Tautology of Pilates

I want to take just a couple minutes to debunk the myth that pilates will give you a long, slender physique. It's true that everyone who does it seriously has a long, slender physique, and so we assume that they are evidence that pilates works.

NO!

As I have now experienced on more than one occasion, you cannot do pilates unless you have a long, slender physique!!

In class, this evening, the instructor kept wanting us to do different variations of the same theme: crunch your bellybutton to your spine and move your spine as close to your thighs as possible. It takes many forms, from variations on the standard crunch, to rocking back and forth as a "scrunch" ball, to being an extended cow cat...or something like that. Anyway, what I realized every time she wanted us to scrunch up for this or that that I CANNOT scrunch myself the way she does! It's not that easy for me to put my chin over my knees, because that involves folding myself in half, and let's just saw that between my mid section and my thighs combined there is a lot of human matter getting in the way of the scrunch.

I really think only people who already have pilates bodies can do pilates at all, but I'm not giving up, yet. There were no hot guys in my class, unfortunately; in fact, I was the only guy in the class (there were only 5 of us), but there was a rather butch lesbian with killer back muscle!

Will I be 20lbs less chunky by Christmas? We'll see!

VC