How Do I Know If PILATES Is Right For Me As a PHYSICAL THERAPIST?

One of the biggest questions I get as a Pilates physical therapist is: “How do you know if Pilates is right for you?” This comes from other therapists. So, how do I know if Pilates is going to help my practice? How do I know if it’s something that will improve my outcomes? 

Well, one thing you have to do is make sure that you're interested in Pilates. If you’re doing something that’s going to help your clients but it’s not something you’re interested in, then it is not going to work.

My first advice is to take a Pilates class. Go, check, and see if it interests you and if it’s the right fit for you. I recommend you to take a couple of classes, like a mat class because a Pilates mat class is very different than a Pilates reformers class. And a private Pilates Reformer class is very different than a group Pilates Reformer class.

So, one of the most common questions I get is, how do I know if it's right for me? That's very simple. You kind of starting to build a relationship with a trainer when you go to a class. 

You can start to use that relationship with a trainer to your advantage, as well as determining if it's something you want to do in your own practice. It makes a lot of sense to try it out before doing it.

For me, once I tried it out, I saw how positive of an effect it had on my posture. And it’s just within that first session. On my first session, I could already sense that my body was two inches taller, because I was no longer slouched.

So, one session brought me up into this and I didn't stay there forever by any means. But it was something that one session changed my mind. It was something that I knew I could present to my patients and provide my patients as a part of the therapy with the manual therapy that I was doing. It’s been a fantastic thing since.