The Swing of Things – Pilates & Rotational Sports
Golf, tennis, and baseball are just a few sports that demand mobility, stability, coordination, balance, and alignment for efficient movement. Athletes who participate in these rotational sports are excellent candidates for Pilates.
If we take a moment to think about the demand placed on the body when playing any of these sports, we can quickly see that repetitively swinging the arm overhead, if not integrated with the rest of the body, can easily cause injury. Common injuries include rotator cuff impingement and tears, tendonitis, bursitis, sprains, and back pain. All of these things can be avoided and minimized with one thing…Pilates!
As Pilates teachers, we know how to help our clients integrate movement efficiently. We are great at looking at the bigger picture. For example, when we observe someone performing footwork on the reformer, we are not just looking at foot and ankle alignment. We are watching how the knees track in line with the hips; do their hips seem level; does the weight distribution and timing seem to be balanced; are the ribs in line with their pelvis and softly resting on the carriage; are the shoulders open and level; is the head centered with their body? These are just some of the basic things a Pilates instructor is trained to see– just imagine how powerful a Pilates instructor’s intervention could be with an athlete!
Pilates for rotational sports can help enhance this skill set by looking at the dynamic relationships of the body. Using Polestar’s six Principles of Movement, together with the Pilates repertoire, we can make better decisions about which exercises to use with athletes to optimize their sports performance.
Pilates for rotational sports is synonymous with Pilates for injury prevention. As alignment is improved, efficiency and endurance increase. When our joints are moving in their optimal way, muscle actions are more balanced and the likelihood of injury decreases. By adding Pilates to an athlete’s workout routine, we can better educate them so that they can get the most out of their play.
EXPERIENTIAL / TRY THIS AT HOME
Increasing spinal mobility in general can have a very positive impact on rotation of the spine. Because all of our ribs are attached to the spinal column, increasing the mobility of the ribcage can increase the mobility of the spine. One of my favorite ways to access more movement through the ribs is through breath.
Breathing for spinal mobility:
Props needed – yoga strap, belt or scarf
1. Lie on your back with the strap under your ribcage, crossing in front; hold opposite straps with hands so that when you pull on the straps it tightens around your ribcage.
2. Pull the strap tight enough that you can just barely feel it against your ribcage.
3. Inhale and allow the strap to slide to accommodate the increase in size of your ribcage. Notice how much strap you let slide.
4. Exhale and pull the strap to help your ribcage narrow with your exhale.
5. Repeat this 8-10 times and see if the total difference from full exhale to full inhale increases.
Stand up paddle boarding is one of the fastest growing water sports in recent years. Paddle boarding is an aquatic activity that is performed standing on a surfboard with the help of a paddle to propel you through the water. One of the earliest accounts of stand up paddling was in pre-colonial west and south African tribes, standing in long canoes with modified spear-paddles. The sport as we know it originates in Hawaii, where they use 5 meter long boards and paddles. Professional SUP started in Hawaii around 1990, when the practice began being taught in surf schools for the first time.
SUP is an ideal activity because it doesn’t require much adeptness to surfing (or even waves). Practicing Pilates while balancing on a board, on the water, is another story. Pilates on the board becomes a more dynamic balancing experience of posture and breath. When you climb on the paddle-board, the movement of the water creates an extra dimension of instability and challenge to familiar Pilates poses. SUP + Pilates does wonders for awareness, balance and focus – assuming you can stay on!
Polestar Graduate, 
I was once at a Polestar Pilates Educator meeting in which we were working hard to create content for the Internet to communicate to the world, “Why Pilates?” And “Why Polestar?” The answers I found to these questions were easy. Why Pilates? Because Pilates keeps every person doing what they want to do! Whether that is hiking mountains or pulling weeds, running marathons or playing on the floor with grandchildren.
Now Why Polestar? That’s an easy one. Polestar Pilates allows me to be creative within a system of principles. Rather than teaching me a series of exercises that become a rote script for a beginner, intermediate and advanced Pilates class, Polestar provided a structure within which I could be creative. This meant that I could use the same tools to teach an 85 year old grandfather as well as a ten year old boy. I wasn’t taught a recipe of exercises but a systematic approach and theory. The amateur chaos theory mathematician in me was stoked!
The Polestar Pilates system is based on six principles (Polestar Principles of Movement) that are designed to guide the critical thinking of a Polestar Pilates Practitioner. In this post I want to describe the first one.
The Breath Principle
Now, we don’t specifically choreograph when one should inhale and exhale. We study the anatomy and physiology of the breath and we also learn the “biokinematics” and the “arthrokinematics” of breath. All of this information within the principle allows us to decide how to best use breath as a tool for movement facilitation. When we study the breath principle we choose to ask the question how can I use the breath to create the best movement. Will an inhale help facilitate healthy movement, or is an exhale better? Or we might ask, how can I use this breath to challenge the mover in front of me to create greater integration of movement.
The Polestar Principles encourage client-centered inquisitiveness – Can our understanding of the breath shed light on any other physiological questions? How might I use breath to improve posture? Create more flexibility or space in a joint? Create axial length or facilitate thoracic mobility?
Why do I love Polestar Pilates? Because Polestar gave me a plethora of information and then said, “okay kid, take this and run with it! Have a ball, and most importantly help people move”.
Experiential:
The breath is a system and tool we can learn to control (and teach our students to control as well). Try “Box Breathing” for stress reduction, grounding and activating the parasympathetic nervous system.
• This breath practice can be done anywhere! Wherever you are, sit or stand in a way that you feel grounded (weight distributed evenly between the feet or sits bones) and lengthen the spine as if your head was being pulled up by a thread.
• “Box Breathing” consists of the same number of counts during your inhale as your exhale with an added pause at the peak of the inhale and valley of the exhale.
Try It!:
A. Inhale Four Counts (1,2,3,4) – (Pause Four Counts – 1,2,3,4)
B. Exhale Four Counts (1,2,3,4)- (Pause four counts 1,2,3,4)
C. Try Repeating this Cycle 4 times.
• This rhythmic breathing practice can help activate your parasympathetic nervous system (the one that makes you feel calm). Experiment to find the number of counts that works for you – it should be easy, steady and grounding. Breathe On!
Katrina Hawley PMA-CPT, Polestar Educator and Affiliate is the owner of 
I had been working in technology sales for more than ten years and was getting very bored. My current position was winding down and I hadn’t started looking for anything else. At the same time, I was seeing a career psychologist to help determine what I should do next. Just the same it never dawned on me to leave the corporate world. Then, a personality profile that I had completed with the psychologist showed that I would make a good teacher. Of course, I thought. You don’t work in technology sales without being able to teach clients why the new expensive tech solution is something they need when none of their competitors are spending money on it. But, did that mean I could teach people why Pilates could help them stay strong and flexible while enhancing their ability to do just about any other activity they were interested in doing?
Weeks passed and I kept going to my two private Pilates sessions every week. My instructor brought it up again. I questioned her about why she thought I would be good. It turned out she was seeing the same things that the personality profile showed. I started to connect the dots and thought this might be something to consider. I did a little research into different teacher training programs and quickly decided that if I was going to do this I wanted to be comprehensively trained from a school that qualified for PMA certification. I wanted to make sure that I was well qualified to teach; I was going to do this right.
Even though I live in Philadelphia, a major metropolitan area, there were not many options. I had long believed in the therapeutic healing properties of Pilates. It made sense to me that a school founded by a physical therapist would take a scientific approach to Pilates. My logical mind liked that. This led me to Polestar. It was also the school that my teacher had been trained by. I considered other schools and really wanted to find an option that would not require a hotel or long drive. In the end, I chose Polestar and took the training in Burlington, VT. It was a long drive, but it was also where my husband grew up and his parents still lived there. In the end, I did have a long drive, but I would not have a to stay in a hotel.
The training was intense. I was surprised by how much there was to learn. After all, I had been doing Pilates for 8 years. I thought for sure I knew how to do the exercises. Turns out it takes a lot more than knowing the exercises to be a Pilates Instructor. In addition to learning how to cue and formulate a workout, Polestar takes the time to make sure you understand why you are doing what you are doing not just how to do it. A lot of time is spent prompting the student to think through their decision-making process to ensure that when they graduate they can work with people in an effective manner that helps them reach their fitness goals.
The educators and mentors truly care about the students in a way that makes you feel like family. As I planned my Pilates career and determined that I wanted to open a studio I knew that I also wanted to work with Polestar to bring Comprehensive Teacher Training to the Philadelphia area. In the fall of 2017 it became a reality. Now I am the instructor asking my clients to consider becoming Pilates teachers.
Surprisingly I have not missed the corporate world. It used to be that every couple of years I would get bored with my job and start looking for something new or different. Now, I truly believe that I have found what I was meant to do. Several years have passed and rather than becoming bored, I have become more obsessed and engaged with Pilates and the Pilates community.
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