Having been in the health and fitness industry for over 10 years now, one of the most commons questions I get from a client is either A) what are my pelvic floor muscles, or B) am I meant to be using my pelvic floor muscles now?! And this stems from the fact that about 20 years or so ago, when Pilates was still in its infancy in Melbourne, it became synonymous with physiotherapy in particular, as a support tool for rehabilitating injuries - mainly those of the spine and pelvis. So it got drilled into not only the practitioners, but anyone who did Pilates that they had to squeeze their pelvic floor to do Pilates. In reality, this is far from the case, and has actually become quite problematic for a lot of people, creating dysfunctional pelvic floor muscles, as well as stiff and tight backs.

People get sore hips, all the time. Every day in the studio is a constant barrage of aches and pain, and without fail 99% of clients will mention something going on in their hips. And fair call - we put them through a lot of work! Between sitting and compressing tissues for hours every day, to then asking them to suddenly go to the other end of the spectrum when running and jumping and generally doing vigorous activity, we don’t really give them the TLC they really deserve. But on the other hand, maybe we need to keep pushing them around to a greater extent? We know the body will always adapt to whatever environment you put it in consistently, so if you want robust hips, maybe you need to ask some robust questions of them?