Kristin Procopio, Master Physical Therapist, and Senior Pilates Instructor, explains the different Pilates equipment used at Studio U.
Interviewer: Can you explain the different types of Pilates machines?
Kristin Procopio: Of course, alright. So the hardest level of Pilates is actually the mat, okay, because it is you and the air. So the nice part about mat Pilates is it can be for the masses. You can take a big class and you have a teacher and you do this, do this, do this, and you can do it.
However, to do it well we take you to the equipment.
The equipment is spring-loaded. We have various types of equipment. We have a reformer, which is my favorite piece of equipment, which is a platform that you lie on, similar to a leg press machine, that's spring-loaded, and what that is to do is to help you find the stretch. Figure out how your body works, figure out, can the front or the back of your body balance itself out or does one want to work harder than other?
For example think about you're in a fitness class and they have you bring your legs up towards the ceiling lying on your back and you're lowering them down, raise them up, lower them down, raise them up. Well, most of us feel our back lifting and lowering, lifting and lowering. Our poor little spine is just overworked. That's not healthy. So what we can do with the equipment is we can put your feet in straps which supports the legs so you can start to figure out how can I get my legs to move towards the ground, while I keep my spine stable, and up and down. We can take you in any position like that, so that's the reformer. And we can work in actually all the way up to standing on that piece of equipment.
We also have a Cadillac and the Cadillac is more springs on a wall kind of feeling. So it's a very stable piece of equipment, and you can do, once again, anything you want. We can either work at the straight bars or we can pull springs, and we can find movement patterns there.
We have a CoreAlign which is a standing machine for the most part and that starts working gate a lot more. It's two platforms that are connected with bungies that you're starting to move independently. Once again we can do anything we want and we are very creative here. We do lots of stuff.
We have the chair, so you can do a seated thing. The chair has springs that are loaded down. Interesting fact about the chair, it started off with Joseph Pilates creating it because people in New York wanted equipment in their house, however they don't have room in those small studio apartments. So that was meant if you turned it one way, you get the spring loaded, if you flipped it over you could actually sit on the chair which is kind of funny. It's a good piece of equipment though. And like I said we have pole, we have aerial equipment, with the power plates. Not technically Pilates equipment however, depending on how you move your body and how you're thinking about it, anything can be Pilates. So we "Pilaticize" size things here.
