Pilates Exercises For Working From Home

Due to the current COVID-19 outbreak, many people has no choice but start to work from home. As therapists, we notice that people are prone to have discomfort around their back and shoulders. This could be due to the prolonged poor sitting posture from working from home. Instead of sitting on their office or ergonomic chair, they might prefer to sit on sofa or even floor for the convenience. Hence, our postural muscles start getting imbalanced and making you crying from the pain.

In this article, we would like to share 3 equipment- free Pilates exercises which can maintain your posture and avoid pain during work-from-home period.

Push Up Prep(Scapula Isolations)

Prolong sitting posture like hunching causes  winged shoulder blades and rounded shoulders with weak midback muscles. In order to realign our posture,  we need to activate the shoulder blades surrounding muscles while you work from home.

Position: In table top or modified plank pose

Inhale: move shoulder blades away from the midline

Exhale: bring shoulder blade back to neutral

Inhale: squeeze the shoulder blades towards the midline

Exhale: bring the shoulder blade back to neutral

Repeat 10 times for 2 sets.

Leg Pull Front Prep

If you prefer to slouch on sofa to do your work at home, you probably will have soreness on your back after a period of time. Thus, it is important to retrain your postural muscles which are the back extensor to prevent it happen again. Thereby, leg pull front prep is excellent workout to deal with this.

Position: In table top

Inhale: Ready

Exhale: lift the knees off mat together (2 inches)

Inhale: Stay

Exhale: lower knees together onto mat

Repeat 10 times for 2 sets

Swimming Prep

Well, you might want to jump into swimming pool but you could not do it due to the virus outbreak. Don’t worry, now you can learn to swim at home!

This is a combined workout which target the arms, back, legs in reciprocal movement. So you may challenge your body coordination after your long and  hectic day.

Position: on tummy with arms extended overhead along mat

Inhale: stabilise the shoulder blades

Exhale: lift opposite arm and leg off mat. Focus on the stability of torso.

Inhale: Return

Exhale: switch to opposite arm and leg off mat.

Inhale: Return

Repeat 10 times for 2 sets

We hope the above exercises could help your work-from-home experience. Should you have any questions, feel free to contact us. Also, check out our instagram page for more useful tips and videos.