Beautiful Bodies from Pilates
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, as Valentine’s Day approaches, you can emphasize beauty? Our schedules often get busy. In this hustle, it's too easy to let self-care routines slide. However, it doesn't have to be this way. Here's a tip: set your alarms early and prioritize your self-care before the rest of the world – your kids, your neighbors, your busy schedule – wakes up.
What are the benefits of early morning exercise? Exercising first thing in the morning offers major advantages, such as:
Improved Focus and Mental Clarity: Engaging in physical activity early in the day can boost brain function, resulting in better concentration and productivity.
Elevated Mood: Exercise releases endorphins, which can improve mood and reduce stress and anxiety, setting a positive tone for the day.
Increased Energy Levels: Regular morning workouts can lead to higher energy levels throughout the day, as opposed to feeling sluggish or tired.
Beautiful bodies from Pilates
It’s possible to strengthen, improve flexibility, and sculpt with Pilates—but as we’ll soon see, it’s typically not enough on its own to achieve significant muscle gains. At any rate, Pilates helps to maintain muscle since it’s a form of resistance training. Many Pilates exercises incorporate the full body or, at the very least, a single Pilates class will typically ensure that you work all your muscles at different times.
Still, certain muscle groups tend to take precedence. Pilates is highly focused on alignment, posture, stability, and moving with integrity, which ends up targeting the core (front and back body), glutes, and in some ways, mobility.
The Benefits of Pilates for Muscle Development
Those who are new to Pilates may find that they build muscle at the start—namely since they’ll target muscles they’re not used to activating—yet they may end up hitting a plateau without adding that extra oomph. Pilates offers countless benefits for your body—not to mention your mind, health, and overall sense of well-being. Yet in most cases, it typically won’t suffice to adequately build muscle. In order to increase muscle mass, you need to continuously level up with added resistance or weight, which involves a process called hypertrophy.
Per the National Academy of Sports Medicine, hypertrophy is “the enlargement of skeletal muscle fibers in response to being recruited to develop increased levels of tension … [which] is characterized by an increase in the cross-sectional area of individual muscle fibers resulting from an increase in myofibril proteins (myofilaments).” In simple terms, increased tension causes muscle fibers to tear, and the body will then fuse those fibers back together with new muscle cells to build muscle mass. So, unless you’re consistently increasing resistance with your Pilates regimen, you’re more likely to maintain, rather than gain, muscle.
But just because Pilates isn’t the ideal workout to build muscle, it doesn’t mean that you should skip it if you want to bulk up. In fact, Pilates offers several benefits that can complement muscle development, including:
Increased muscle strength
Improved endurance
Enhanced flexibility
Better posture and balance
Greater body awareness
These perks can facilitate longer, more effective workouts—including if you choose to do standard weightlifting—all the while providing functional benefits for your body. Sign up to get on the morning exercise benefits training!
Looking to Start Pilates Classes in the Upper East Side Area?
At ChaiseFitness, we believe that anyone can be fit—no matter what skill level or body type. This belief inspired the creation of our patented Reinvention Method, which is for everyone—the athlete, the dancer, the beginner, the advanced, the rebuilder. We blend Pilates, ballet, and strength training and equip you with a chair and overhead bungees so that you work out all your muscles every time. We are located in the Upper East Side in Manhattan. For more information, you can contact us at (973)996-2063, or visit our website.
