Ah-HA. It All Makes Sense. Understanding Muscle Types.

A Primer on Muscles

With kids back in school, let’s do a quick primer on muscle fundamentals for adults. Muscles are made up of different types of fibers. Some are meant to be powerful and allow you big bursts of movement. We call these mobilizers and they are made up of fast-twitch fibers. They are meant to move your joints, but they fatigue easily. Think squats and the power in your quads and hamstrings. You couldn’t do squats all day. You would fatigue.

Other muscles are stabilizers and they are made up of slow-twitch fibers. They don’t fatigue quickly and are designed to be ON all the time keeping you stable and your skeleton upright. They are deeper in the body and are designed to keep the joints supported.

Your transverse abdominus – the big abdominal muscle that wraps around you like a seatbelt – is a slow twitch, stabilizing muscle for the pelvis. There are many stabilizers at every joint of the body.

In Pilates First We Stabilize, Then We Mobilize

Pilates is famous for its focus on core muscles. It is also about stabilizing the joints first, then working the mobilizers. When all is functioning correctly, the stabilizers keep the joints steady and supported, and provide challenge or resistance to the mobilizers. The result: a 2-for-1. You get effective work for the big muscles AND you protect your joints.

If your stabilizers are not doing their job, then the mobilizers take over. But they are not designed for that job and don’t do it effectively or efficiently. They allow your joints to be pulled out of alignment, which sets you up for injury.

For example, when a weight lifter blows out his shoulder, often what happens is the rotator cuff muscles supporting the shoulder joint are not engaged or sufficiently trained to keep the joint in a safe range. The deltoids, biceps and other big muscles take on a lot of weight, but without the joint properly stabilized. (Something like 80% of rotator cuff injuries are the result of rotator cuff muscle weakness or instability.)

Big Payoff

It takes a little patience to activate your stabilizers first, but the rewards are huge. You are retraining ALL of the muscles – mobilizers and stabilizers, giving you toned muscles and good movement patterns that serve you in fitness and daily life.