Pilates is about refining those muscles!

"What constitutes the balance of body and mind is conscious control

of all muscular movements". Joseph Pilates

In Pilates, the muscles are always stretched during the exercises. Whether it is the legs, the spine (from the coccyx to the top of the head) or the arms, it is a constant self-expansion.

In this way, a beautiful posture such as a dancer's postureis quickly achieved. A beautiful head carriage and an elegant body alignment!

It also makes walking smoother, lighter and faster.

All the muscular chains that we use during the execution of the movementsharmonise with each other, tuning them like the strings of a guitar.

By stretching the muscles, which are often tense, we lengthen them: 

Muscle solidarity means that we do not stretch a muscle in isolation, but as a whole, taking into account its agonists and antagonists. 

The agonist muscle is therefore the one that contracts, while theantagonist is the one that stretches. The muscles all work in agonist-antagonist pairs. ... the biceps, which contracts when the arm is bent, and the triceps, which stretches.

 We first stretch the muscles that need to contract -to be powerful- and to stretch -to remain long-; we can stretch the tendons -the Achilles tendon, for example, which is often too short and prevents us from squatting-; we never stretch the ligaments -this is called a sprain!

 Stretching allows us to gain mobility and body ease, to relieve accumulated physical tension, to calm the body, to improve our posture and therefore our Pilates practice.