Tisha - Freelance Pilates Instructor

Full springs, split pedal, barely holding on, and my left side is definitely working now! I can feel more sensory stimuli like touch too. As long as I keep up with my individualised training, as I still regress easily. Takes time for those neuro connections to get stronger and change to become more permanent.

In the year following the accident my left side had felt completely alien to me. And for the last 3 years I’d felt like my body was 2 half bodies glued together, with the left feeling smaller, flatter, slightly hollow and mushy. And with that it wasn’t activating as much, nor could I feel as much anything on the left.

As I’m starting to regain juice down my left side, I finally start to feel my body being one! And with that I suddenly have moments where I feel back to being myself. There is no such thing as a mind-body separation, we are one.

The thing to take away is that if you’ve experienced this type of symptoms after a Traumatic Brain Injury, or a mini stroke, it is possible to improve, no matter how long it’s been (I’m 4 years in). Of course the severity of the injury, your age, your general health and your motivation will all be important factors.

And you may have been cleared medically (I was cleared over 2 years ago) and not need medical treatment as such but you do need to train with an instructor who understands the neurology of movement, brain functions, and the consequences of a head trauma. Appropriately modified exercises can help a lot, while others can do the opposite…

That was 6 months ago. Now on next post!

What do we actually mean by strength?

We talk about muscles being strong or weak, but are we talking about muscles fibres? And their quality or quantity?

There’s no equipment that could measure strength on a muscle at rest. In order to measure strength, we need contraction of the muscle. And in order to get contraction, we need activation.

Activation is the command from the brain to the muscle, telling it to contract: how fast, how much, and do you what.

So with that in mind, when we talk about strength, and improving strength, it might be worthwhile thinking about brain health, and the neurological pathways involved in movement (motor and sensory)…

What do you think?

Little myth busting: if Pilates gets great results with low back pain, it has not that much to do with strengthening of the abs or "core"… to me this is actually secondary.

Exercises like this one on the Cadi don’t strengthen your abs much, the springs provide assistance so you can go all the way up even if you don’t have the abdominal strength to do so on your own…so how come it can be one of the most helpful exercises for people who experience chronic low back pain?

With the assistance from the springs, not only can you go all the way up and down, but you can do so slowly and in a controlled manner, ensuring you are mobilising all the joints in your spine sequentially and providing lots of sensory feedback up to the brain about what’s going on in there. If the pain usually experienced isn’t quite in proportion with the actual physical state of your back, which is often the case, that pain experience will generally lower, depending on other factors involved, and sometimes pretty fast. Pain is a complex phenomena, and chronic low back pain is a neurological condition, not a musculoskeletal one per say… (always check with your doctor)

Also a muscle that crosses a joint that isn’t moving as it should (could just be not ever being moved) can’t function at its full capacity cause the brain will limit activation to protect that joint, thinking there’s a problem with it… so you can do all the abs workout you want, if your spine isn’t moving as it should somewhere you’re just wasting your time, money and energy. Ooops, I said it 🤭

So yeah, if used appropriately Pilates exercises and the equipment can be great tools for sensory and neuromuscular rehab, that’s why we can get such good results… it all starts in the brain 😉