Gain Without Pain

Sun Herald

Sunday September 30, 2001

CHRISTINE HOGAN

So you hate gyms? So did CHRISTINE HOGAN. Then she discovered Pilates.

MICHAEL Klim is a miracle in the pool. He slices through the water with precision, perfectly balanced to maximise speed and minimise drag. That, according to informed observers, would be down to the abs of steel which keep him stable. And that, according to its adherents, is what you get from the Pilates (pronounced Pah-lah-teas) method of body conditioning.

It wasn't in homage to the mighty Klim that I first went to Pilates: my GP made me do it. Years of niggling pain had finally escalated into a chronic bad back.

My struggles were not a pretty sight and the squeaking from the pain wasn't so good either. So I acquired Sarah Key's Back Sufferers' Bible and read up it was clear from the first pages that even the most exercise-resistant among us need to strengthen stomach muscles to support their backs. I knew I would have to find those stomach muscles (they went missing somewhere about 14 years ago) before that could start to happen.

But the thought of going to gym classes was just too horrible to contemplate, almost as horrible as the prospect of spending the next 40 years a martyr to my constant companion, my back pain.

That's what finally galvanised me into going to the doctor. I was hoping for drugs.

She diagnosed a problem with my SIJ (that's the sacroiliac joint, where the spine at the sacrum sits on the pelvis. There's usually a small amount of movement at this joint, but it can become hypermobile leading to SI joint pain) and that's what sent me to physiotherapy. The physio recommended massage therapy, coupled with a course of Pilates classes.

I didn't know it, but I was about to become hooked on an exercise method that's increasingly popular around the world with men, women, physiotherapists and other health care professionals, the very young, the old, the completely out of condition and people so fit you could bounce dollar coins off their butts. (This is a technical word you learn fast in Pilates, as in ``Squeeze that butt!")

Dancers among them members of the Australian Ballet like Pilates because it adds strength to muscles without bulking them up, and improves balance.

(The dancers are the ones in class who, when asked to do a hamstring stretch, lie flat on the floor and put an ankle behind an ear. So depressing for those of us just going for a simple 90 degrees.)

You know your exercise method is deeply fashionable when it becomes part of the cultural literacy.

Just the other night on Grosse Point, Hunter was getting her hapless flunky to schedule her Pilates class.

Apparently the body-conscious end of Hollywood including Julia Roberts and Courteney Cox Arquette is going off to classes in the sweat-free, body-conditioning method first devised by Joseph Pilates in the early 1900s.

Here's the quick history lesson: the German-born Pilates had suffered from rickets and asthma as a child and determined to strengthen his frail body with a series of exercises he called The Art of Contrology. (Good thing someone rethought that name.) During World War I, he was interned and eventually worked as an orderly with bedridden patients in a hospital. He attached springs to their beds to help their weak limbs and noticed that patients he worked with were improving at a greater rate than normal. The system Pilates devised was, essentially, exercise for the bedridden.

For him, it was all about balance. Stabilise and strengthen the central core of the body, and the limbs would naturally fall into equilibrium, moving freely.

Pilates, who opened his first US studio in New York in 1926, said: ``Physical fitness is the first requisite to happiness."

The first good thing about Pilates is that you will not need a whole new wardrobe to do it in. All you need are comfortable, loose fitting clothes, a towel and a pair of socks. The second is that the exercises are not supposed to hurt you once there is pain, you stop. (Tell that to a gym nazi!)

The classes are in two areas: the mat, which works mainly on the abdomen and the spinal muscles (eg, the cat exercise to flex the back, back bracing, side to sides) or on the machines (the trap table and the Reformer), which focus on resistance training. It's low impact and hardly raises a sweat.

It's deceptive, this form of body conditioning. It draws on quite a number of yoga asanas, or poses, as the basis for some of its exercises.

And, like yoga, it also requires a form of commitment. As Joseph Pilates said: ``Physical fitness can neither be achieved by wishful thinking nor outright purchase."

I now go to yoga twice a week as well. That's probably the miracle of Pilates even the bone-lazy respond.

How to start

Read

Sarah Key's Back Sufferers' Bible (Allen & Unwin).

The Pilates Body by Brooke Siler the ultimate at-home guide to strengthening, lengthening and toning your body without machines (Broadway Books, New York, through Amazon.com).

Body Control The Pilates Way by Lynne Robinson and Gordon Thompson (Newleaf).

Pilates Body Conditioning by Anna Selby and Alan Herdman (Gaia Books Limited).

For the accredited Pilates Method studio nearest to you, call the Australian Pilates Method Association, 02 99554588. Class costs vary and depend on how many there are in a class. A general class might cost around $15, one-on-one considerably more. Optimum maximum size for a mat and machine, one-hour class, is three people. If you pay one class at a time, you will pay considerably more than if you buy a group of 10 or 20 classes.

Rub in

Biotherm has developed a range of creams, gels and a lotion to make the exercised skin feel more supple. In the Aqua Sport range, there's Deep Relief Massage Gel, Invigorating Shower Gel and Icy Gel For Legs, Cooling Energising Body Lotion, Soothing Foot Cream and Quenching Body Cream. Developed in conjunction with athletes and trainers, Aqua Sport uses mint extracts and natural moisturisers.

Exercise for pleasure

After you have started work on your body with the Pilates method, you might find you are ready to add to your exercise portfolio.

* Swimming: This has the great advantage in that it can be easily mistaken for fun but you need to do the lengths, of course. Swimming is low-impact (no impact at all if you don't hit the sides or the bottom of the pool) and is great for increasing your aerobic capacity.

Advantage: You can work on your tan and not look idle.

Disadvantage: Finding the swimsuit.

* Walking: Time to get out there and have a look at the real world. You can take it fast, or take it slow depending on your level of fitness and how you feel.

Advantage: You can take a friend, a family member or a dog with you.

Disadvantage: Sometimes they will want to find their own path and take you along for the hike.

* Yoga: Ranges from Karma Yoga, doing the right thing for its own sake without considering the results, to Bhakti Yoga (love and devotion), to Ashtanga Yoga, the tough and backbreaking form. There are various forms of Hatha Yoga which expound the idea of a healthy spirit in a healthy body.

Advantage: It's a way of life if you want it to be.

Disadvantage: No-one laughs in a yoga class and they really should.