Yoga or Pilates?

Definitions

Yoga: An ancient practice from Northern India, focusing on the physical and mental wellbeing, incorporating posture, breathing, healthy diet relaxation and meditation.

Pilates: A physical fitness system in the early 20^th century focusing on core strength and development that keep the body balanced and give support to the spine.

The area of focus

Yoga: The bringing together of the physical and spiritual, yoga is a life style approach rather than just an exercise method, aiming at flexibility and to be therapeutic, has been around some 5000 years. 

Pilates: Focus on core strength and movement based exercise, aiming towards physical strength and toning and allowing the lengthening of the spine and building strength within supporting postural muscles, has been widely practised for over 80 years.

Which to choose?

Obviously you can try both, but for a little more information this may help.

Yoga: For those focusing on flexibility and wanting a method to relieve stress and enjoy an inner peace.

Pilates: For those wanting to exercise and improve flexibility as well as strength and muscular toning. Especially within the core muscles.

WHY ARE MY HAMSTRINGS ALWAYS TIGHT?

Many people speak of tight hamstrings after running. The description has become a bit of a throw-away line when talking about one of the most common aches and pains we feel from the rigours of our training.

Many people in fact fail to maintain a neutral pelvic position as they move. This is most likely due to a lack of core strength, and Hip flexor tightness. The pelvis tilting anteriorly (forward) increases the distance between hamstring origin and insertion, lengthening the hamstring muscles and increasing tension.

It’s quite possible that your hamstrings aren't tight because they’re chronically short, it’s far more likely that the feeling of tightness is there because the hamstrings are being held in a lengthened position due to poor Pelvic position and Core weakness.

Before you spend ages performing static stretches for your hamstrings, be smart and work on building Core Strength and achieving and maintaining proper pelvic position as you move. Taking part in our technique clinic classes, pilates and yoga classes are a great way to asses posture, muscular imbalances and range of movement. 
The below link provides a video in relation to hamstring tightness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iW3C4q4QmWk

Swimming at Breadsall Priory

Come along to Breadsall Priory and make the most out of all our facilities including our swimming pool. Swimming is a brilliant way to exercise and because water is about 800 times denser than air you can work hard and burn more calories than out of water. Because swimming uses so many different muscles your heart and lungs must work hard to supply them with oxygen. Swimming can support up to 90% of the body’s weight in water meaning those of you that might have any disabilities or illness such as arthritis can take part in a comfortable environment.

Swimming is a brilliant all round body workout and particularly good for your core strength, the constant kicking in the water will give your legs a brilliant workout and will vastly improve your cardiovascular fitness.  It is a fantastic way to get that toned beach body that many people desire, it will improve your strength and it is statistically proven that people experience less tension, anger and depression after a good swim. I have personally used the pool for the last year at Breadsall Priory and the results I have seen from it have been very encouraging.

Corey Hodgkinson

Tyre Flipping, Method To The Madness

At Breadsall Priory we love to keep up to date and different training methods, old and new and we love getting outdoors with our training. We have recently acquired Tractor tyres, heavy duty for that king of total body exercises, the tyre flip! A few people have questioned what exactly it is we are doing and why, not to mention what the benefits are, so let’s quickly discuss.

The tyre flip is basically using the same lifting technique as a dead lift, you stand toes to the tyre, bend the knees, send the hips back and take hold of the bottom of the tyre with an under hand grip (as opposed to the standard over hand grip in a barbell dead lift) then keeping a strong and neutral spine you drive up through the heels and stand tall, that’s you your dead lift, but with the tyre you keep lifting greater engaging your arms and as soon as the tyre is standing upright you push it down powerfully to the floor and then repeat. So the tyre flip engages just about every muscle in the body and recruits more muscle activation of the core, biceps and triceps than your standard dead lift.
Our trainers also use different adaptation to make the exercise more fun, Karl said ‘I like to perform the tyre flip and then jump into the center of the tractor tyre and back out, turn around and keep repeating, it gives a really good lower abdominal workout and pushes your agility and staying power’
whilst instructing in the Saturday morning bootcamp Corey explained how ‘the tyre flip is really good because it’s tough, you never have to worry about equipment getting damaged and because we have more than one tractor tyre I like to get people racing, because it’s so different to what they usually do they really focus and don’t think about how hard they’re working and when you bring in that element of competition people really dig deep and push hard’

The outdoor training is something to look forward to and will be available for those attending Bootcamp sessions or looking for one to one personal training.