Why Does Pilates Make You Shake?
If you have done Pilates, you know all about the “tremor of truth.”
Although it may initially seem like a sign of ‘weakness,’ it is often the athletes, heavy weightlifters and CrossFitters who shake the most.
“It’s a good thing!” your Pilates teacher says. “Work to the shake!”
But for new students, it can be a very strange and uncomfortable sensation.
“It’s your nervous system,” your Pilates teacher tells you. (Don’t they sound smart!?)
SO, WHAT THE #%&* IS A NERVOUS SYSTEM?
Think of the brain like a computer that controls the body's functions, and the nervous system is like a network that relays information from the brain to the body. It does this via the spinal cord, which runs from the brain down through the back and contains threadlike nerves that branch out to every organ and body part.
The information is transmitted through billions of neurons which communicate through chemicals that create electrical impulses.
Blah. If you want to read more on this, Google it. For now, we are desperately trying to keep this simple.
WHAT EXACTLY CAUSES MUSCLES TO SHAKE?
I don’t know. I am not a professor of physiology.
But I did find one with a great explanation. (And if anyone out there is qualified and would like to contribute, please comment below or email me, and I will update the article.)
Loren G. Martin, professor of physiology at Oklahoma State University in Tulsa, explains what causes muscles to shake with exercise in Scientific American.
He says - drum roll, please - “they’re tired.”
…I am paraphrasing. (Read full article)
But here’s the short of it:
A muscle is controlled by many motor units (a group of skeletal muscle cells and the motor nerve cell to which they connect in the spinal cord).
When a muscle contracts, the motor units all move at different speeds and times, so while one unit within a muscle is contracting, another unit is relaxing. However, because there are so many units working, there is a lot of overlap, which makes the muscle appears to move smoothly. That is, until they get fatigued.
When the motor units get tired (meaning the chemicals that create the electrical impulses becomes depleted and cannot be manufactured and released fast enough to keep up with the level of activity), they drop out.
As more motor units drop out, the muscle has fewer motor units to rely on, which makes the muscle move in a more jerkier motion, hence the shaking.
Chelsea Corley, a Pilates teacher with an M.A. in motor learning theory, explains that the full-body shaking we see in Pilates, the “earthquake shaking,” is more about the brain and body connect of the neural pathway not firing in a correct sequence rather than the muscles being tired.
“All of these motor neurons are firing because the most efficient pathway hasn’t been created yet,” Corley explained. “Your body is experiencing a new way of moving. When your brain learns how to execute these movements more effectively, with practice, the shaking stops and you can focus on actually strengthening the muscle fibers.”
Chelsea has an online school for Pilates teachers, Integrated Teaching Systems, that focuses on motor learning concepts. Check it out here.
BUT WHY DO WE SEEM TO SHAKE SO MUCH MORE IN PILATES THAN OTHER FORMS OF EXERCISE?
THERE ARE A LOT OF THEORIES OUT THERE ABOUT THIS. (AND I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR YOURS! PLEASE COMMENT BELOW - I WILL UPDATE THIS ARTICLE WITH ANY USEFUL TIDBITS.)
Here are some of the points that make Pilates unique when compared to other exercise forms (in no particular order):
1.THERE’S NO REST IN PILATES
Exercise forms that use a quick contraction, such as weight-lifting, allow for repeated breaks at the opposite end of the exercise. Lift, rest. Lift, rest. Lift, rest. But Pilates doesn’t work like that.
Pilates takes your muscles on a slow and controlled journey that requires constant engagement.
2. PILATES REQUIRES CONSISTENT MUSCULAR ACTIVATION
The muscles are not only activated in both their long (eccentric contraction) and short form (concentric contraction), but in their static hold position (isometric contraction) as well.
It requires, and builds, stamina.
3. YOU CAN’T RELY ON MOMENTUM
Because Pilates uses slow and controlled movements, you cannot rely on momentum to assist you.
4. PILATES USES YOUR ENTIRE BODY AS A WHOLE
All of your muscles - big and small, global and stabilizing - work together to carry out movement.
These factors really put your strength and control to the test.
5. WEAK AREAS ARE QUICKLY IDENTIFIED
We see it a lot in people who work out, lift heavy things, and are otherwise very “strong.” They have extremely developed shoulders and quadriceps, but their core stabilizers tremble like a magnitude 8 earthquake with a simple, well-executed roll-up.
Because Pilates is a full-body exercise system, if part of your body is weak, unbalanced, or underdeveloped, it will be noticed almost immediately.
6. POSTURAL MUSCLES ARE OFTEN UNDERDEVELOPED AND UNDERUSED
Ah, the Pilates powerhouse. In Pilates, all movement is generated from the center of the body, and ALL the muscles around the abdomen and hips.
This includes important, yet often underdeveloped, postural muscles that are not a focus of many other exercise systems and activities.
7. PILATES CHALLENGES YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM
Pilates takes your body on a journey of completely new and foreign movements. Your nervous system is not used to a lot of the movements and it has to establish new neural pathways.
SO HOW DO I MAKE IT STOP?
Practice makes progress. The stronger you get, the less you shake.
According to Mark A. W. Andrews, associate professor of physiology and director of the Independent Study program at the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, in Scientific American, “How Does Exercise Make Your Muscles Stronger,” (More) there are two things that make you stronger with continued exercise.
The obvious one is that the muscles get bigger (hypertrophy).
However, this is a slower process that requires new muscle proteins to develop.
We first become stronger due to changes in the nervous system. With continued exercise, the nervous system begins recruiting more muscle cells and power strokes at once (synchronous activation).
Also, with continued exercise, the central nervous system will begin to decrease a natural response called inhibitory neural feedback, which basically fatigues the muscle to keep it from overworking and ripping itself apart when it tries to exert a level of force is not used to.
The changes to the nervous system happen more quickly than the actual muscle growth because the nervous system utilizes nerve and muscle cells already present.
Read: Cues To Use: Five Best Assisted Stretches On The Pilates Reformer
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE
You have a lot more control over this than you think.
“Neurons that fire together, wire together” (1949 by Donald Hebb). This means, the more you do something, the stronger those neural pathways become, and the easier the task becomes for your body to carry out. It’s brain training, people.
And, as my mentor Eric Franklin of the Franklin Method loves to remind us, “better information leads to better navigation,” which means the more detail you give your brain about how you want to move and feel through focused attention, use of imagery, other sensory cues, etc., the more efficiently and effectively the nervous system can work to produce better results.