movement of muscles can lead to muscle imbalance.
Because of the imbalance in the muscles, our bodies tend to be more susceptible to injuries. For example, much of the impact experienced during a motor vehicle accident (MVA) can put immense amounts of pressure on the spine, which can lead to muscle pulls, strains or worse injuries.
As a physiotherapist, I have had many dealings with individuals who have been involved in MVAs, but have found that using individualized Pilates programs has time and time again shown to help bring them back to their baseline function.
More than just a regular exercise, clinical Pilates is recommended by many other health professionals for rehabilitation treatment after an injury.
The success of Pilates as a recovery treatment is due to its method of incorporating factors like core strength, good control, and balanced musculature. Pilates workouts focus mainly on the flexibility of your spine and motion. Pilates also compels us to pay more attention to our posture while performing various activities and other motions to avoid injuries in the future.
Pilates focuses on the basic aspects like strength, concentration, centering, control, precision, fluidity, breathing and flow which has made it successful in the clinical setting. However, no matter where you perform Pilates, these factors remain the same and help develop and strengthen your body.
An efficient Pilates workout provides a higher degree of flexibility compared to other conventional therapy options and can be altered based on the person’s ability and comfort level.
It has become a great tool for rehabilitation from an injury because of its ability to promote agility and good postural control by strengthening your core, and it helps create spinal and pelvic control.
It’s this ability to individualize exercises and movements as a physiotherapist that has allowed me to work successfully with all of my patients.
So if you have an injury, don’t think that you can’t do Pilates. Make sure you get clearance from your doctor, but there’s probably still a lot you can do!
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