PERFORMANCE PILATES Battersea

Pilates is all about movement and exercise. It can be completed both as Mat work or on a Reformer, which has a series of springs and moveable board to help increase or decrease the training load and facilitate your training progress. An instructor will take you through a series of exercises that can address different areas all designed to improve your core strength, movement patterns and muscle tone, while it is increasingly used as a rehabilitation tool for recovery from injury.

Uniquely at Performance Logic we complete a movement assessment to understand how you move and this helps make sure we are targeting the right Pilates programme for you.

Pilates can be performed both as a 1.2.1 session with an instructor however many people prefer to complete classes. At Performance Logic all our classes are limited to three customers to a class, helping you achieve your individual goals while training in a group environment.

Pilates is a great form of exercise, but we would not say as a stand alone it is good for weight loss. It will assist as part of a multi-faceted approach it can help you achieve your goals. If weight loss is your main goal, we would suggest looking to find someone to oversee your whole programme to make sure you address both exercise, diet and day to day life effectively.

Pilates is an excellent training programme that can help improve muscle tone and improve flexibility, while increasing core strength. It is increasingly used by elite sports (such as cricket, rugby, lacrosse, hockey, football) to help player core strength and mobility as part of their training week.

Pilates is also increasingly used to help the later stages of recovery from injury, assisting in the improvement and recovery from back, hip and upper back and shoulder issues. It is used to help improve muscle function and build stability again.

Reformer Pilates is completed on a bench with a sliding section that is attached to various strength springs. It means the loads can be changed to make the exercises either harder or easier, as required for the specific customer.

This is a tricky question as there are so many different forms of both, but primarily they are both forms of exercise that help improve your core strength, flexibility and stability. Pilates is completed as 1.2.1, small or medium sized classes generally, while Yoga tends to be more of a medium to large class options.

Pilates is more focused on muscle activation through movement, while yoga tends to work more on holds of positions, so can be more static as a result. This depends on the forms of each that you are completing though.

Anything you feel comfortable completing a work-out in and generally wearing normal gym kit is perfect for this type of training.

Pilates Instructors complete a specific Pilates training programme, the advantage at Performance Logic is that all our instructors are degree level physiotherapists, sports therapists or sports rehabilitators so have a great understanding of injuries, training and performance. This, along with their Pilates training, completed primarily through APPI, means that our team are highly skilled practitioners.

All forms of exercise burn calories and fat, there will be some that are more efficient than others at these roles. Generally activities like running and HITT training sessions would be more effective at achieving these goals, however once you move to the higher levels of training, like our Elite Classes, you will be pushed to a new level and certainly it will become more influential in improving calorie and fat burn.

Personally we would look at it as an essential part of your training, improving your core strength will help with your other forms of training and allow you to progress and achieve your specific goals.

Reformer Pilates is a form of strength training however it is more geared towards improving your core strength and stabilisers than improving your raw strength. That said if your core and stabilisers are stronger and working more effectively, you will find that your strength will improve as a result. This is why many elite sports clubs now use Pilates as part of their training week.

Pilates was developed by Joseph Pilates who had a background in boxing and gymnastics, which he took up to help him recovery from a poorly childhood. He moved from Germany to the UK in 1912, and later to America where he set up a studio with his wife, which began to attract dancers and soon after ballet dancers too. From there he never looked back, and more recently over the past 25 years it has been increasingly used in the mainstream as a great form of exercise, to build and develop core strength and for recovery from injury.

Simply you will not become bigger from Pilates training. Pilates targets the stabilisers primarily and these muscles will get stronger but are not designed to get bigger in the same way, this will help with tone and strength without adding bulk. The focus is on muscles like your obliques, lateral gluts, rotator cuff muscles.

Clinical Pilates, called Foundation Pilates at Performance Logic, is designed with injury recovery in mind and generally completed by Pilates instructors that have a injury training background. At our clinic all the Pilates instructors have completed degrees in physiotherapy, sports therapy or sports rehabilitation. This gives them a unique ability to help progress customers from injury, build their foundation and elevate their performance.

Pilates is a wonderful way to assist in injury recovery, primarily it is great to target low and mid back pain along with most shoulder and hip injuries. However, due to the reformer training process it can be used assist with the recovery of most injuries by improving your strength, flexibility and stability of your muscles.