Your Ultimate Pilates Body Challenge At the Gym, on the Mat, And on the Move

Welcome to Your Ultimate Pilates Body Challenge! As many of you know, Pilates is one of those wonderful phenomena that has broken through the surface of the collective consciousness in the last few years to emerge as a "hot new trend." Fewer people realize that Pilates brings almost one hundred years of history with it. Created by Joseph H. Pilates to strengthen his frail and sickly body, Pilates was then translated to specific apparatus to help those unable to support their own body weight. It debuted in 1920s New York City as the lengthening, strengthening, and rehabilitation secret of stars, starlets, dancers, and acrobats and then all but disappeared for the next few decades, remaining known only to the small population interested in physical fitness. Today that demographic extends to include most everyone looking for strong, long, lean muscles, inspired either by the media culture or touched by an injury. Dressed up or dressed down, at the core of the Pilates movement today still beats the heart of the Pilates of yesteryear. Designed to use the art and science of muscle control--what Joseph Pilates termed Contrology--to help you achieve the body that looks good, feels good, and sustains you for a lifetime, Pilates is ageless, colorless, and genderless; and once incorporated into your subconscious, it marries the joy of movement with the efficiency of your most challenging workout. Correctly executed and mastered to the point of subconscious reaction, these exercises will reflect grace and balance in your routine activities. Contrology exercises build a sturdy body and sound mind capable of performing everyday tasks with ease and perfection. They also provide tremendous reserve energy for sports, recreation and emergencies. (Return to Life through Contrology, Joseph H. Pilates) Many of you are old friends, readers I know from The Pilates Body. I hope, too, many of you are new friends, readers who have picked up Your Ultimate Pilates Body Challenge because you are intrigued by expanding your awareness and your body's potential. And, finally, welcome to the reader who is not yet in shape--or who was in shape and is somehow, now, mysteriously, feeling as if he or she were living in someone else's body, because I can relate! Halfway through the writing of this book, I had a baby--and suddenly became my own audience. So, as I wrote and rewrote, read and reread this book's philosophy I also relived the work from the ground up. I began writing Your Ultimate Pilates Body Challenge before I was pregnant. Why? Because I was seeing what I felt was an alarming trend. Every day I had clients coming in and doing amazing work, then abandoning basic posture and alignment before they got to the sidewalk. I began to do some research. What I discovered was a twofold problem: Clients were stagnating within their solo workout sessions, and they weren't applying what they had learned in the studio when they were off the mat. Off the mat? Yes. Because Pilates is more than the exercises performed in a studio. It's about personal responsibility, active self-care, and feeling good as you move through your day and your life. More than a series of movements, it's a philosophy and a mind-set. Because, if your brain is not active and engaged and working, it won't matter how good you look; you won't feel your best. Without your conscious brain, your body is like any piece of equipment without an owner's manual. Usable, but too often a mystery. And, as I said, I understand that feeling of mystery! After having my beautiful baby, I discovered that even though I had been physically fit, and educated, my body had become a mystery. Although I knew intellectually where I should be lifting from and which muscles I should be engaging, the communication lines between my brain and my body appeared to have been disconnected. I needed to rerSiler, Brooke is the author of 'Your Ultimate Pilates Body Challenge At the Gym, on the Mat, And on the Move', published 2005 under ISBN 9780767919821 and ISBN 0767919823.