6 Ways Women 50+ Can Benefit from Pilates

Pilates is a type of anaerobic exercise that is designed to increase the strength and flexibility of your core muscles.  The beauty of Pilates is that it can be done by just about anyone at any fitness level (see me & Pilates on Facebook).  It involves very little in the way of exercise equipment and can be done anywhere.

Pilates isn’t just for the young, athletic person.  Because it doesn’t put undue strain on the heart, it can safely be done by older adults, including those over the age of 50.  It can improve the health of woman over 50 and doesn’t take a heavy toll on the body.

There are many reasons why Pilates can be a good exercise for women over the age of 50 years of age.  Some of these benefits include the following:

1. Pilates involves an invigorating mind-body workout. Pilates places a heavy emphasis on using proper breathing techniques, aligning your spine correctly, and keeping your pelvic aligned.  It involves concentrating on flowing, smooth movements that help you become more in tune to your mind and body.  When you do Pilates, you learn to control your movements by practicing quality exercises that focus on the core.  There is a focus on breathing to the tune of your movements so that you can use your power to efficiently move your body.  By being a mind-body workout, Pilates teaches you how to breathe better, which can be great for women who are under a great deal of stress.
2. Pilates helps you develop strong core muscles. Much of the focus in Pilates is the strengthening of the core of your body.  The core of your body is the central part of your body—both the abdominal muscles and the back muscles.  Pilates helps you strengthen these muscles so that you can move with ease as you go about your day with complete control over these essential core muscles.  Pilates can help you find integration between your pelvis, trunk, and shoulder muscles so that they function as a strong unit.
3. Pilates helps increase flexibility and allows your muscles to lengthen.  Many anaerobic workouts, such as weight lifting or using weight machines will only lead to muscles that are bulky and short.  These muscles tend to be more likely to be injured and aren’t the kind of muscles you want to have.  Instead of bulky “body-building muscles”, Pilates helps you elongate your muscles, strengthening them at the same time.  Your muscles will become more elastic and you will have increased flexibility of your joints. When you achieve these kinds of muscles, you are less likely to become injured.
4. Pilates can help you prevent muscle injuries and can improve your performance in other sports. Most other anaerobic workouts work the same muscles over and over again, such as the biceps muscles or quadriceps muscles.  Sometimes these muscles are exercised to the exclusion of other muscles.  You can easily over-strengthen certain muscles, while other muscles are under-strengthened.  In Pilates, all the core muscles are strengthened at the same time so that you have a decreased chance of becoming injured while working out or by doing your ordinary activities of daily living.
5. Pilates conditions the entire body. In doing Pilates, you strengthen not only your core muscles but also strengthen the muscles of your extremities.  Pilates doesn’t emphasize one set of muscles to the exclusion of other muscles.  When you do Pilates, you can function better in daily living and will be better at sports with a decreased chance of becoming injured while doing other types of sports.
6. Pilates helps you move with better efficiency.  When you do Pilates, you train many different muscles at the same time.  Pilates involves doing smooth and continuous motions so that you can train your body to move with more safety, decreasing your risk of falls and the fractures that can come with falling.

As you can see, Pilates is an activity with many benefits for women over 50. If you are interested in doing Pilates as a form of anaerobic exercise, take a Pilates class or purchase a DVD (such as those in my Amazon store below) that will teach you how to safely do the exercises.  You can practice Pilates every day with a low risk of suffering from any kind of overuse injury to your muscles.

How Your Mindset Can Actually Make You Physically Stronger

Don’t believe that simply changing the way you think can have a big impact on your life or your accomplishments?

It’s a somewhat abstract concept to think that just being more positive or more driven can attract more good things to you, or that focusing more on the good in your life can make you happier.

So how about a demonstration to show just how powerful the mind is? What if the brain could make you considerably stronger, simply if you change the way you think?

Introducing Hysterical Strength

Hysterical strength is a term used to describe historical examples of people tapping into incredible physical power. The most common story is that of mothers who have to rescue their children from being trapped under cars or some other heavy object. In these scenarios, the mothers call upon some kind of superhuman strength and manage to physically move the cars out the way. How can this be possible?

While this has never been proven, there actually is a good scientific explanation for how it might work and some evidence to support it.

That’s because we normally are only capable of accessing around 30%-50% of our muscle fiber. When exercising or going about our normal routines, we can’t use 100% of our strength because we would risk injuring our ligaments or exhausting ourselves. You can see this when someone gets an electrical shock – this causes the muscles to contract to their fullest which is enough to throw the individual right across the room!

But under times of incredible stress or in life-and-death scenarios, it might just be that the brain is able to tap into those hidden depths. This would work because of the release of stress hormones like cortisol, adrenaline and perhaps other neurotransmitters such as acetylcholine. Together, these could improve communication across the neuromuscular junction, thereby recruiting a greater number of muscle fibers and allowing the individual to access their ‘full’ strength.

Putting it Into Action

In theory then, you could gain more strength simply by imagining your family trapped under a car. If you could really believe it, then you might be able to access hidden strength enough to break your records in the gym.

But there are easier ways according to the research. That’s because yelling at the top of your voice just so happens to trigger a small stress response and studies demonstrate that this is enough to allow you to gain a little more strength during lifts! Talk about mind over matter...