Picture courtesy Grindstore.com

What do you get if you put together a lot of pies and lattés? Not very much, aside from increased girth and potential heart attacks… But not all combinations have such unfortunate consequences. At Moushu’s Pilates, we have a range of Pilates-related workouts that you may enjoy experimenting with.

P-Prop, P-Pulse, P-Func, Pre-Pop & Equipment Pilates

In addition to the Classic Matwork, or P-Classic, Moushu’s Pilates offers different kinds of workouts that combine Pilates’ principles with other fitness concepts and elements. P-Prop, for example, adds the challenge of different props like the Swiss Ball, Foam Roller or Balance Board. P-Pulse is what we call our Barre exercise format – a blend of Pilates and some aspects of Ballet, which make it more fast-paced and aerobic in nature. If you want a workout that involves speed as well as some high-intensity interval training, then P-Func is for you. This variation is based on the tenets of functional training combined with Pilates. Pre-Pop is a pre-natal workout designed especially for expectant mothers, keeping in mind the continuous transformation that a woman’s body goes through during the nine months of pregnancy. Finally, there’s also Equipment Pilates, which involves the use of a Reformer – a specialized machine that is designed to work on balance, flexibility and strengthen muscles using spring-loaded tensions. Get in touch with us if you’d like to learn more about these different classes.

In the meantime, have you heard of these ‘Pilates-ized’ workouts?

Yogalates

Gimmicky as it sounds, this is actually a thing. Yogalates was devised by Jonathan Urla in 1997 and popularized by Louise Solomon. It is, as the name suggests, a balance of yoga and Pilates, a blend of the gentle and effective stretches of yoga with the intense core-building strength of Pilates. Both Pilates and yoga focus on correct posture, breathing and movement with the holistic involvement of mind and body, which makes Yogalates a natural fusion.

Piloxing

Piloxing has nothing to do with pill-popping cattle, nor does it (I discovered to my utter disappointment) have anything to do with even pillow-fights. Piloxing is a mix of Pilates that gives you flexibility and control over movement, boxing that trains you to be quick and agile, and dance that is great cardio as well as a lot of fun! You wear specially-made weighted gloves during this high-intensity workout that involves moves taken from salsa, hip-hop and ballet with a Pilates-twist to them, interspersed with throwing different types of punches like jabs and uppercuts – all to some very energetic music.

Pawlates/Doga

Laugh all you want, but Doga (yes, that’s yoga with a D for dog) and Pawlates (yes, another terrible portmanteau of Pilates and paws) are both real. Doga is not yoga for dogs, but is actually just the practice of yoga with your pet, which is most often a dog presumably because cats wouldn’t be so obliging (read needy). As nonsensical as ‘doga’ seems, I have to admit the idea of exercising with my puppy hanging about does sound incredibly fun!

Pawlates, like doga, is simply practising Pilates with your pet. Some instructors have even devised exercises where you use your pet (if it’s a tiny breed and lift-able) as a weight for resistance. Unlike doga, however, Pawlates is also an actual fitness option for dogs and other pets! There are animal fitness instructors trained in veterinary physiotherapy, who use Pilates exercises to help animals build core strength, flexibility, balance and posture, just like with humans!

Spillates

This is probably the only kind of Pilates that requires little to no training and seems to come naturally to most housekeepers. A blend of Pilates and spillage, Spillates consists of a series of stretching movements and calisthenics that tone and strengthen muscle while improving flexibility, through wiping up spills under tables, chairs, beds or other furniture, in car seats as well as on the car’s floor, on tabletops, countertops and the tops of any other household surface, and sometimes even on the ceiling.

Pilacheese

This is the divine union of Pilates, the god of all exercises, and cheese, the god of all food. It is a special kind of Pilates that specifically targets parts of the body that are most likely to be impacted by the insanely large quantities of cheese (and bread) you wolfed down the previous weekend. It is intense and aimed at making you deeply and bitterly regret your dairy indulgences. Pilacheese is symbiotic in that the consumption of copious amounts of dairy both leads to and is born of a vigorous and sweat-inducing Pilates workout.

And just in case you haven’t guessed by now how much I love puns and wordplay, I’m going to leave you with this:

Picture courtesy 9GAG.com