One Year of Pilates: How My Body Changed

This post was automatically translated by AI from the Japanese original.

I’ve been going to Pilates once or twice a week since 2025, and a year and a half has already passed.
I counted my lessons and I’m almost at 100!

Compared to when I started, I can feel changes in how my body feels and how aware I am of it, so I want to keep a record.

Why I started Pilates#

My daily life is mostly desk work.

I wasn’t getting enough exercise and some days I struggled with lower back pain, so I thought I had to do something.

In my case, the cause of the back pain seems to be that I sit all day and my glutes get stiff.
So I went to a stretching studio for several years, but it never really got better.

Even if I loosen up for an hour a week, if the rest of the time is the same as always, it just goes back.
I came to think it would be more effective to fundamentally pay attention to my everyday posture and how I use my body.

I chose Pilates because, after researching a lot, it matched what I wanted right now.
Pilates strengthens the inner muscles and teaches you to use your body correctly, posture included.

Combining two kinds of Pilates#

If I’m going to go anyway, I wanted to do it properly one-on-one, even though it costs money.
I go to two different Pilates places.

One is a Pilates studio near my home.
The other is a studio that combines Japanese-style body work (seitai) with Pilates.

I go to two because it makes booking easier.

As it turned out, this was a good thing.

Learning from the same instructor for a long time makes it easier to notice my own habits and changes.
Being seen by a different instructor teaches me new ways to move my body.
I get the best of both.

Changes I felt after a year of Pilates#

What I like about Pilates is that it isn’t brutally hard like strength training.
But muscles I don’t normally use get to work, and it feels like it’s working quietly, bit by bit.

As I kept going, I started to get happy about being sore after every lesson.

My posture got better#

I learned through my body what to focus on to improve my posture.

I still tend to have rounded shoulders, but I’ve gotten better at standing with my back straight.
When I stood with my back against a wall, I was happy to see that much more of my back touched it.

I got more flexible#

My flexibility improved and I can now do a lot more movements.
For example, I can sit with my sit bones upright in a long sit, and my forward bend gets much closer to the floor.

I never used to be able to picture myself getting flexible, but now I understand what it means to stretch.
Stretching doesn’t mean pain, it means feeling the muscle working. I’ve started to find stretching pleasant.

My lower back pain got better#

The lower back pain I’d been struggling with got better!
Depending on the day, my lower back can still feel tight, and if I press on it there’s a gritty feeling.
But it no longer gets in the way of daily life.

I can also stretch on my own, loosen up with a foam roller, and take care of it before it gets bad.

I built an exercise habit#

On top of Pilates, I now have an exercise habit: strength training at the gym and walking.

Honestly, changing into workout clothes and going to the gym is a hassle.

But once I’m there and moving, my body gets pleasantly tired and I feel refreshed.
My self-esteem goes way up. lol.

Why I kept going: my awareness of my body changed#

Every time, I started paying attention to how my body feels: “How’s my body today?” “Oh, my left side feels kind of hard to move,” “My back feels a bit tight today.”

And then I feel like I should move, I should stretch.

There’s no dramatic change in a day or two, but it’s interesting how my sense of my body changes the more I keep at it.

So all in all, it’s nothing but good things!
I want to keep at it steadily, looking forward to how much more my body will change ♪