Okay, today take 5 minutes and close your office door or if you don’t have your own office find a meeting room that isn’t being used. Lie down on your back with your butt as close to a wall as you can get. Let your legs rest against the wall. Try and keep you legs straight. Your hips should be at a 90 degree angle. Stay there for 5 minutes. You can do pelvic tilts if you want.

Rarely do your feet get elevated on the job. Usually your standing or sitting. It’s good for your back, and some research shows inverting the body (getting the feet over the head) will make you less depressed. So this is a great option on a day that just isn’t going your way.

If you feel like 5 minutes qualifies as a break you don’t have time for, bring some paperwork you need to read through. You’ll be doing work while in a position that is good for your back and body!

If you don’t feel sore after Pilates class that is okay. It is not a sign that you didn’t work hard or didn’t have an effective workout. I will often feel like I can’t do one more double leg stretch and my abs will burn during a Pilates class. Then I wake up the next morning and don’t feel sore. At the same time, every now and then I’ll take a class that feels surprisingly easy and be sore the next day.

As your body gets used to an exercise soreness will be caused by doing something different or in a different order, but soreness is not an indicator of a well-worked muscle. A study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning this February found that muscle soreness can be reduced by running for 20-minutes before weight training and doing aerobic exercises between sets and reps. This article was geared specifically toward weight lifting, but it should have a similar effect on any exercise that challenges or fatigues the muscles.

What really indicates whether you’ve had a good workout? Here are some things to look for:

• Am I improving week to week/month to month?
• Can I complete an exercise I wasn’t […]

It’s Friday. Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing are you sitting up tall right now with your belly button pulled to your spine and your kegel engaged? If yes, that’s great. If you are already feeling the effects of TGIF and you can’t wait for a little R&R that’s okay too. Sometimes it’s good to give yourself and your body a break.

That being said sometimes the best time to exercise is when you don’t feel like it. Luckily, with Pilates you are actually exercising when you engage your core muscles, think about your posture, and attempt to have good posture. I know it’s hard to maintain for long periods, but that’s why it counts as work, especially when you first get started with Pilates.

I used to have a kickboxing instructor that always repeated these words in class: “Exercise all your life” and “Exercise even when you don’t want to.” Exercising on days you don’t feel like it starts to train your brain to recognize exercise as an activity it must get used to. Plus, I don’t know how many clients I have that start a […]

I know you are supposed to be paying attention to important information during meetings, but a meeting is also a time you can practice muscle isolation and no one will know. Here are some ways do get some extra work done during a meeting:

• Try to engage your core muscles (kegel and belly button pulled toward spine) throughout the duration of the meeting. Don’t engage them has tight as you can. Think of them as an elevator that you can engage between floors 1 and 5. Try to keep them at floor 2 for the the whole meeting.
• Practice isolating your glutes (butt muscles). Squeeze one and then the other.
• Work on shoulder isolation (elevation, depression, protraction and retraction). This is a motion people might notice, but they shouldn’t be too bothered. It will look like you’re just trying to loosen up your shoulders, which you are.
• Straighten you legs under the table. This contracts your quads while giving your hamstrings a stretch. Hold while one person talks; release when they are done.
• Try very small pelvic tilts, rocking from neutral to imprint. Try to make sure the rest of your body doesn’t move. […]