3 Best Pilates Exercises for a Strong Core (Ages 50+)

3 Best Pilates Exercises for a Strong Core (Ages 50+)



• Get Will's Sunday Times Bestseller, Thriving Beyond Fifty, here: https://hayhs.com/TBF_pp_pb_az
• Find the Lifelong Mobility Program here: https://lifelongmobility.co/lifelongmobility
• Get the “Ultimate Guide to Building Muscle & Strength Over Age 50” video bonus FREE here: https://info.ht-physio.co.uk/video
• Join 100,000+ others and get 3-Tip Friday, Will's free weekly email where he shares his best health tips, videos and research, here: https://info.ht-physio.co.uk/3tf

Follow Will on Instagram for more content: https://www.instagram.com/htphysioofficial/

*About Will Harlow*
Will Harlow is a physiotherapist, best-selling published author and YouTube creator who specialises in helping people over the age of fifty. Will is a fully qualified physiotherapist with a Master’s degree from Brunel University in London. His credentials include a BSc and MSc. More about Will Harlow here: https://willharlow.com/

Will is HCPC registered, which you can verify here: https://www.hcpc-uk.org/check-the-register/professional-registration-detail/?query=PH108170&profession=PH

If you're over 50 with a painful problem in the Farnham, Surrey area, you can learn more about how HT Physio can help you return to your active life here: https://ht-physio.co.uk/

**Any information in this video should not be used as a substitute for individual medical advice. Please seek advice from your local healthcare professional before taking action on the information in this video. Use of this information is strictly at your own risk. Will Harlow will not assume any liability for direct or indirect losses or damages that may result from the use of information contained in this video including but not limited to economic loss, injury, illness or death.**

Full policies here: https://ht-physio.co.uk/injury-disclaimer/ & https://www.lifelongmobility.co/advice-injury-disclaimer

today I'm going to share three of my favorite Pilates exercises to help you build a stronger core if you don't know who I am my name is will harow and I'm the over 50s specialist physio here at HT physio INF farum and today we're going to be talking all about some of the best Pilates exercises for core strength that can protect your back and help you to walk and move and live with less pain so these exercises are going to be suitable for a wide range of people but not everyone so do make sure you get checked out by your doctor before you put them into action and if these exercises cause you any pain just avoid them anyway let's have a look at the exercises and I'll explain why they're so important so now I'm going to show you some of my favorite PES exercises for a stronger core I've got three to show you today I'm going to show you how they work why they work and how to do them at home so to make this work you're going to need to lie on a nice stable surface it wants to be soft without being overly giving so we don't want a really soft mattress a firm one might work but the idea is a mat on the floor like this you can use a pillow if that makes you feel comfortable but you can also do it without so the first exercise is called Toe dips and this exercise is a lovely way of switching on the core and checking that everything's working well so to show you how to switch on the core the first thing I'm going to do is give you the basis for all of these exercises and to switch on the core what we want to do is bend the knees like this keep the head nice and relaxed just tuck your hand underneath your lower back and you should be able to slip your hand quite easily under your back like this and all I want you to do here is just press your back down into your hand as if you're flattening your back down to squash your hand so now I can't pull my hand out very easily that means I know that my back is flat and also whilst doing this just pull your tummy button slightly in towards you towards your spine and what this should do is tense the muscles around the lower abdomen and what we're really trying to get here is an effect where if someone was just about to jab you here you were protected so imagine someone's about to just put two fingers really hard into the soft bit of your tummy what would you do to protect it well you would just slightly rotate your pelvis to flatten your back you'd pull your tummy in and you'd feel this area harden up now that means that you can poke me pretty hard I'm well protected which means my core is switched on so let's have a look at the first exercise so we're going to switch on the core so this makes up the foundation and then we're going to bring one leg up like this and then we're going to try and bring the other one up to meet it as well now if this feels pretty tough for you and it does for many people and they struggle to keep that control around their mid riff you could just do this as an exercise so bringing both up then you put one down and then the other one down as well keep the core switched on then you bring one up the other one up and then one down and the other one down so this is the basic version and this is a really nice way just to work on Switching the core on but if you've mastered this this feels very very easy for you I'll show you the full variation of this exercise so again we start in this position we call it tabletop this position I'm going to keep those muscles switched on and then we're just going to slowly drop one of your legs down to touch the toes on the the bed or the mat and then bring it back up again like that so again we're going to drop down touch the toes and then bring it back up and down touch the toes and bring it back up you can see where I don't have any of my feet resting on the ground or the mat I've taken away half of my base of support here which means my core has to work extra hard to maintain the position of my stomach and my back and I'm challenging it even more by bringing my center of gravity away which means my core has to work even harder cuz I'm extending out there and keep to keep that control over my spine so when you're doing this exercise you're going to keep working up to about 30 seconds to a minute you should feel some tiredness in your tummy by the time you finish if you don't feel the tiredness you need to keep going until you do that's how we get better have a rest for a minute repeat that three times over and then we can move on to the next exercise and the next exercise I've got for you today is called 100s and this is another of my favorite Pilates moves it's such a good endurance test for the core and it's kind of relevant to real life because we've got a changing Dynamic core as we move and this exercise challenges it very very well so I'm going to show you a few variations so the first thing we're going to do here again is flatten that core down into the bed and I'll show you how the basic version of the hundreds works now we're going to put our hands down beside our sides like this with the Palms down and just ever so slightly lift your neck and your head from the bed and then we're just going to move our arms up and down like this and we're going to try and do that movement 100 times that's why it gets its name now you don't actually have to hit 100 for this to work well it doesn't have to be anywhere near that many but the closer you get to 100 the the better your score is if you like so let's say I've just done 50 there and I can relax back down now that's quite easy for me for some people that's enough but for me I would need something a bit harder so the next step is we take away half of our base of support So this time we're just going to lift one leg so we're going to keep our hands down switch the core on hold that on throughout lift this leg up to tabletop lift the head and repeat so again this is a little bit harder but not a huge amount harder it's just enough to kind of get the core working a bit bit harder we can feel those abdominals working a little bit more now and then we will try and get to 100 and obviously repeat that with the other side as well now if that was too easy for you we can make that Harder by taking both legs away okay so we're going to switch the core on put the arms down go up into tabletop so one leg two legs like this round like that just lift the head not the shoulders just the head and then we'll start flapping and again we're looking for 100 flaps keeping that head up can really feel that core working try and pull the tummy button in towards the spine it doesn't take long before you get a nice burn in your core drop your legs back down now if you're really Advanced and you want something even harder there's another way we can make this tougher and that is by extending those legs out so what we would do is switch the core on bring the legs up to where they were before and now extend in front lift the neck and then start you can see now I'm starting to get a little bit of a shake down in the core as I try and maintain this position and this is much harder than the variations we did before but if you're very Advanced this is probably the way to challenge it now if you're not Advanced and you haven't tried this before or you have lower back issues don't do that you don't need to get make it that hard to challenge yourself but if you want a challenge that's a great way to do it try and get to 100 have a rest for a minute repeat three times over and then move on to the next exercise and the final exercise we're going to do today and this is one of my favorite Pates exercises as well is called the bird dog and I'm going to show you a couple of variations of this this is one of my favorites because it was proven by Dr Stuart McGill to be a really good protector of the lower back who for people who do it regularly and it's one of the ones I personally do for my gym maintenance routine as well so to make this exercise work for the mat you're now going to go onto your hands and knees so make sure you can comfortably weight bear on your hands and your knees like this and you want your knees underneath your hips and you want your hands underneath your shoulders the first thing we're going to do for this exercise is find what we call pelvic neutral so if you look at my hips right now I'm in an anterior pelvic tilt which is my bum sticking up in in the air and if I go the other way that's a posterior pelvic tilt so what we want is a neutral position halfway between so you might want to find the top and the bottom and then just find the Midway so for me that feels like about there the next thing we're going to do is switch the core on and that's exactly what we did before so we're going to imagine someone's about to poke us here we're just going to pull our tummy in just to protect it and then keep that contraction switched on and then we're going to do level one of the bird dog which is just lifting an arm making a fist keeping that arm outstretch without letting the spine rotate hold for a second pop it down and then swap Sid so lift the arm make the fist the fist actually increases the uh the tension throughout the body which is good because that's what we want and we should if you just took a snapshot of my body you shouldn't really be able to tell that I'm lifting my arm unless you looked at my arm itself because that means I'm keeping everything else controlled and still keeping my core switched on nothing's moving even though I'm technically less stable because I've gone from a four-legged table to a thre legged table so that's the level one and if you find that quite easy we can move on to level two so find that neutral pelvic position again so it's about there switch the core on so pull the Tommy button in and now we're going to lift one arm and as we do that we're going to also lift the opposite leg at the same time we want to have the leg straight and the arm straight but again we should be a nice stiff tabletop as if you could rest the drink on us and it wouldn't drop off our back going to hold for a couple of seconds like that and then pop down and then swap sides so now lift the left arm and the right leg keep that neutral pelvis pull the tummy in the intention here is very very important hold for a couple of seconds in that position and then pop it back down and again alternate to the other side so lift keep the pelvis in the same position keep the core switched on don't let your spine rotate and then pop it down and then swap sides again and rather than counting repetitions I would just recommend that you count seconds so I would work up to sets of 30 seconds 60 seconds maybe more do as many as you feel you can until you get that working ache in the tummy with this exercise I feel it less in the Target muscles but I almost feel it all over as if I've generated tension all throughout the body and I think that's one of the main benefits to it it helps to make the core work at the same time as the limbs in a very different way to the other ones and that's why it definitely deserves a space on this program so repeat that for one minute maybe two minutes have a rest for a minute or so repeat three times over and then that's a great palates workout if you want a stronger core so those are three of my favorite Pilates exercises to help you build a stronger core I hope you found this video useful and if you've learned something do drop a comment below and let me know your thoughts because it does really help me to improve future videos so thank you if you take the time to do that and if you want to get more from me you can pick up a copy of my book it's called thriving Beyond 50 and you can find it on Amazon using the link below it's got loads more core strength exercises inside to help you build a stronger core and a better stronger more mobile spine as well anyway thank you so much for your time I appreciate it and I'll speak to you on on the next video

#Pilates #Exercises #Strong #Core #Ages

source

Previous

No Equipment Full Body HIIT (Burn Up To 500 Calories)

Related Articles

Added to wishlistRemoved from wishlist 0

No Equipment Full Body HIIT (Burn Up To 500 Calories)

Added to wishlistRemoved from wishlist 0

5 MIN ARM WORKOUT

Added to wishlistRemoved from wishlist 0

3 Holistic Healing Practices to Achieve Optimal Health

Added to wishlistRemoved from wishlist 0

IMMUNE BOOSTER SHOT ⦊ maximum strength!