Can you improve muscle tone without lifting weights?
You’ve likely heard about the benefits associated with strength training, but it may surprise you to learn just how much it can positively affect your overall health. “If you knew that a certain type of exercise could benefit your heart, improve your balance, strengthen your bones, and help you lose weight all the while making you look and feel better, wouldn’t you want to get started?” [1]
By the time you’re in your 30s, your muscle mass starts to diminish naturally with each passing year, and the only way to maintain it is to continue to build muscle through weight-bearing exercise. So if you want that sleek, toned look, you’re going to have to fight back by incorporating strength training into your regimen. But what if you hate the weight room and worry that over-building your muscles will make you look bulky?
Strength training is not limited to the weight room
Fortunately, there are other ways to work on building and sculpting your muscles without stepping foot in a weight room, particularly if you’re not interested in “bulking up”. Repetitive, heavy weight lifting tends to build and tighten muscles in the body, resulting in the stiff, bulgy physique associated with a bodybuilder.
Pilates, on the other hand, is designed to provide a balanced approach to training the body by strengthening and toning all the muscles, while improving flexibility and range of motion at the same time.
Pilates also focuses on strengthening the core which improves posture and proper alignment and helps prevent chronic back pain. It works on lengthening and loosening muscle fibers and connective tissues rather than tightening them like heavy weight lifting does. The end result is a loose, limber, toned body.
How to get started
Propel Pilates, the premier studio in San Diego County, accommodates your needs and schedule. Start with one-on-one instruction to make sure you have a firm grasp on the proper way to do each exercise; move on to taking classes with other students, or stick with private sessions if that works best for you.
Regardless, our highly trained and passionate instructors will give you an excellent introduction into one of the most versatile and beneficial types of exercise routines you can do. Our customer reviews demonstrate the power of this all-around exercise. One student raved in a Yelp review, “I am getting stronger and healthier all the time, and look trimmer, too.”
Pilates gives you all of the benefits of traditional weight training and improves flexibility, posture, and balance, as well. Call or sign-up online to schedule an introductory class today, and get the strong, toned, limber body you want.
[1]7 Ways Strength Training Boosts Your Health and Fitness, everydayhealth.com