Quotes:

“Imagine your body is your car and Pilates is a tune-up. Without Pilates, your body gets rust on the chassis, the tyres aren’t aligned, your oil is low, the engine gets too hot… You get the picture! Pilates keeps the body running like a well-maintained car.”

Ben Salmon, Tennis Coach, Client

Method information: Pilates and GYROTONIC®

PILATES

Nicholas explains Pilates

The Movement Refinery offers unique care and programming for the best results.

Pilates, is no fad. The method’s creator, Josef Pilates opened his first studio in New York City in the late 1920’s. Since his death in 1967 the method has evolved and been continually updated and finally landed in Australia just over 20 years ago. Pilates, in the initial stages is a corrective exercise method. In this way, you will iron out faults in your movement system and find a clean and strong way of moving. For example, why use your neck and shoulder when all you want to do is a sit-up to strengthen your back and tone your tummy? Pilates will decrease your chance of (re)injury, reduce your experience with back, neck and joint pain and overall give you a stronger sense of good health.

Once your body uses the correct muscles to stabilize movements, advance through the method with greater physical challenge and enjoy the results of advanced strength training but with a solid and educated foundation. This means that instead of being drilled with a no-pain, no gain mentality, you work-out the smartest way to build strength and dexterity of movement.

The Movement Refinery uses custom designed and environmentally friendly equipment to provide assistance and resistance while exercising.

Clients start with a complimentary private session which will help you understand the principles of Pilates, offer a postural assessment, discuss goals and begin your first Pilates exercises.

From this point, you can decide whether you wish to continue privately (1:1) or semi-privately (1:4). Just as a Doctor prescribes different medication for different patients, we will never treat two clients the same. You will always receive individualized programming whether you come to Private or Semi-Private classes.

Exercise Physiology and Pilates for Pain Management

Living with pain is draining, tiring and often relentless. Long term pain has several secondary consequences for your overall health and fitness: muscles around the injury become weaker due to pain, and you become generally less fit and active as it is difficult to exercise as you may have previously.

However, it is well recognized that specific therapeutic exercise can help many different types of injuries and chronic pain conditions. Take for example, lower back pain. With chronic lower back pain, the muscles around your abdomen and spine waste away due to constant pain. It may be also difficult to continue playing sport or being physically active. So the first step is learning to activate the muscles around the lower back and abdomen again, as they are very important in giving your lower back stability and strength. Once these stabilizing muscles start to work again, the process of strengthening the whole body can increase. Gentle cardiovascular exercise like walking, swimming, cycling will assist in getting your whole body moving again and does wonders for your mind as well.

Many chronic pain conditions cannot be cured, but regular and appropriate exercise may reduce some of the harmful physical side effects and give you some power over your pain.

In your sessions with Liz, you will experience safe, individualized Pilates-based therapeutic exercise which will help you become stronger, more flexible and more capable of living a healthy and active life with or without pain.

GYROTONIC ®

Unlike most conventional exercise machines where linear or isolated exercises create uncoordinated strength, GYROTONIC® Expansion System is served by specially designed exercise equipment built to optimize and integrate the human body, accessing freedom in movement, strength and flexibility.

GYROTONIC® is three-dimensional exercise taught on unique weight and pulley based equipment. Founded by Juliu Horvath your workout incorporates the principles of yoga, dance, tai chi, and swimming. GYROTONIC® training is a series of circular and fluid exercises that works the entire body through muscular, skeletal, and cardiovascular stimulation.Exercises are combined with synchronised breathing patterns which enhance aerobic and cardiovascular stimulation and promote neuromuscular rejuvenation. GYROTONIC® is a system focused on muscles, muscle fascia, your skeletal system including your joints and spine, your nervous system, and your energetic biology.

Differences of Pilates and GYROTONIC®

Pilates aims to restructure and re-educate the musculo-skeletal system through a series of controlled exercises which differentiate ‘stability’ muscles and ‘movement’ muscles. Stability occurs by activating core muscles. Pilates training is a system focused on muscles and clinical alignment.

GYROTONIC® is predominantly a multi-directional technique and works the whole body at all times. It focuses on teaching the body to work efficiently, enlisting all of the muscles, even the ones we do not tend to use in our everyday linear life, like our fingers and toes! Stability is found not only by activating muscles, but by reaching out in opposition to create contrast. This gives your movement a sense of strength and depth, or light and shade. Lessons begin on a Private (1:1) basis, allowing you to work on a program designed specifically to your needs and enables you to enjoy maximum benefit. At the discretion of the instructor you may be eligible to progress to Semi-Private (1:2) training.

This method is universal and beneficial to all ages, body types, fitness and well being goals. GYROTONIC® is used world-wide in spinal rehabilitation hospitals, Olympic training facilities, leading dance companies and sports institutes. Internationally, many Pilates studios offer GYROTONIC® to compliment the benefits generated by Pilates.

Each prospective client is entitled to a complimentary class of a method of their choice.

Gyrotonic equipment  information:

The GYROTONIC® Pulley Tower Combination Unit is the staple of any studio and we are lucky to have two! The 'tower' features a system of weights and pulleys articulately hand carved out of natural blonde wood and a long bench which houses two rotational discs. These rotors allow the user to articulate the spine through constant arching and curling, spiralling and extending. The pulley tower allows the user to strengthen and stretch the legs and hips, arms and abdominal muscles while maintaining the energy and frame of GYROTONIC®. The beauty of the tower is that all exercises maintain an integrity of movement not seen with regular weights work. There is never a static moment, your session will see you find the stillness in movement and the movement in stillness.

The GYROTONER® offers a connection between the spine and the arms in a way never before utilised in exercise or conditioning. Juliu Horvath developed the movements so that various muscle groups, tendons and ligaments in the spine, torso and limbs can be simultaneously strengthened and mobilised. This piece of equipment is ideal to release the hips and shoulders!

Studio Director Nicholas Psarros recalls, "When I broke my elbow in 2006 my entire arm atrophied within the first week of being in a sling. By the end of the second week it was less than half the size of the other arm and even worse, I had lost a great deal of mobility in my elbow and wrist. This all changed when I met the GYROTONER®! In three sessions, my mobility completely returned and was better than before."

The GYROTONER® has great capacity to let the body talk through movement openly and freely completely connecting the limbs, the spine, the trunk and the breath. Start to enjoy the benefits of the GYROTONER® at your next session!

JUMPING STRETCHING BOARD

Clients can enjoy the only Jumping-Stretching Board in Australia! The Jumping-Stretching Board looks like a set of parallel bars with padded sliding discs set on the floor between them. In addition it has a pulley tower at one end and the tracks underneath the bars slide up to a 45º angle.

This apparatus extends on the movements experienced in the early Pulley Tower work but has the greatest affinity with the movements from the Gyrokinesis class.

Nicholas Psarros believes, "The apparatus lets us take a client to the next level of strength with fluidity. Even if the body is unaccustomed to the GYROTONIC® way of moving, the Jumping Stretching Board offers a link between the movements and the western body. It allows you to use your upper body to help release your lower body and uses your arms to help strengthen and 'chill out' your spine! It is easy to see how the evolution of physical exercise has progressed to working out on this custom-designed equipment."