Back to Pilates

I went back to Pilates yesterday and it was awesome.  I knew that some of the things that I would be able to do would be things that I've never done before so it was pretty exciting.  The new ranges that I have that have no pain at all, mean that I'll be able to strengthen more muscles and get more out of both the Pilates sessions and my new parts!

Some of the regular exercises that I used to do have been cut back a little bit as far as the number of springs that I am using on the reformer.  I also skipped some of the balance ones that require standing on a bosu and the like, as I'm not ready for those yet.  My strength has dropped a little from my pre-op levels, though I was a little surprised at just how much I was able to do without any difficulty at all.  I'm not quite up to the long spine where the pelvis is lifted (as I spoke about and had images of in Late to Pilates) but I am doing the first part and it is a little wobbly and harder to control than pre-op but still pretty awesome.  I'm not yet doing reverse knee pulls yet - which is also pretty awesome since I really don't like them!

The biggest issue I had was with maintaining alignment.  My brain doesn't seem to know what is straight and I need someone to keep me in line (in more ways than one, but that is a story for another post).  My alignment is significantly better than it was pre-op and I am slowly starting to get things to move in the right way.  Some things feel a little weird, like correcting the inward rotation of my femurs.  I stopped it post op, but as I have been getting stronger and doing more, I have fallen back into my old bad habits.  I'm didn't think that would happen as I didn't do that post-op but maybe muscles had to heal and gain some strength before they wanted to do what was 'natural' to me.  Those so called 'natural' movements weren't really the way that the human body was supposed to move but pre-op it had no choice.  Now, I have the choice to train it properly.

It might take a bit more time yet.  Being able to add Pilates to my already busy schedule means that I'm still moving forward and will be the next step towards being better than ever.