Pilates Positions And Pilates Terminology

Know What It Means To Pull Your Navel To Your Spine

Pilates positions and Pilates terminology are a necessary part of learning this method of exercise. Imagine: you’re in your Pilates mat class and the teacher suddenly tells you to scoop. Then you hear zip up your abdominals, pull your navel to your spine, and work from your powerhouse. Huh? Feel like you're listening to a foreign language?

Actually, these are just a few of the common Pilates positions terms a Pilates instructor might use to assist you in feeling and performing the exercise properly. Joseph Pilates believed strongly in the power of the mind and when you use the Pilates terminology, you trigger your mind to follow the image you are creating.

For example, if someone said zip up your abdominals, you can imagine zipping up a tight pair of jeans. Your belly automatically pulls in a little deeper. Joseph Pilates used the “navel to spine” image often to get his clients to work from their powerhouse.

What is the powerhouse? The area between your pubic bone and the bottom of your ribs including abdominals, back, pelvic floor, gluteal and inner thigh muscles. Imagery is a fantastic tool for instructors and clients to use to advance their understanding of their bodies and the exercises.

In addition to the Pilates terminology, there are few key Pilates positions that will be used again and again in your Pilates workout. Here are a few:

• Pilates Stance: Refers to a slightly turned out position of the legs. It is less turnout than a Ballet first position, actually about 15 degrees of turnout. Legs gently squeeze together.This enables you to feel the glutes and inner thighs and a lengthening of the legs.
  
• Parallel: Legs and feet in alignment, neither turned out nor turned in. A place where your feet, knees, and hips are in alignment. also known as the Trap table: Looks like a table surrounded by four vertical poles that frame the table. From those poles hang various accessories like leg springs, fuzzy straps, the trapeze, and the push through and roll down bars.
  
• Neutral Spine: or neutral pelvis. A place where your hip bones and pubic bone are held in the same plane. It is neither too flexed nor too extended in the lumbar spine.
  
• Imprinted Spine:A term generated in the Stott Pilates method of Pilates. A place where the lumbar spine is slightly more flexed giving the feeling of your lower back being closer to the mat.
  
• Table Top: When lying on your back, a place where your legs are elevated and bent at a 90 degree angle both at the hip and at the knees. Legs squeeze gently together to engage inner thighs.
  
• C-Curve: Where the spine is flexed into letter "C" position. Enables the feeling of strong navel to spine and prepares you to roll through the spine smoothly.
  
• Spinal Flexion: Where the angle at your hips decreases, like when you bend over to touch your toes or when you perform the Spine Stretch Forward Pilates exercise.
  
  
• Spinal Extension:Where the angle at the hip increases, like when you bend backwards or perform the Swan Dive Pilates exercise.

The importance of knowing the correct terms and Pilates positions is crucial in your Pilates exercise routine. Imagine being a ballet dancer and not knowing the five basic positions, or a weight lifter who doesn’t know how to squat properly. Not knowing the language of the work you are doing is disadvantageous to your progress and a disservice to the history of Pilates exercise.

Hopefully, the next time you hear "navel to spine" you'll be in your favorite Pilates studio mat class performing the Pilates exercises and feeling a little more like you speak and understand the pilates poistions language .

• End of Pilates Positions and Terminology Explained article

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