What 30 Pilates Sessions Did to My Body

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

They say that with Pilates, you feel a difference after 10 sessions, your look changes after 20, and your whole body changes after 30.

I started going at the beginning of this year, and this week I hit my 30th session.

At first I went 4 times a month, but since spring it’s been 6 times a month.

Since it’s a milestone, I want to write down the changes I’ve noticed.

Why I started Pilates in the first place#

Being stiff has always been a complex of mine.
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been stiff.

People told me that stretching every day would make me flexible, but I couldn’t even get into the poses I was taught. It just hurt, and since results didn’t show up right away, I gave up again and again.

If I couldn’t do it myself, I’d have a professional do it. With that thought, I started going to a stretching studio 3 or 4 years ago.

Thanks to being stretched by someone else, I learned that stretching can feel good. At first I was rock-hard and it was just painful, but as I kept going, my body got used to being stretched and it started to feel pleasant.

And what I’d vaguely thought of as “my body is stiff” turned out to have specific causes: “the muscles around my glutes are tight,” “my hamstrings are tight,” and so on.

Once, I even got to the point where my hands touched the floor in a forward bend. But because I mostly do desk work, I’d be back to square one within a week.
Three steps forward, two steps back (sometimes four steps back).

I’m much more flexible than before, but I’m still stiff.
Eventually I learned that stretching alone doesn’t make you flexible.

Muscles get stiff when you overuse them, and they also get stiff when you barely use them.

So I started strength training 1–2 days a week as well.

▼How I keep my workout records

Tracking My Workouts in a Japanese Field Notebook (Sokuryo Yacho)

I’m an indoor person who has never liked exercise.
I don’t want to build muscle, and my motivation was pretty low.
There were days I made all kinds of excuses and skipped it.

After a while, though, I started suffering from lower back pain.
I think it was because I sit for long hours and kept holding postures that strain my lower back.

Say I move my body for a little while in a week. If my posture is bad the rest of the time, isn’t the total still a loss?
Wouldn’t it be faster to learn how to use my body properly in everyday life?

Then, while scrolling Instagram, I came across a stylish influencer going to Pilates in a vlog. If your posture is beautiful, even a plain T-shirt looks great.

I started longing to hold a nice posture and move my body smoothly.

So I began looking for Pilates near my home. I chose personal lessons rather than group classes, because I’m so stiff I couldn’t keep up with everyone. And the pressure of having an appointment with the instructor keeps me going.

At the start, I told the instructor, “I want to fix my slouch, and along the way I’d like to get more flexible.”

Once I started, sore muscles everywhere#

Through the lessons, I build the inner muscles that keep a good posture.
Every time, I got sore in places that made me think, “I had a muscle here?!” My abs, back, glutes, hamstrings, and more.
But thanks to the soreness, I could tell exactly which parts I wasn’t using.

I also figured out the cause of my lower back pain. My weight leans to the left, and my left shoulder sits lower than my right.
That means the left side of my body is constantly shortened. The muscles tighten up → blood flow in the shortened muscles gets worse → knots form locally and start to hurt.

Since I move my body while focusing on specific parts, I learned the names of muscles and became able to move them.
For example, I used to bend my leg using the front of my thigh. Now I can bend it using my hip joint.

The changes after 30 sessions#

That was a long introduction, but let’s look back at how my body was at the start of the year and how it is now.

My back stands up straighter#

When I’m walking around town and catch myself in a mirror, I can tell my back is straighter than before!
Especially on my way home from Pilates, my back is far straighter than usual.
After a week, I slip back into my familiar old posture. Then at the next week’s lesson I remember again. That’s the cycle.
I can now tell where I’m off compared to correct posture. For example, my head is further back than I thought, and my weight is on my heels rather than my toes.

My lower back pain got better#

I’m no longer plagued by lower back pain.
There are still bad days, but it doesn’t hurt all the time anymore.
What I feel most is that I can now sit on a chair with my lower back upright.

I learned where my muscles are#

The iliopsoas, which connects the abdomen to the legs
The serratus anterior, which pulls the shoulders down
The latissimus dorsi and trapezius in the back

The names of the muscles are now linked to the feeling of moving them. I also know which of my muscles are weak.

Goals from here#

Strength and flexibility in my back, abdomen, and core. There’s still room to improve.
I want to make life without lower back pain the normal state, and get to where I keep a nice posture without even thinking about it.

For now, I plan to keep up this set of three, as far as I can: