Making Movement (and life) Easy.

“Exercise” is a funny thing, and to tell you the truth, I prefer to talk about “movement” rather than exercise because a lot of people relate to exercise as a “chore” or something that they’ve “always hated”.  But let’s leave that discussion for another day. For now, let’s talk about the purpose of exercise and how sometimes we focus on the wrong thing. 

Most people think that exercise needs to be “hard” to be effective. You’ll often hear fitness instructors saying “squeeze your glutes as hard as possible, draw in your tummy nice and tight”. But focussing on working hard just teaches your body to use maximum energy when you move. 

What if we changed our focus to making movement as “easy” as possible? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not endorsing workouts that don’t challenge you. But if the aim of exercise is to keep us fit, healthy and able to do what we love, then we need to find ways to teach our bodies to work with efficiency, flow and grace. What if you could find a way to make squatting down feel easy instead of hard? What if going for a 5km run felt energising instead of draining? 

This fortnight in Pilates, we are focusing on just that. We will be challenging you to find ways to move with less effort. Same task. Less energy. It will be challenging but not because you’re squeezing every muscle in your body at once. It will be challenging because you’ll learn to trust that your body can find a way to move using only the minimum muscles and effort that is required.