Pilates and Sport

Pilates is a wonderful tool to help increase performance and reduce injury.  Come into The Body Refinery and see Sam or Victor to get you started on a program specific to your sport.
 

Pilates and Cricket

Pilates provides key benefits for both batsmen and bowlers, which is why many top cricketers use it.

The aim of the batsman in cricket is to spend long periods at the crease, in an unnatural stance that requires forward flexion of the spine. It is hardly surprising that many batsmen have succumbed to back injuries. Mike Atherton, the former England captain, was one. Atherton swore by Pilates - as a way both to recover from injuries and to prevent future ones. Graham Thorpe, another English batsman, has also used Pilates to overcome serious back problems.

The aim of the bowler is either to propel the ball at extreme speed, or to use the angle of the body to create swing, or to employ the shoulders and wrist to impart spin. All bowling actions demand smoothness, economy, rhythm and balance. They also require accurate alignment to enable the body to withstand the force of landing on the front foot and rotating through the spine.

Bowling coaches are particularly concerned to eliminate the 'mixed action', in which the feet point in one direction (for example, side-on to the wicket) and the upper body in a different one (for example, facing the batsman). Heeding the maxim: 'Keep the hips and shoulders in line and you'll be fine; twist the back and it will crack!', a good Pilates teacher can devise a set of exercises to help a bowler become aware of what this alignment feels like. Practising the exercises before going out to bowl will enhance 'muscle memory'.

The Australian fast-bowling attack, long rated the world's best, uses Pilates to strengthen the area between the hip and shoulders, as part of injury prevention conditioning. Andrew Flintoff, English fast bowler, took up daily Pilates to solve his back problems, on the advice of Mike Atherton. Flintoff took the advice and was soon back to fitness and form.

'Aspects of Pilates are used in our training all the time, Nigel Stockill, head physiologist and biomechanist for the England Cricket Board, recently told the press. Pilates, he added, was particularly beneficial to cricketers because it helped them to recover faster from sports injuries and had a strong focus on the abdominal muscles and back.
 

Pilates and Golf

Of all the professional athletes who have discovered Pilates, golfers have taken to it fastest and in greatest numbers. Devotees include Annika Sorenstam, David Duval, Kelli Kuehne, Andrew McGee, Grace Park, Tiger Woods and Carin Koch, among many others.

And maybe this should not surprise us.

Golf, like Pilates, is about stability - the ability in the case of golf to hold a position long enough to play through a shot without the body buckling or twisting.

Golf, like Pilates, is about focus and 'getting in the groove' - repeating similar movements efficiently, effectively and precisely no matter, in golf's case, the distractions of weather, terrain or opponent.

Golf, like Pilates, is about core strength, movement from the centre of the body, flexibility, precise movements and tiny margins - a small improvement in a golfer's shoulder flexibility, for example, can be the difference between a drive from the tee veering into the rough or going straight onto the green.

Often thought of as a game requiring little more than hand-eye co-ordination to hit the ball and stamina for a long walk round the course, golf is actually a whole-body sport in which the key movements - particularly when driving or chipping - come from the core.

Pilates addresses the need for excellent rotation around the spine while maintaining stability through the transverse abdominal muscles. The shoulders and arms also need to be stable in order to control a shot - yet sufficiently strong and elastic to deliver power and send the ball 150 metres and more down the fairway.

Top golfers nowadays work on their fitness as much as their putting - a feature that is becoming more common among club-level players, too. Even though Seve Ballesteros describes Pilates as 'boring, boring, boring', the Spaniard knows it can ease his perennial back pain: 'I believe it is making a difference. It needs patience, but if it will help me on the golf course I will do it'.
 

Pilates and Swimming

Pilates exercises are performed at a deliberate pace, employing appropriate breathing patterns and attention to detail. This approach translates well to the pool, where many swimmers need to 'slow down', forget how many lengths they intended to swim and focus instead on breathing, body orientation and balance.

Particularly important is the need to release the neck in order to lengthen the spine, eliminating the muscular tension that affects the whole body when the head is pulled back. The head position adopted by most poor swimmers, particularly when performing the breast-stroke, would be impossible to hold for long periods out of the water. The challenge, therefore, is to 'remember to remember' the superior postural alignment and sense of lightness gained through Pilates and apply it in the pool.

Swimming, meanwhile, has the image of being a sport for which the prime requirements are strength and determination, and success is measured in terms of 'how far' and 'how fast'. The skill of learning to swim well is overlooked, with little attention paid to grace, elegance and economy of movement.

As a result, it is rare to find recreational or fitness swimmers demonstrating effortless, efficient strokes that cause barely a ripple on the surface. Instead, too many of them view swimming as a battle against a relentless opponent - the water; hence the number of head-out-of-the-water thrashers, expending energy but getting nowhere, both literally and metaphorically.

Swimmers who also do Pilates, however, find it easier to focus on breathing, grace, flow and maintaining a steady pace.
 

Pilates and Racket Sports

Pilates, says the writer Martin Amis, who does it twice a week, is the reason that he no longer groans when playing tennis. 'Pilates', says Elena Baltacha, one of Britain's top women players, 'helps with a lot of injury prevention. I'd recommend it to anyone.' Baltacha herself reportedly spends an hour a day doing Pilates.

A growing number of tennis and squash players at every level for everything from injury prevention and recovery to rectifying muscle imbalance, improving flexibility and building core and stabilizer muscles.

Well-known tennis players who do use Pilates range from Venus and Serena Williams to Lindsay Davenport and Jennifer Capriati. Martina Navratilova says that Pilates has helped her body regain the flexibility of her prime, while Pat Cash, the former Wimbledon champion, still does Pilates as a key part of his fitness routine.

The Squash Player magazine, meanwhile, recently featured a full Pilates programme for squash.

Racket sports are by their nature one-sided. Most players repeatedly use the same hand and arm to hit the ball, generally in the same direction, with the head and neck usually adopting the same position in anticipation of playing a shot. Such pronounced left- or right-sided movements load stress on the structure of the body, producing a physique that is out of balance and more liable to break down with over-use injuries particularly prevalent.

Further problems can result from the fact that few tennis players have a bio-mechanically perfect serve. Repetitive, inefficient patterns of movement combined with the quest for power give rise to problems in the collection of joints that make up the shoulder. 'Tennis elbow', or inflammation of the muscle tissue and ligaments at the base of the elbow, is caused by chronic twisting of the arm plus repeated shocks to a small bony ridge on the outer elbow.

While even the best Pilates instructor may not help you serve like Venus Williams or Roger Federer, a programme of specific exercises will work the body more uniformly to prevent overdevelopment of one side, while also strengthening the deep abdominal muscles needed for a stable base from which to hit that winner. Addressing flexibility through the shoulders and upper back while lengthening the tighter front muscles of the torso will boost your power and range of motion - and make it easier to reach for that drop shot at the net.
 

Pilates and Cycling

Cycling may be great cardio-vascular exercise but the modern bike is not a masterpiece of efficient design - or a promoter of healthy posture. Indeed, quite the opposite, which is the main reason that many cyclists do Pilates and even more should.

Old-fashioned 'sit-up-and-beg' cycles were far better suited to a comfortable riding position, with the upper body held still and the spine lengthened. Modern mountain bikes require a more hunched posture with the head placed low over the front wheel. This causes excessive bending of the lumbar spine, a forward rotation of the hips and pelvis, and shortening of the back of the neck due to the need to look forward and see where you're going. Many committed cyclists also suffer from a shortening of the hamstrings.

Just as runners can use Pilates to enhance their body awareness and condition efficient patterns of movement, so many cyclists use it to restore postural alignment, shift the spine back into position, open up the chest, ease and prevent back pain and relieve the tension caused by sitting for long periods in a mechanically unsound position.
 

Pilates and Rugby/Soccer

A growing number of top soccer and rugby players do Pilates as a way of improving co-ordination, mobility and flexibility, as well as for both recovering from injuries and preventing them in the first place.

In the quest for the winning edge, modern soccer and rugby players will latch on to any fitness technique that they believe will help them where it matters most - on the pitch. Both codes of rugby, in particular, exemplify this thinking, with Pilates exercises long incorporated into both preparation for matches and rehabilitation after injuries. The Welsh Rugby Union is among the high-profile advocates of Pilates. And is Susan’s pick to win the next world cup.

Soccer managers such as Arsene Wenger of Arsenal, meanwhile, have long preached the crucial importance of stretching, suppleness and flexibility - the very things that Pilates does best. Indeed, Pilates exercises should be used more widely than they are in, for example, pre-match warm-up routines.

Both soccer and rugby can be physically gruelling, draining bodies that may already be fatigued. However, recent years have brought a growing willingness to look outside the sport for ideas, in particular to address the injury toll associated with over-training of certain muscle groups.

Weight training is an essential aspect of training for players of both sports; yet a body that has been bulked up in the gym can become rigid and restricted in its range of movement. The popular pec-deck machine, for example, may produce an impressive upper torso yet the movement required is unlike anything found on a sports field - or in everyday life, for that matter.

With both soccer and rugby demand rapid directional changes often at near-maximum pace, an inflexible physique is unhelpful. Rugby forwards must also possess the ability to deliver controlled power from the unbalanced body positions adopted in the scrum. A Pilates programme can greatly improve general mobility and enhance core strength while easing the stress placed on the neck and spine during intense scrummaging.

Hamstring tears are also common in both sports and a properly tailored programme of Pilates, focusing on the stabiliser muscles of the pelvis (the buttocks and groin muscles), will help prevent them.
 

Pilates and Running

Runners do Pilates most of all because it builds long, strong muscles, improves their flexibility and lessens their risk of injury. The way that Pilates opens up the vertebrae in the lower back, in particular, helps prevent the sort of back injuries which can result from the constant impact involved in running.

Running and Pilates, however, also complement each perfectly at what might called a deeper, philosophical level.

Good runners run tall. They don't hunch, lean, push with their hips or tighten through the neck and shoulders. They avoid pounding the ground with every stride. Their movement is smooth and light. There is both an economy and an integrity to their form.

Good runners pay attention. Instead of seeing a run as an excuse to zone out with the iPod, they see it as a chance to develop their kinaesthetic awareness - for example, to explore the feel of their feet on the ground, how balanced their head is on the neck and spine, whether a mild ache in their leg has caused them to run more heavily than they would wish, whether their ankles and knees are releasing in sequence, how their breathing patterns have changed as the workload becomes more demanding. This approach makes running as much a mental activity as a physical one - very much like Pilates.
 

Pilates and Skiing/Snowboarding

Most of us who ski take to the slopes once a year - and, after a first day of enthusiastic snowplough turns, need a forklift truck to winch us back out again. That's because so-called 'ski fitness' classes target the major muscle groups, particularly in the legs.

Unfortunately, they overlook the core muscles that help to maintain the dynamic, balanced posture essential for safe and efficient skiing. 'Most skiers overtax their big muscles because they haven't learned how to use their core muscles,' says Caroline Lalive, the Olympic downhill racer.

Pilates is not designed to address the cardio-vascular demands of skiing; it's vital to do regular aerobic training since tiredness results in loss of concentration and increases the risk of an accident.

Instead, Pilates challenges the deep abdominal muscles to support the core and creates a strong, flexible, resilient structure. This is essential to cope with the simple fact of having solid objects strapped to the feet that, for beginners, don't always go in the direction you want them to. Not to mention counteracting the twists and turns of the slope, and the ability to get up unscathed whenever you take a tumble.

For advanced skiers, activating the body's stabilising muscles helps maintain balance and poise at greater speed or off-piste - so not only will you feel like Franz Klammer with the breeze in your hair, you might even look like him, too.
 

Pilates and Equestrian

A growing number of riders use Pilates to build core strength, suppleness, flexibility, grace and balance, as well as to improve general body awareness.

The perfect riding position is called the 'classical seat'. It requires the rider sit in such a way that each part of the body rests on the part directly below it, enabling the weight of the rider to reach the horse in a straight line. This minimises discomfort to the horse, while giving security and comfort to the rider along with the ability to guide the horse with ease and efficiency. Done well, human and horse can work as one.

A general Pilates programme will develop the necessary postural alignment and balance, while specific exercises can enhance the ability to move one body part - say, the legs - without the need for major readjustment of the hips and torso.

Since a rider must cope with a horse moving both vertically and horizontally, core strength is vital, as is resilience within the body to maintain the 'classical seat'.

Betsy Steiner, a former member of the United States Dressage Team, is just one riding trainer who recommends Pilates. In fact, she includes a Pilates programme in her book, 'A Gymnastic Riding System Using Mind, Body And Spirit' (equilates.com) and advises riders of all levels to do Pilates three times a week.