Pilates Abdominal Exercises

What are Pilates abdominal exercises?

If you're involved in Pilates, one of the phrases you hear often in relation to Pilates is pull in your abs.

In fact, this is one of the core focuses and benefits of Pilates, but it's not really understood that well.

You have to pull in your abdominal muscles as part of the Pilates abdominal exercises you do.

It's done for strength training, physical therapy, and in other disciplines of physical fitness because it stabilizes your spine.

If you do this properly, training your abdominal muscles with this kind of focus gives you core strength that both supports your back and creates stability and ease of motion throughout your body.

What does it mean, though, to "pull in your abs" effectively, and how is this different from doing something as innocuous and ineffective as sucking in your gut?

Pilates abdominal exercises are among the basic Pilates moves. They seek to give you a stable foundation. In effect, you are developing movement from the inside out.

You use the muscles of your pelvic floor and your abdominal muscles, helping them work in tandem with your back muscles to both avoid injury and increase strength and flexibility.

In fact, Pilates focuses on the deeper abdominal muscles, such as the transverse abdominis, and it also focuses on the muscles of the pelvic floor. This is very different than other types of core training.

And in fact, these muscles themselves are often underdeveloped and not pulling their weight along with the surface muscles, such as the rectus abdominis, or the six pack that so often touted as beneficial to have. Of course, it is, but it has to work in tandem with all muscle groups.

Oftentimes, practitioners of other types of exercise or therapists encourage patients and participants to pull your belly button up to your spine, or to think as though you got punched in the stomach. Of course, this facilitates you to pull in your abdominal muscles.

But these activities are erroneous and have no benefit, because they only facilitate "looking" like you're focusing on your core muscles instead of working from the inside out. In fact, they encourage a weakening of posture, in that you slump forward from your upper torso doing this, as well is tucking your pelvis in.

This is the exact opposite of what you want with a stable core. In fact, what you want to work on is not in the area of your belly button, but with the muscles of the pelvic floor.

You often hear of muscles in the pelvic floor being in great focus for women who have just been pregnant, or for women in general. When you hear of Kegel exercises, for example, this is very similar to what you want to do with Pilates for the pelvic floor.

However, it means so much more than simply having some control in that area. It means that you have a stable base from which to work. If you work from the pelvic floor up and in at the same time, this is more accurate as to the image of what you want to achieve.

And in general, Kegels are much more intense and focused entirely on the pelvic floor, whereas in Pilates, it's much more generalized.

With Pilates abdominal exercises, you engage the pelvic floor and then "pull in" just above your pubic bone, which eventually progresses to a deep pulling-in of your lower abdominal muscles.

You keep going until you in effect pull the bellybutton toward the spine, and then continue upward to the upper abdominal area. If you're like some people, you may even be able to continue a bit further and do an extra upward lift of the abdominal muscles.

This is what is called a pull in and scoop of the abdominal muscles. And in addition, you're not just pulling in from front to back, but also concentrating on the sides of your abdominal area.

It's important to remember that when you're doing a pulling-in of the abdominal muscles, you are not utilizing your spine but you are keeping it neutral. The pulling-in you create does not flex the upper spine forward, nor does it tuck the pelvis in as with the previously mentioned examples.

As you pull in your abdominals, maintain a long back, as well as the width. What you want to do is counter the pull of your abdominal muscles. Even though Pilates does use exercises with your spine flexed forward or a flat or curved back, these are for specific exercises and not for just an intention to pull in your abs.

When you do abdominal work with these types of basic Pilates moves, you should remember that your breathing is not to be impeded. You only use a very small amount of breath capacity to focus on this part of your body. In fact, breathing fully expands into your sides and down your back, as visualized. This can also further help open and lengthen your back.

When you do an abdominal pull in with Pilates abdominal exercises, you can do it intensely while training so that the muscles themselves become stronger. In other words, this is a specific effect when you are focusing on strengthening your abdominal.

In turn, when you do this type of focus, you learn to integrate the use of all of your abdominal muscles so that everything from everyday movement to athletic pursuits are performed more effectively and efficiently, without a thought after a while.

In other words, you're not going to use a strong pull-in all the time as you move through your life. Instead, as your core becomes stronger, the muscles themselves become stronger as well and are able to handle the job you need to do. However, you shouldn't need to concentrate on pulling in your abdominal muscles constantly.

With practice you'll find doing the Pilates abdominal exercises get easier and become more natural and enjoyable.

When you do the Pilates abdominal exercises, that's just part of it. Pilates focuses on the entire body as a whole, and on its alignment. In addition, you want to fully utilize breath, and have focused awareness as you move through each exercise, so that you achieve full benefits.