Cancer Survivor Becomes "Pilates Powerhouse"
Michele Aryant, a 46-year-old designer and educator in New York, took up Pilates while she was undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer a number of years ago.

"I had read that you increase your chances of surviving (cancer) by exercising three to four times a week," she says. "I had also hurt myself doing a lot of other kinds of exercise. I was radically underweight and I wanted to build myself back up while I was in the process of doing the therapeutic tearing down of chemotherapy."

Now cancer-free, she says she looks and feels years younger than her 20-something design students at New York's Parsons College. "I have physical endurance in my day-to-day life that I would attribute to Pilates. My core muscles are astonishing. It's what they call the 'Pilates powerhouse.'" (The Pilates powerhouse is the area between the pubic bone and the ribcage, front to back. It includes the lower back muscles, stomach and the upper buttocks.)

Sean P. Gallagher, who bought the official Pilates Studio, based in New York, in 1992, says the poor posture of most Americans contributes to the epidemic of baby-boomer back problems.

"You can't have your head two inches off your center and not have some of the soft tissues overworking to hold you in place," he says. "You have to be able to sit with that idea of a good posture and a good alignment, but also have the endurance to hold it for a period of time, otherwise you'll just slouch as soon as you get tired.

Resistance and Short Repetitions
"The Pilates method teaches you to stabilize your spine, and once you isometrically stabilize the spine, you're eccentrically and concentrically working the extremities." Seventy to 80 percent of the exercises are isometric, intended to build endurance to hold the torso in good posture.

Whereas weight lifters typically do a dozen or more repetitions, the Pilates workout comprises more kinds of resistance work, but only three to eight repeats. Pilates, Gallagher says, thought that building up lactic acid in the muscles, a result of hard weight repetition, was detrimental to the muscle. But the heart rate is elevated during the roughly hour-long workouts.

You can benefit from working out on any of the Pilates equipment, Gallagher says. "A basic program is the mat and Reformer together, but once you learn the system, you can do just the mat, which is what I do when traveling."