Pilates aims to provide a safe and effective means of strengthening your body and helping you return to regular activity following an injury.
By focusing on the core, as well as being able to target specific muscle groups and areas of the body, pilates can be used to shape a recovery pattern which uses pilates to help you regain full range of motion and confidence following injury.
How can Pilates help with sports injury recovery?
Primarily, pilates helps with injury recovery by stabilising the body, restoring proper muscle function by encouraging muscles to support the surrounding joints as they are supposed to. The process centralises regaining control over the body and the muscles within it.
Pilates also helps by correcting detrimental movement patterns which you may have begun to use as a result of injury, compensating for a lack of function in one area by increasing it elsewhere in the body. Retraining movement patterns through measured exercise techniques allows a pilates specialist to notice where irregularities lie and help you to correct them gradually and painlessly.
Finally, pilates helps to retrain and strengthen injured muscle groups. Injury can result in a certain part, or multiple parts of your body, being out of use for long periods of time, which causes weakness and loss of control. Pilates aims to slowly and methodically reintroduce healthy exercise to these areas through a range of simple and controlled exercises which balance the body and muscles, increasing strength in the core and in targeted areas. This reduces the chance of reinjury, and speeds the process of rehabilitation.
The right kind of Pilates for injury recovery
For injury recovery, it’s normally most beneficial to adopt a rehabilitation clinical pilates approach. Often used as part of a bigger sports injury rehabilitation plan, clinical pilates is guided by a highly qualified pilates instructor who prioritises communication and encourages you to speak out if you’re experiencing any pain or discomfort.
Clinical pilates can be tailored to meet your needs, prioritising exercises which will aid recovery and encourage muscle strengthening in and around the injured area. It will consist of increasing and decreasing intensity and length of exercises based on pain and comfort.
Why you should consider Pilates when recovering from sports injuries
If recovering from a sports injury, you should consider pilates because of its methodical and measured approach. Especially when combined with other techniques, such as strength and conditioning training or sports massage, pilates can act as a therapeutic means of regaining control over your body and easing yourself back into your sporting activities.
Pilates also has the benefit of drastically reducing the chance of reinjury. The low-impact approach to gaining core strength and stability encourages healing without being strenuous or painful. As a result, you’ll feel your confidence increasing gradually, as you learn to become aware of your body after an injury.
Incorporating pilates into a rehabilitation program is highly beneficial, can be a great means of stress relief and help strengthen the whole body, as well as injured areas specifically.
At Injury Mechanics, our evidence-based approach to injury recovery ensures the process is as easy and comfortable as possible. Our goal is to listen to your goals, and provide a recovery plan through pilates or otherwise, which helps you reach them. Get in contact to find out more.
