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The Complete Book of Pilates for Men
The Lifetime Plan for Strength, Power & Peak Performance
By Daniel Lyon HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2005 Daniel Lyon
All right reserved. ISBN: 0060820772
Chapter One
Pilates: The Man's Workout
This book offers the best exercise system available to practice on your own, wherever you are. Why is it the best? Simply put, Pilates works. It addresses exactly what we men need, especially as we grow older: overall health, long balanced muscles, strength from our centers, and control of our bodies.
You've probably come across Pilates in various places over the past few years. Your significant other may have taken a private lesson or mat class. You may have picked up a woman's magazine in the waiting room of anywhere, U.S.A. Or you may have seen a commercial on television showing a roomful of buff women performing leg raises as if they were the Rockettes. The fact that women and their networks have dominated the world of Pilates in recent years has bred the misconception that Pilates is a female-only activity. This couldn't be further from the truth. Joseph Pilates was a cigar smoking boxer, acrobat, and gymnast, and he developed his exercise program from that background first and foremost for men.
This book is designed for all men -- including the athlete or jock, the sedentary man with little or no exercise history, and the injured man. If you're an active athlete, you will discover that Pilates is a natural cross-training resource. It will heighten your coordination, balance your strength, and sharpen your focus.
If you're a sedentary man, you will find Pilates to be a welcoming challenge because it feels natural. You will improve your strength and flexibility with each passing day, and within a short time you will see dramatic results in the mirror. In Joseph Pilates's own words: "In ten lessons you'll feel a difference, in twenty you'll see a difference, and in thirty you'll have a whole new body." His words continue to ring amazingly true.
If you're a man with an injury, you will realize that Pilates offers a logical method of working out while your body is healing. Pilates doesn't aggravate the body; the exercises are always to be performed with control. If ever an exercise hurts, then you simply stop, temporarily or permanently remove it from your practice, and move on to the next exercise. Each body is different. Chances are, you will not be able to perform every exercise from the outset. But eventually, as you gain more control over your body, you will be able to perform all or most of the exercises. Pilates works in this methodical manner, offering new challenges with healing and practice.
I speak from experience. When I hurt my lower back in a power-lifting contest in college, the injury plagued me on and off for ten years. Eight years of jiu-jitsu yielded me a right AC joint sprain, a migration of the left shoulder's clavicle and scapulae, multiple ankle and wrist strains, sprains, and bruises. I have used the Pilates method to rehabilitate my own body. My back no longer hurts; the pain is simply gone. My shoulder no longer "pops" out. I have a full range of motion in both of my shoulder joints. My wrists and ankles -- formerly weakened by repetitive overstretching -- now have new strength. My own body was breaking down during my full-time jiu-jitsu practice. Pilates has reversed the damage.
During and after my years in jiu-jitsu, I had a desk job. As a trader, I watched the markets from 7:30 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. My upper back began to take on that slumped, rounded look. My gut was far from lean, and, if I had not had such a vigorous workout in jiu-jitsu, I would have been rapidly accelerating the aging process. Such bad posture, when either seated or standing, places undue strains on our joints and organs. Just as our brain will stop working if it's deprived of oxygen, our organs won't function optimally if the blood flow to them is hindered or our joints aren't properly aligned. As Dr. Andrew Taylor Still, the founder of Osteopathic Medicine, states, "If the body structure is altered or abnormal, then proper body function is altered and can cause pain and illness." 1 Pilates counteracts the damaging effects of work-related repetitive postures and motions. My posture today is upright, like a sentry standing guard. I have the stomach of a lean twenty year old, and people routinely underestimate my age by seven or eight years. In my own body, I have seen the powerful benefits of Pilates from the vantage of both an injured athlete and a man with a sedentary job.
How does Pilates work for men? It integrates the body by focusing on activating and connecting the strongest parts of the body first -- your core, or what we in Pilates refer to as the "powerhouse." For example, Pilates does not address arm weakness with the thought, "isolate the biceps and strengthen them with curls." Pilates approaches arm weakness and all other body imbalances with the conviction that you must first strengthen your powerhouse. From your powerhouse, you work your body with integrated movement, connecting all the weaker body parts to your strong core. The whole body becomes stronger as a result. In other words, you must strengthen the trunk of the tree and then integrate -- not isolate -- the branches. Through this process, the spine returns to its naturally supple condition.
Think of an aged person. What areas of his body lack the pliability of youth? Typically, they are the hips and spine. The center or core of the body is usually the last area to fail as a consequence of aging. A relatively young person with a rigid spine or immobile hips will appear to be older than his years. Inversely, an older person with a lean, strong powerhouse and a flexible spine will appear years younger than he actually is. This is how Pilates works. I know a man in his late sixties who has been practicing Pilates for thirty years. His workouts aren't as regular as they were when he was younger, but you would never . . .
Continues...
Excerpted from The Complete Book of Pilates for Men by Daniel Lyon Copyright © 2005 by Daniel Lyon. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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