Pilates&Yoga

So I haven't said much about fitness yet, and fitness is my favorite part of losing weight!!! It makes you feel great, makes you strong, it's good for your heart!! So many benefits.  I've dabbled in a lot of the fitness areas so I want to share some of them with you.  When it comes to fitness, don't just go to the gym and do the elliptical for thirty minutes and go home.  You have to find something you love doing, something that is going to keep you coming back for more!!  Hopefully I can give you some information to help you find something you love doing!! Today I want to talk about Pilates and yoga.  I have only done Pilate's once at the O'Fallon Gold's Gym, but I do yoga several times a week.  Basic yoga is offered three times a week at Gold's gym so I take advantage, I also do Yoga-X and X-Stretch.  Yoga X is hard hard yoga and its from the P90X series, X-Stretch is like a yoga/stretch video from the P90X series.  I wanna talk about Yoga a bit first because I am more familiar with it.

Yoga: It's tough.  I'll start with that.  I'm decent, and I've been doing it for ten months.  Yoga is about balance, strength, and flexibility.  It takes all three to master yoga. Basic hatha yoga focuses on breathing exercises and stretching.  You won't burn of a ton of calories in yoga, or burn a lot of fat.  It's a very low intense work out.  Yoga is something that you could probably do everyday along with your regular routine, or you could do it on a day off.  There are moving vinyasa's which are the hardest I think.  Those will burn the most calories.  Moving vinyasas are when you move through different yoga poses going from one to the next.  I included a video I found on YouTube that shows an example of a moving vinyasa.  They are difficult because you are moving through each pose having to find precision in every move.  Yoga is excellent for your health and overall athletic ability.  If you're a football player, runner, dancer, basketball player, weight lifter, yoga is excellent! Yoga is excellent for stabilizing the nervous system, helping organ function, it helps lengthen and stretch your muscles, and it calms the mind reducing stress.  When you do yoga it is so focused that your mind shuts off, and if nothing else you focus on doing two simple things, breathing in and breathing out.  I am a huge fan of yoga!! Most gyms offer yoga classes.  I go to golds and they have several! I try to take the basic class 2-3 times a week. You can also find some great videos on YouTube as well just buying a basic yoga video.  P90X offers a challenging yoga video as well! Here is a video I found, we did some of these moves in the class I took.  They are much harder then they look!! Just a warning!

Pilates:  I've only taken Pilates once, they only offer it once a week which is why, and it's hard to work into my schedule at times.  Pilates is also a lower intensity work out, it is mostly done on the fall using mats.  It is very similar to yoga, except in my opinion a million times harder.  I remember the day after, I had muscles hurt I didn't know existed.  Pilates is an excellent core work out. Really great for your abs, hip flexors, inner thighs, shoulders, chest. Like yoga Pilates takes control, flexibility, strength, and you must find a smoothness to your moves.