Want To Make Your Pilates Workout More Challenging? This Guide Is For You!

Pilates is a perfect form of body exercise that has the capacity to improve the body and mind’s wellbeing. It usually concentrates on strengthening the whole body, while mainly focusing on the core. However, people usually find pilates as a rather simple way to exercise, but this can be highly deceiving. Actually, it turns out that a lot of people do not use the total potential of their bodies during the exercise, which affects the workout performance. To that end, it is important that you occasionally make your workout program more challenging. By virtue of leveling up your exercises, you can reach the full potential of your body and enhance the training much more.

Therefore, if you are a training enthusiast who is results-oriented, then you have to check this list of some great ways to make your pilates workout more challenging and rewarding!

Slow down the movement

You can make the most of your training by slowing down your movements during the whole workout. By virtue of slower movements, you will provoke higher tension, more calorie-burning, and put the exercise to a whole new level. In this way, your training will become more exhausting, so make sure you focus on breathing and make it more balanced.

Incorporate New Equipment

Over the months and years of exercising, our muscles grow resistant to the exercise that we keep repeating. To that end, it is always useful from time to time to introduce a new set of exercises so that you can keep the effectiveness of your workout at a high level. To that end, it will be useful to find some novel Pilates equipment to buy, since, with new equipment, you will be able to do many exercises that you hadn’t done before. In that way, you will make your pilates training both more challenging and effective!

Learn how to control the muscles

Learning to control your muscles can make your whole workout more successful and purposeful. Many people find their workout rather easy. However, oftentimes they do not put focus on the target muscle group but use the whole body instead. This way, the exercise program is less effective and feels “easier”. In order to make your pilates exercise better, make sure you check what muscle group each exercise provokes, and then ensure you focus on that group and put the most stress on it. Because of this, your workout will be harder, but more efficient! 

Decrease rest time between exercises

The mistake that we often make while exercising is that we take more rest than we should. This sometimes happens rather unknowingly. For instance, each time you stop to drink water, reply to a message or email, or answer the questions of your gym mate, you make micro rests that may decrease the overall workout performance. Likewise, we often stop and correct the movement or body position. Nevertheless, you should know that all these stops and the time they take are a certain kind of rest that you give to your body. 

If you want to make your pilates workout more challenging, then you should probably start by becoming more dedicated and disciplined and thus avoid these unnecessary resting points. Once you get over them, you can then decrease the usual rest time that you take between the exercises. This will immediately increase the difficulty level of the workout, making it harder and more strenuous. Naturally, you should start slowly. For example, in the beginning, you can reduce 10-15% of resting time, while later you may reduce it up to 40%.

Increase Time Under Tension

Tension is the moment that is at the core of your workout. Naturally, it is also the most strenuous one. However, if you want to level up your pilates workout, then you may try prolonging the time under tension. You will immediately notice that your workout takes more energy and is more difficult. 

This is at the same time one of the most effective ways to make your workout challenging. In that way, you may try keeping your body position at tension for a few seconds more. By that time, you may continue increasing the time a second or two. This way, you will effectively increase the stress on your target muscle area and achieve more with every workout. 

It is surprising how much you can advance your training by simply focusing on target muscle areas, striking a balance between breathing and body movements, and, importantly, getting the right equipment for the best results! In that sense, make sure you take into consideration some of the useful pieces of advice from this list! Good luck and stay strong!