Eat me, drink me (or the art of not overcorrecting)

Photo by Lucas Andrade

I was talking to a client a while ago who told me she had an imbalance in her hip that made her outwardly rotate the joint rather than work in parallel, but I could clearly see she was in fact inwardly rotating so her leg rolled in. She hadn’t been aware of this, she’d just been working to fix the previous issue she’d been told to correct.

Sometimes when we are aware we have an issue we work so hard to correct it that we go too far the other way. I remember on my first Pilates training course one of the instructors joking about how she’d changed her previously flat back and tucked under pelvis to arching her back and sticking her bum out so far it looked like a celebrity butt lift. She then had to work on getting it to somewhere in between.

Does it matter if we have muscle imbalances? Some would argue that if it’s not causing pain it might not matter, but when we’re working to improve our movement patterns, particularly if we have a problem area we’re trying to work on, it’s good to get our joints moving more efficiently by aiming to balance out our dominant and weaker areas so we are able to move more evenly and with less effort. But it’s worth remembering that if we continue to work on a problem we can go beyond the point of improving it and will then need to work in the other direction!

One of the most wonderful things about regular Pilates is the improvement to our overall body awareness and understanding. Keep monitoring your progress!

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