The truth of the matter is that a lot of different exercises are closed off to the sufferer of back pain. Whether it be due to the amount of stretching they require or the physical power demand that they place on the body, they can be ruled out entirely and this leads to a quandary for the sufferer. When you are unable to do the amount of exercise you need to, then there is precious little possibility of recovering from any injury. The answer to this problem, in the view of an increasing number of chiropractors, seems to be Pilates.

The advantage of Pilates is that it is such a varied exercise regime that, if an exercise puts too much stress on a specific body part, you can substitute it for another. Doing Pilates exercises will enable you to increase the core strength of your body, give your back muscles the rest and support which are essential for recovery and for pain management, and recover from the injury in such a way that you can build for a future free of back pain.

Before you begin a course of Pilates to work on your back pain, however, it is essential that you consult with your doctor and / or back pain specialist as well as with a qualified Pilates instructor to find out whether you are in a reasonable condition to go ahead with it, and to find out any exercises that you should avoid so as to not aggravate your back problems. Undoubtedly Pilates can be a solution to the misery of back injuries and muscular conditions, but with a muscle group of this importance it is essential to be careful.

For a beginning, it is essential to see what you can do on your own time. Of course there are clear benefits to having an instructor present when you are doing Pilates exercises, as they have studied the techniques and the equipment to a point where they have them mastered, However, you will also find that when you go to a Pilates class there are elements that you feel perfectly comfortable doing on your own without supervision. Do these at home to augment your classes.

Further to that, it is advantageous to buy some Pilates equipment which you can use unsupervised at home. The up front layout may seem large, but when you set it against what you can spend attending classes where you don’t need the supervision of an instructor, it will work out to be cheaper. You’ll always have that equipment. When you need exercises that rely upon bigger or more expensive equipment, then a class will be preferable. This way you make your money go further and get a bit more benefit from it.

If you are taking private Pilates classes, now might be the time to stop completely or to cut down on them. Yes, they are efficient and the undivided focus of an instructor will focus your exercise regime considerably. If, however, you are spending so much money on them that you have to economise elsewhere, then it is unsustainable. Consider instead a DVD or book which focuses on your specific areas of weakness, and get the best out of your home workouts. By taking a judgement approach to your Pilates needs, you will get more out of Pilates and keep more in the bank.

If five people know about something, the chances are that everything they know about it is correct. If five million people know about something, the chances are that a significant number will have heard and believed at least two or three things that are grossly inaccurate. The following are some myths about Pilates:

1. Pilates is easy. It cannot therefore be useful.

Tell this “fact” to any practitioner of intermediate or advanced Pilates. Better yet, tell it to someone who has tried any number of other forms of exercise and has found due to injury or an underlying condition that Pilates is the only thing that works for them. There are many different grades of Pilates, and the fact that it may not appear to the naked eye to be as “demanding” as working out on a treadmill or a weights machine does not mean that it is either “easy” or unproductive. It is neither, applied correctly.

2. Pilates is a woman’s exercise regime.

Considering that Pilates was devised by a man – a man who used it to turn himself from a sickly child into a teenager who was in demand to pose for conditioning posters – this is perhaps the most idiotic statment currently circulating about Pilates. Women can do Pilates, of course. At the present time, it is perhaps more popular among women than among men – and that may well be because of lazy stereotypes like the above. Pilates is accessible – this does not make it inappropriate for men.

3. Pilates is simply a derivative of yoga.

Pilates is, indeed, connected to yoga and has a lot of yoga principles in it. Joseph Pilates included yoga in the mix when he designed the Pilates method. He also included principles from body-building, but people do not claim Pilates to be a derivative of that. It is more than a derivative, and its benefits go beyond the simple, imagined effects that detractors claim.

Taking the principles in this order, it is on breath that we wil focus first. Joseph Pilates was very specific in advocating that a full breath was taken by those who wished to benefit from what he called “Contrology”. He stated that you should “squeeze out the lungs as you would squeeze a wet towel dry”. As well as using the lungs to their fullest, breath can also be a key element of timing in Pilates exercises.

Centering means pretty much what it says. The power and impetus of all Pilates exercises comes from the center of the body, in your midriff. Many people call this zone the “center of gravity”. Watch a rugby or football player trying to break through tackles – shrugging off an opponent depends on using this area for momentum.

Concentration is important in any endeavour if you want to get the best out of it. Just as often dubbed “focus”, concentration will allow you to recognise when an exercise is doing what it is supposed to do, and gain the maximum efficiency.

Control applies to the muscles used to do the exercises involved in Pilates – it is important to apply full muscular control because this is how the exercises work. This also gives the lie to anyone who claims that Pilates is an “easy” exercise regime. It really is anything but – just try it without muscular control.

Flow essentially relates to the importance of fluidity in any method of exercise – not just Pilates. Try doing ten push-ups one after the other. Now try taking fifteen seconds between each push-up. Losing the momentum takes a lot of the benefit and the ease out of an exercise. Putting it back makes it work better.

Finally, precision benefits an exercise regime for obvious reasons. If you are doing a designed exercise regime and you either miss out or only half commit to some of it, you will find it doesn’t do what it was claimed to. But then, if you use a knife to stir coffee, you’ll find that doesn’t work so well either. Use the right thing in the right way, and it will work.

Being a chair, the Wunda is a piece of equipment that can be used sitting down. Basic Wunda chairs look for al the world like wooden boxes with a short back and a large panel at the front. That panel is, in actual fact, a pedal, and means that you can work on your central muscles from a sitting position simply by pressing the pedal. However, you dont need to limit yourself to this fairly basic exercise, as many people also lie on their side on the chair and push the pedal with their arms. Therefore you can work your arms, your legs and your torso with the chair.

The chair’s versatility means that it can be a part of a Pilates regime almost right from the start, although as beginners should ease in with some floor and mat exercises it may be best to wait a couple of classes before tackling the chair. When you move to the chair, you will find that it enables you to work on all of the principles that have been covered, and that the only limitation to what it can do is how far you want to push yourself.

Beginners, intermediate and advanced users alike all report very positive things about the Wunda chair – hence those headlines which have already been mentioned. The chair does have many applicable uses, and committed use of it will certainly aid your fitness regime. You may want to get as much use of it as possible at the gym, though, as they tend to start at about £400 ($700)

It is wise, however, to apply some general safety first principles when choosing a Pilates instructor. After all, you will be paying good money for these classes, so it is essential that you get value for money. Stick to the following principles and you cannot go too far wrong.

1. Find out if they are a certified Pilates instructor.

Not everyone who claims to be one really is. If you are reluctant to ask the instructor, then you can ask the gym where they practice. If a gym employs an instructor with strong credentials, they wil not be shy about saying so. They will have had similar enquiries before.

2. Do they make their instructions clear and understandable?

Simply put, those who do not know what they are talking about tend to be somewhat more obscure in their language. If the instructor is giving unclear and incomprehensible instructions, it is not because they have such a powerfu command of the medium that it is intimidating – it is because they are covering for their lack of real knowledge.

3. Does the instructor check in with you during classes?

Any instructor, teacher or tutor with a large class group will know very well that there are differing skill sets in their group, often as many skill sets as there are pupils. Due to this, they will circulate through the class when it is in progress, checking you know what you are doing. If the Pilates instructor sits at the front watching or reading a book, they are not doing their job.

4. The key point – Do you feel better?
If a Pilates instructor is doing their job, you will feel good and motivated after their class. If you don’t, they aren’t. It really is that simple. If you have doubts, explain them to the instructor. Their answer should set your mind at rest, not make you feel like an idiot. If they do the latter, they are not a good instructor.

Born in Moenchengladbach in 1883, Joseph was a sickly child in the fullest sense of the term, having to deal with asthma, rheumatic fever and rickets. Not one to be cowed by the hand life dealt him, he took this as a springboard to develop a program whereby he worked on his physical strength and condition, the better to deal with the problems he had. This he did by focusing on a number of existing programs, including some learnt from his gymnast father and his mother, a naturopath (or what would now be referred to as an alternative medicine practitioner). By the age of 14, he was in good enough condition to be asked to model for development charts.

In 1912, Joseph Pilates moved to England and while he was there the First World War commenced. The British government interned him and other German nationals as a “precautionary measure”, and while in confinement he took the opportunity to train his fellow inmates in physical conditioning. It was this training that was credited for the fact that he and other inmates were left largely untouched by the flu pandemic of 1918.

Having returned to Germany shortly after the war, he became strongly disillusioned with the direction in which the country was moving, and he left for America. It was there that he and his wife Clara founded a studio dedicated to the practice of “Contrology” – his name for the training regime – and it was there that his methods were taken up in earnest for the first time. Since his death in 1967, the practice has taken on his name and has become one of the most popular physical training procedures in the world.

The reason that this is the case is simple: without the resistance provided by the equipment, someone trying to get fit with Pilates will, inevitably, not get the best out of the exercise. It is in working against this resistance that you will work the specific muscle groups, known as your “core”, which will see you get fitter. A “Magic Circle” is one of the most popular and important pieces of equipment you can buy, and takes the shape of a ring (unsurprisingly), usually about a foot in diameter (or frequently just over) with a pad on either side of it.

The idea of those pads is to provide the all-important resistance that makes Pilates exercises highly effective. When exercising, the way to use a Magic Circle is that you sit inside it and hold or press the pads firmly but not aggressively. Although many first-time users attempt to push so hard on the sides that they buckle the thing, the correct level of pressure to use is simply one that brings resistance and makes the exercise more effective. It’s there to make you work the muscles, not bear it a grudge.

The benefits of using a Magic Circle are, like most other Pilates equipment, in the fact that it helps you firm up key muscle groups in your arms, hips and thighs. It is more than worth taking the time out to get a proper feel for the equipment before trying to use it. This is particularly the case if you have paid out for one of the more expensive models, which can come in at a cost of £45 ($75). Although these are more durable, they will not react well to people treating them like strength-testing machines. Used wisely, though, they will provide an excellent way of getting muscle tone.

While it is the role of many pieces of exercise equipment to make the exercise easier to do, the exercise ball (to give it as accurate a name as can really be bestowed upon it) does quite the opposite. It provides the exerciser with a challenge, in that they have to factor in not only the amount of work that they need to do but also the amount of balance they will require in order to do it. You have surely seen the type of ball of which we speak – it is usually between 50-75 cm in diameter and inflatable. Imagine sitting on one to watch television – you’d find the whole process somewhat disorienting. This is why it benefits the exercise to such a great extent.

Apart from anything else, the muscle groups you will need to work to give you balance on an exercise ball are exactly those which Pilates is designed to strengthen and use – your core muscles. These are the muscles which will get sore when you hold your body in an unnatural position for a prolonged period – and with Pilates, you can work to make this less problematic.

Often you will hear the ball referred to as a Pilates ball (which despite the title of this article is not strictly accurate), a balance ball or a stability ball. As you will have noticed, the latter two refer to things which the ball takes away rather than bestows – but this is because it is those qualities it hopes to reinforce in you.

For many people, of course, the major scare of beginning Pilates is the fear of exposing your novice status and your perceived lack of fitness. However the fact is that we were all beginners once. Further to this people will, in the main, be concentrating on what they have to do and not on what you are doing. And perhaps most importantly, if you are beginning Pilates you are not going to be trying to match what they are doing. You will be picking up the basics in order that you can do that stuff later.

For any beginning Pilates pracitioner, the key is to begin with mat exercises. Similar to yoga, from which Pilates takes some of its heritage, basic mat exercises are important in teaching you the principles of Pilates. You will build on these principles, going from the basics to the intermediate stage, and beyong if you wish. But to get these principles you really do not need anything beyond simple floor exercises, and to hone them you can use the more basic equipment.

Early Pilates is simply about communicating the importance of the six principles of Pilates – breath, centering, concentration, control, flow and precision. Once in a while you may look around at the odd chair-shaped contraptions among other items and wonder what part they play in what you are about to do. As a beginner, you do not need to worry about that. When the time comes to use them, you’ll know how and your body will be ready. Concentrate on acclimatising, and the step up will seem minimal when it happens.