Pro Pilates
A Statement from Cherry Baker, Director of Modern Pilates, regarding the recent articles in The Times by Peta Bee.
“Anybody who has ever trained with me will know I have said for many years that Pilates will get a bad name! Smugly I was right. Also, sadly, what does concern me is that many folk are teaching Pilates with only a few days training andmany of the original works of Joseph Pilates are inappropriate for most people with disc injuries. However this was not really the main focus of the article and are only my views said Cherry Baker.
Cherry further states that “Modern Pilates believes that the body works as a unit and that core stability on its own specifically, if taught only on the floor, is not functional and therefore not effective. Modern Pilates also believes in at least a 20 minute standing section within a class that focuses not only on core work but also on pelvic stability and specifically correcting lumbar pelvic rhythm with functional exercise.”
The word Pilates is now synonymous with core stability however the range of abilities in the teachers out there teaching Pilates is massive. Whilst our Level 3 (CYQ) training is very throughout indeed it is also basic and I still feel most teachers should undertake further training. We have courses in back care and diagnostic days for qualified Matwork teachers which enable them to deal with clients who have an injury and specifically back pain. These courses are run by qualified Physiotherapists” Cherry Baker stated.
A statement from leading Physiotherapists Dr. Chris Norris PHd MSc MCSP regarding the recent articles in The Times by Peta Bee. Chris was instrumental in creating the Modern Pilates programmes with Cherry Baker.
There have been several articles which pick up on the Lederman article published initially online and then in JBMT, and Stuart McGill's research. All of these support what Modern Pilates is doing. If we go back historically spinal rehab was traditionally performed using high intensity exercise as a result of research done by the Saal brothers in the California Institute of Spinal Rehabilitation which showed that patients having weight training recovered better than those having spinal surgery. This led to further research into what exactly rehab achieved - remembering that this was in the days of the Back School program in Scandinavia and criticism of it by Nachemsen who basically argued that as all chronic low back pain resulted from discal pressure changes, exercise which increased this pressure was pretty pointless.
Australian researches (essentially Gwen Jull and Caroline Richardson) where able to show changes in the TA and Multifidus and their students (Hodges and the rest) pursued this with vigor. This was muscle isolation gone mad because it was good research, but demanded close 1 on 1 supervision, a highly motivated patient and a lot of time. Pragmatic research (i.e. with real patients) started to come out which showed that this type of core stability training was no better than traditional spinal rehab in its long term benefit (one leading paper used the exercises from my book). If people would actually take the time to read the papers rather than just the abstracts on Google scholar they would see that the research compares muscle isolation only (Multifidus / TA etc) with spinal rehab and found that both were the same - readers then take this up and say that core stability (and now Pilates) is no good. The paper do NOT say that, simply that it is no better.
Stuart McGill took a different route as he was essentially interested in occupational injury and heavy lifting. Essentially he concluded that other muscles (QL particularly) were equally important as was postural re-education.
In my Back Stability book (and my original articles in physiotherapy J) I argued that muscle isolation was a starting point which should be progressed to more functional activities using balls, bands weight etc, and that a postural approach could be used to guide exercise selection. At the time many people said this was wrong, but (thankfully) the research is now proving this right. This is why when Cherry originally contacted me about Modern Pilates I agreed to go ahead and the program we created does the same thing - it starts with foundation movements and progresses using posture as a guide to exercise selection. The research supports what Modern Pilates is teaching and instructors can use this in their marketing - i.e. Modern Pilates does not just use muscle isolation but a progressive program of spinal rehab which is evidence based.
Chris runs his physiotherapy practise in Cheshire and you can view his books and articles on www.norrisassociates.co.uk.
Modern Pilates also uses/references Chris’s Abdominal Training and Back Care books on their courses.
