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By Rachael Bird, Myotherapist
Pilates is highly effective in addressing muscular imbalances, as it focuses on core strength, flexibility, and body awareness. This makes it a perfect addition to your pain or injury recovery plan! Pilates can help you in many ways, including: Core Strengthening: Pilates exercises specifically target the core muscles, including the deep abdominal muscles, pelvic floor, and back muscles. Strengthening these muscles helps improve stability and support for the spine and pelvis, assisting in correcting imbalances. Muscle Symmetry: Pilates workouts emphasise working both sides of the body equally. By engaging in exercises that promote symmetry and balance, Pilates can help correct discrepancies in muscle strength between the left and right sides of the body. Alignment and Posture: Pilates focuses on proper body alignment and posture during exercises. By practicing correct alignment, individuals can retrain their muscles to maintain proper posture, which helps in addressing imbalances caused by poor posture. Mind-Body Connection: Pilates encourages a mind-body connection, promoting greater awareness of how you move and use your body. This awareness helps identify imbalances and allows you to correct movement patterns that might be contributing to the issue. Flexibility and Mobility: Pilates exercises often involve stretching and improving flexibility. Tight muscles can contribute to imbalances, and Pilates helps in lengthening and strengthening muscles to restore balance. Targeted Muscle Groups: Specific Pilates exercises can be tailored to focus on particular muscle groups that are imbalanced or weaker. This targeted approach helps strengthen weaker areas to bring balance to the body. Rehabilitation: Pilates can be used in rehabilitation programs to correct imbalances caused by injuries. The controlled movements and low-impact nature of Pilates exercises can aid in the recovery process. It's important to start Pilates under the guidance of a certified Pilates instructor, particularly if you have known imbalances or injuries. They can assess your situation and tailor exercises that specifically target your imbalances while ensuring movements are performed correctly to avoid exacerbating any existing issues. I recently met Anke Wagner, an amazing Pilates instructor here in Rowville. I interviewed her about her approach to pilates, and can recommend her classes to help with pain relief, injury recovery and maintaining a healthy and happy body. Consistency in Pilates practice is key to seeing improvements in imbalances. Over time, with regular practice and proper guidance, Pilates can significantly help in addressing and correcting muscle imbalances, leading to a more balanced and functionally efficient body. Head over to Anke Pilates to help build up your strength, Increase flexibility and movement today: https://www.ankepilates.com.au/ Anke and Myself have partnered up in helping to offer more to our clients, and we’re excited to help share this with you. She loves helping clients that have limited range of movement, and will help tailor classes to adjust and support each individual's needs. By Rachael Bird, Myotherapist I recently had the pleasure of meeting with Anke Wagner, a local pilates instructor here in Rowville. Anke is a very experienced instructor, shes been teaching for nearly 2 decades, and based locally in Rowville for 9 years. I interviewed Anke about her classes and her approach to pilates.  What services do you provide to the community and where are you located? I offer Pilates classes in Rowville. The classes range from using the reformer equipment, and the Pilates chair and separate classes with just the aerial hammock. The groups are small with a maximum of 3 people. Private classes are offered for beginners as well as clients with specific needs for their injuries. How long have you been operating? AnkePilates has been operating since 2006 and has been in Rowville since 2014. What are your open hours? Monday to Wednesday - 9:15-1pm, 5pm-8.15pm Thursday and Friday 9:15 - 1pm Private classes can be booked outside these opening hours. What made you choose to teach Pilates? I’ve always loved dancing and movement in general. From an early age, I’ve danced ballet up until my late twenties. While living in New Delhi, India, I taught movement classes and Aqua fitness at the American Embassy. Following this amazing experience I began training myself in Pilates in Germany. Once I experienced the Pilates equipment it got me hooked and I knew I wanted to let others experience it too. What types of people does your business serve? I teach a variety of clients, currently from ages 12 to 80. My clients come from all around the eastern suburbs and mostly join to work on their strength and general fitness. I also have clients who join to form a fitness routine with me as well as enjoying the socialising of being in a small intimate group. Some are young mothers who need a bit of ‘me-time’, some don’t enjoy going to a normal gym, or are women in their 40-50s experiencing menopause. No matter the diversity in clients, I always make sure to integrate fun and laughter during our workouts. If a client has ongoing health issues I offer to teach one-on-one. What do you like most about it? My favourite part about teaching Pilates is that it gives people confidence even when their mobility and moving range is limited. There is also so much variety in movements that the Pilates method offers which lets me tailor the class to create challenges and to adjust and support each individual's needs. And of course the way of teaching. I get to use a lot of visual language to facilitate a certain movement. Pilates is a big playground for me.  Tell us about you?
Besides my movement practices, you can find me going on long hikes through the Dandenong Rangers with my husband or enjoying all the flowers I’ve planted in my garden. I’m also on the path to becoming a Harp Therapist as well as giving Sound Massages. My qualifications include:
How can people find more information or book a pilates class with you? Information about classes can be found online at www.ankepilates.com.au I can be contacted for enquiries and bookings by emailing [email protected] or by phone on 0439109775. Thats right! We have a new face in the clinic! Meet Duke Autret, our new Remedial Massage Therapist!  Duke got his Remedial Massage qualifications in 2019 from Australian College of Fitness & Bodywork, which is the same college that Mel studied her Myotherapy qualifications.
He is also close to completing his certification as a Pilates instructor, and interested in leveling up to become a Myotherapist! He's a body and movement nerd - and you know how much we love nerds here at Simple Wellness Myotherapy! In addition to a feel good remedial massage, he will be able to give you some great take home movements that help which you can use between your treatments to boost your recovery! Our long term plan is that once Duke has finished his Pilates instructor training, we want to offer combination treatments where you can experience half the appointment as manual therapy, and the other half as a tailored pilates program. You can book with Duke for remedial massage on Thursdays 3pm-7pm and Sundays 12pm-6pm. Here in Melbourne, we're back in Stage 3 Restrictions. That means that most of our favourite ways to move, stretch and exercise may not be available to us right now, including gyms, yoga studios, pilates classes, martial arts, personal training, and lots more. So what are your options from home to keep moving, stretching and feeling physically well? Here are some of our favourite at home, online accessible resources.  Erica Webb Yoga & Pilates Virtual Studio - Erica has an amazing and gentle approach to movement as medicine. Shes fun, insightful, and her classes are suitable for people of all ages and abilities. Erica is a local yoga teacher from Croydon. Her membership subscription costs less than a single traditional yoga class per month.
Nate Bower Fitness - you don't need a boxing bag to be able to follow along with these boxing drills. Guaranteed to get your heart rate up, and lots of beginner friendly classes. This YouTube channel provides free 20-30 minute boxing class videos. Couch To 5K App - Want to start running? This app helps you go from dusting off your old runners, to running a full 5km. Starting with very small bursts of running with big walk intervals, and as your fitness improves the interval timing changes, until you can make it through your full 5km run. I've used this app myself in the past and found it really useful and encouraging. You can use the official C25K app on Apple or Android, or there are plenty of similar versions for free (maybe with a few ads!) Mountain Pilates - Jeanette Tatton is a local pilates instructor in the Hills, and is running Zoom pilates classes each week. Pilates is a great full body workout that is gentle but effective at strengthening your body. Alpha Health - Our good friend Ash and her partner Paul are amazing personal trainers offering online coaching to keep you fit and moving throughout isolation. When Anytime Fitness in Ferntree Gully is open, Ash offers training there, too. What are your favourite online resources to stay inspired and healthy during lockdown? Let us know on our social media channels on Facebook and Instagram! |
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