Pilates

Every Monday 7:15pm to 8:15pm with Steve Wright. All necessary equipment provide. Suitable clothing for light exercise is all you need to wear. Exercises are done in socks or bare feet. £5 per session please call Eileen 07799 408983 for further details.

Pilates is an invigorating form of exercise for your mind and body that can improve your strength, flexibility and overall mobility. It helps restore your body to balance. As a result, your posture will change and you will move more efficiently.

You'll achieve a strong core, develop longer, leaner muscles and improve your overall sense of well-being. And, if you are a sports enthusiast, Pilates can help improve your game. Pilates is a safe and effective exercise method that will enable you to look - and feel - your very best. Best of all, because it gives you such a wonderful sense of well-being, you'll want to do Pilates for the rest of your life.

Ten Reasons Why You Should
Try Pilates Today!

1. Improved posture. Your spine supports the weight of your body and allows your body to move with ease and comfort. That's the theory anyway. But in practice, hours spent sitting in front of a computer screen or slumped in front of a TV means that the spine's natural S shape is lost, resulting in back pain and rounded shoulders. Pilates helps to re-align the spine and with that comes better posture.

2. Relief from back pain. As mentioned above, a great deal of lower back pain comes from poor posture and our daily mistreatment of our spines. By re-aligning your spine and improving your posture, lower back pain can often be eliminated entirely.

3. A good night's sleep. Ask anyone to name three things essential for life and you will be told, water, air and food. Few people will mention sleep and yet it too is essential to life. A disturbing ten million prescriptions for sleeping pills are issued every year in England alone - a figure that gives you some idea of the numbers of people who suffer from insomnia. Pilates can help stretch muscles, releasing tension and pain, and it can also help trigger natural sleep responses.

4. Increase your strength and stamina without adding muscle bulk. Pilates helps increase both your strength and stamina without adding unwanted bulk because it focuses on developing your "core" muscles - muscles found in your abdominal and pelvic regions as well as in your back. By toning and stretching these muscles, and by correcting your posture, your natural strength and stamina will improve in leaps and bounds.

5. Pilates can help prevent osteoporosis
One in two women and one in five men over the age of 50 in the UK will break a bone, mainly because of a bone disorder called osteoporosis. Osteoporosis affects three million people in the UK every year, with bones (and particularly those of the spine, wrist and hips) becoming thin and weak and susceptible to fractures. By promoting good posture and balance, pilates can actively help you avoid becoming one of those people.

6. A great way to relax and beat stress
Pilates is a gentle form of exercise that literally re-introduces you to your own body. And the better you understand your body and how it works, the easier it will be for you to release tension, relax and beats the stresses and strains of modern life.

7. Help with prevention of incontinence
Stress incontinence is the most common form of incontinence and affects over three million people in the UK. A common cause of this type of incontinence in women is pregnancy, where the pelvic floor muscles can be weakened, but as we get older muscles in the pelvic area can weaken too. Pilates will help you strengthen your pelvic floor muscles, thereby curing what can be a very distressing problem for sufferers.

8. Improve your balance and co-ordination
Pilates helps improve your balance and co-ordination by realigning your spine and strengthening your "core" muscles. And better balance and co-ordination means fewer injuries - hence pilates growing popularity among professional sports people - from dancers to rugby players.

9. Helps aid recovery after injury - and prevent injury recurring Because of its low impact nature, pilates is widely recognised as being beneficial to people who are recovering from certain types of injury including whiplash and a wide range of sporting injuries. Indeed, many of the injuries that sports people are afflicted with can be avoided - and pilates can play a big part in ensuring correct body movement and core body strength leads to fewer such injuries.

10. No pain plenty gain!
In most gyms you will hear the mantra "no pain, no gain", but you won't hear it repeated in a pilates studio. Pilates is a gentle non-aerobic form of exercise that will tone and strengthen your muscles and transform poor posture without stressing the joints or the heart.

Pilates Foundation

The Pilates Foundation is an international organisation for Pilates teachers and training. Founded in 1996, it brings together qualified Pilates teachers who are passionate about providing the highest standards of training and practice of Pilates and maintaining the principles and integrity of the work.

As a not-for-profit organisation, the Pilates Foundation is committed to establishing and maintaining certification, and continuing education standards at the very highest level.

All Pilates Foundation teachers are accredited members of the Pilates Foundation and must follow a strict Code of Ethics and Code of Conduct.

You can find an accredited list of Pilates Foundation teachers on this web site. Just click on Class Finder to find an accredited teacher or class in your area.

Wigan Sports Club

Established 1843