If you are an athlete, either professional or recreational, you are probably always striving to improve your personal best at the sport. You may be wondering, can Pilates exercise help me to improve my athletic performance? The answer is, most definitely, yes! Pilates has been proven effective to enhance sports performance for many different sports. Specifically, Pilates is known to be beneficial for golfers, cyclists, equestrians, long and short-distance runners, as well as competitive divers, baseball, football and basketball players.
Benefits of Pilates include muscle balance, core strengthening and stability, improved focus and concentration, injury prevention, reduced stress and relief from pain. Pilates aids in restoring muscle imbalances created by one-sided sports such as golf, baseball and tennis and can be utilized to build strength, power, endurance and precision for most if not all sports.
Golf requires trunk flexibility and stability, strong legs and gluteal muscles to help transfer the energy of ground force reactions, strong shoulders and lats to assist with control of the golf club and a strong core to support the body for the rigors of the repetitive swing motion. Back injuries are common with golfers and Pilates exercise can help golfers with relief of pain as well as help them gain more balanced muscular which helps prevent back pain and injuries.
Other rotational sports such as tennis and racquetball have similar requirements—players need a strong trunk and legs as well as shoulder stability for maximum power and energy transfer. Additionally, both sports require good balance skills for quick directional changes. Pilates also helps players increase endurance and concentration while helping to decrease the chance of injury.
Many sports are more linear such as running and cycling and are more lower body dominant therefore predisposing them to developing imbalances in their musculature. Cyclists are also in a constant forward flexed position, overstretching the muscles in the upper back while the shoulders roll forward and the pectorals get tight. Adding Pilates to their repertoire can help runners and cyclists restore muscular imbalances in the legs by increasing the flexibility of tight quadriceps and hamstrings, strengthen the adductors and abductors to help the knees be more stable. Adding hip stability by taking the legs and hips into greater ranges of motion is of utmost importance as well.
Swimmers require strong abdominal strength to stabilize themselves in the water and many swimming movements can be mimicked on the Pilates apparatus, using springs as resistance to mimic water.
Individuals competing in all sporting endeavors can benefit from the breathing, centering and concentration that Pilates demands and unlike weight training, which can be very useful for gaining strength in individual muscle groups, Pilates movements are generally more complex and therefore recruit a higher number of muscle groups within each exercise. Pilates exercises also require a greater range of joint motion, and therefore work to stretch as well as strengthen muscles.
