I've quit training heavyweight until further notice.
On a recommendation from a friend I started taking pilates to help my lower back. I am now convinced that no one should be lifting any significant amount of weight until they can complete a pilates class with relative ease. And that is no small task, let me tell you. And the bigger and "stronger" you are the more humbling this kind of class will be. And no this isn't some finishing class, some thing you should think about adding one day if your already well designed workout isn't doing it anymore. This is the shit we should have been forced to do when we were kids. This should be the benchmark of physical health (one of them anyways). With all the back and hip injuries that are so common today I think it's imperative that the dudes with all the skullcaps who are working on that sixth set of preacher curls get their tiny little boy butts on the floor and learn to hold side plank for 60 seconds.
I always thought pilates was for skinny people. After all, I have a nice soft layer of snuggle pillow, so what's the point of getting all crazy with fourteen bazillion ab exercises? The point is LIFE. Everything we do everyday involves an actively engaged core. Even the act of getting out of bed in the morning and reaching down for our pants, or picking up the paper we dropped, it all depends on proper movement. And proper movement, not just in the plane of a squat or deadlift, is essential to long term health and short term happiness (show me someone with a spasm in their lower back and I'll show you one miserable sod).
But now I have a new respect for pilates. I always did have a certain reverence for it's difficulty. But I still treated it as a novelty, a parlor trick for chicks who still think doing ab exercises will trim their waistlines.
Now I know better.
And all I want for christmas is for one other soul to read this and save themselves years of misery by taking up a pilates class near them.
