Pilates vs Yoga - What's the Difference and Where To Start?

Transcript

hey it's so good to see you I am so excited to talk to you today about the differences between Pilates and yoga this is the question I get asked so often so I'm really excited to address it here so I'll tell you from a personal standpoint I am a Pilates teacher and a physical therapist I've been doing both professionally for 20 years I also am a yoga student okay I don't teach yoga I'm not trained or certified to teach yoga but I've been taking yoga since about 2008 so I have experience with it from that side and doing a few trainings as well so when I bring in my personal experience that's kind of how you know where I'm coming from so one difference between Pilates and yoga is obviously when they started so yoga was started over 5,000 years ago it has a very long history Pilates on the other hand is just about a hundred years old so yoga started actually as a means towards spiritual enlightenment and I think that's why it kind of has that spiritual component to it it was actually developed as a means to spiritual enlightenment and self-awareness Pilates wasn't necessarily developed in that vein but that being said it does have a component of spirit that a lot of people don't realize nowadays Joseph Pilates said this was his quote that Pilates was the perfect coordination between body mind and spirit so he understood that there was an importance of that self awareness when it comes to our overall health so I think that's really important to kind of understand and grasp is that that is a big difference obviously between yoga and Pilates and especially how they're taught nowadays but the original intent of Pilates was to actually have that awareness of your mind and your spirit control over your body and how the three of them really work together for overall health so I think that's a really cool component but yes a very obvious difference is taking classes now in this current society yoga versus Pilates you will have more of that spiritual component in yoga you'll have some mantras and those kind of things and in Pilates you generally won't but I will say that really depends on the instructor I've gone to some yoga classes that have very little if any spiritual component and then I've done some Pilates classes that do have more of that self-awareness kind of self improvement kind of component to it because it just depends on the teacher but that is a very basic difference another thing that is somewhat different between Pilates and yoga is that Yoga is going to give you more static poses to hold and Pilates is going to move through poses more now again that can be different when it comes to different instructors but yoga you're gonna have things called poses in Pilates we don't call them a pose we call them an exercise so that alone can kind of tell you a little bit that there is a difference in yoga when you're doing warrior two pose you might hold it for a while when you're doing warrior one you might hold it for a while and Pilates when we're doing a teaser we generally aren't gonna go up and hold it for a long time and come back down now again sometimes I'll do that to throw in a wrench into your workout and challenge you a little bit more but in general we're gonna go through more repetitions versus actually holding a static posture okay so that's another difference another thing is this idea of flow which i think is really interesting because people will say oh yoga flows but to be honest a really good Pilates classes kind of flow too because when you look at the original intent of Pilates by Joseph Pilates it was to get your heart rate up so it was to have a little bit of a cardio component and that is accomplished when we flow from one exercise to the other so really the difference though with the yoga and Pilates is that in yoga they're gonna go through a sequence of exercises so if you think of a Sun Salutation which is your you know warrior and into your vinyasa and those kind of things you'll go through that and you might go through it numerous times or you're always coming back to that vinyasa pose Pilates isn't necessarily like that so we're gonna flow because we're gonna move from one exercise to the there but we're not going back and repeating all of these sequences over and over again so the original Pilates mat work is going to be your you know 30 31 exercises right in a row depending on how you teach it right in a row and we don't go back and repeat them again that's gonna be more the traditional class verses in yoga where you're taught a sequence and you might do that same sequence kind of over and over and over again or come back to those same poses over and over and over again right so that's kind of another difference you can expect another one is that yoga in general is going to put you in more extreme positions okay and again I'm a yoga student I love yoga I'm not saying this bad whatsoever but as a physical therapist to be honest if I'm having someone come back from an injury I am going to have them do some Pilates with me first to get stronger before I let them go back to their intense yoga class and I will tell you why very specifically because in the more advanced yoga classes you're going into more advanced postures that are putting you into a bigger range of motion so you're going into some of those big back bends that aren't always easy to control versus Pilates the original name of it actually was control adji that's what Joseph Pilates called it the study of control so it had a little more aspect of trying to control that range of motion in your body so as a physical therapist when I'm trying to get someone back from an injury I want to control their range of motion I want to control what their body is doing so I'm not putting them into an inflammatory State so I want to do that first with some of my basic Pilates principles then I absolutely am going to encourage them if they enjoy yoga to get back into their yoga class but I want to make sure that they have that control of their body first so that when they go into some of those more extreme postures and range of motion they again can control they can get into it they can get out to it of it safely and use the right muscles to do it okay so to me from a very helicopter view again I'm always gonna say teachers you're gonna teach things a little differently and you could obviously go to a beginner yoga class versus a really advanced Pilates class and that's gonna change things too but if they're on the same level the same intensity of class I am going to want someone in Pilates first so I can teach them how to control their range of motion and then I'll let them go into their yoga class if they want to to gain into those extreme positions and extreme postures okay because that's this where it's gonna put you it's a little more extreme obviously for flexibility for those kind of things versus Pilates that we aren't going into that kind of extreme range of motion all right one other difference that's a fairly obvious difference is that in Pilates we do have the opportunity to use equipment so most of what I teach for people at home is mat Pilates based because obviously most people don't necessarily have equipment but there's this whole wonderful wide beautiful world of Pilates equipment that I teach as well that includes performers trap tables chairs and all these fun little props and so that is something that's an obvious difference if you go to Pilates equipment classes that's gonna be a complete difference because you're using this one basic piece of equipment that was developed just for Pilates so those are kind of the main differences between the two I am NOT ever gonna tell anyone that one is better than the other because I would never tell anyone that anything is better than something else they're just different and one can be better than the other for different bodies okay so from my personal standpoint I the very first yoga class I took was right after I got into Pilates and to be honest you guys I didn't like it at all I didn't like laying in shavasana at the end I didn't like anything about it and I didn't know why people liked it it took me about five years to go back to another class and when I did it was a dear friend of mine teaching she had opened her own studio so I was just trying to say kort her and there was something about it I fell in love with and I've been a student of it since then I do it once every couple weeks at this point it has helped me in various ways but I will be honest I don't think I would have appreciated it or been able to be successful at it if it weren't for Pilates I think that was a big piece of why it took me so long to really enjoy it because like I said before I had learned how to take ownership over my own body I was stronger I knew how to modify things for myself so it made me feel much safer in the yoga class and it made things more accessible like oh I actually can try this handstand because of the strength I've gained in Pilates the muscles that I've built up and all the work with the straps and the planking I can then try a handstand in my yoga class and feel somewhat safe because of all that work in Pilates that I did first so that's my history with it I hope that helps you as well to simply know the difference here on my youtube channel and with my workouts you will find some Pilates yoga fusion workouts because like I told you I do love them both for various reasons Pilates will always have my heart and my soul because it's my history it's where I come from and it's what I use most for all of my clients and all of my physical therapy patients but I encourage you to try different things and to always have a variety of workouts so that you can cross train and find your absolute strongest self ok thank you for joining me and I will see you next time thanks so much for stopping by remember and you'll be notified every time a new video comes up like and comment on this video and let me know what you thought you could also always come over to Jessica Volant Pilates comm to find out all the resources I have for living a healthy lifestyle including full-length workout videos healthy recipes and a community I would love for you to be a part of so I'll see you there