Do certain Pilates Moves attribute to more of a boxy figure? Confused!!

[jnicole]

I am new into the fitness world and I want to do pilates along with cardio and weighted squats/deadlifts.
I'm worried about having a total opposite effect of what I envisioned on for myself.

My inspiration is Frida Aasen, even though that WILDLY depends on my genetic. Just a general idea of what I would like, slim hourglass. I know l also need to focus on diet and others also. I do have somewhat of a hourglass at an overweight BMI, so i'm hoping for a fraction of that when I am slimmer?

All the well known Pilates Youtubers use russian twists, Bicycles and etc. under hourglass/abs videos?..

I'm assuming the youtubers know more than me obviously but can someone explain WHY work out the sides? isn’t that going to increase them?? how does that help with sides?
Isn't working out the sides going to add muscle and width resulting in the opposite effect of a slim hourglass??

P.S. Nothing is wrong with having or wanting a boxy/straight figure, this is just for myself and my own personal goals. If i do everything I can and still don’t have it, that’s okay! but if I can do something and make sure im not fudging myself up, then great.

 

[haianhjumi]

@jnicole Are you 5'10 with a long torso and long limbs and a small frame like Frida?

 

[jnicole]

@haianhjumi no but i think you missed the rest of my post lol.. i just used that as an example of a “slim hourglass”

 

[tabitha007]

@jnicole Working the inner TA muscle should in theory pull your waist together from the inside, keeping everything tight, you can test this by contracting it (pretend you have to pee and are holding it in). I learned this in Barre class which has a lot of pilates moves.

 

[anon103]

@jnicole

Isn't working out the sides going to add muscle and width resulting in the opposite effect of a slim hourglass??

Your obliques are thin sheets of muscle. You'd have to get into serious bodybuilder territory for your obliques to impact the visual appearance of your waist at all.

Here's a study that measured thickness of the obliques and other abdominal muscles. Add up your internal and external obliques (since they stack on top of each other) and the combined thickness, in women, ranged from 6.25 mm (about 1/4 inch) to 19.25 mm (about 3/4 inch).

Even if you train hard enough to go from the very low end of that range to the very high end, that's a half inch on each side of your waist. It's just not going to be noticeable.

 

[kenhui]

@anon103 Is it just me or would adding an inch to your width be very noticeable? An inch on the sides would likely add more than an inch to the waist circumference and I know from experience that I can see the effect of less than that change in my own waist measurements.

And why work in the opposite direction OP wants to go in even if it would be a subtle effect?

 

[anon103]

@kenhui if you're working hard enough to add an inch to your waist, you'd be adding multiple inches to your hips, chest, etc. So it wouldn't disrupt the hourglass look.

And why work in the opposite direction OP wants to go in even if it would be a subtle effect?

Core strength is important to support all the strength and functionality that is needed to pursue the rest of OP's goals.

 

[kenhui]

@anon103 If you're doing pilates to add that inch then no, you aren't adding anything to your hips or chest. And it's incredibly difficult to add any mass to the side of your hips as that's not really how anatomy works, therefore you'd wind up straighter than you started.

I think you get plenty of core strength for health and longevity without doing a bunch of oblique specific work.

 

[anon103]

@kenhui Pilates isn't going to add that inch either, tbh. Remember, we were talking about half an inch because that's the difference between the smallest and the largest measurement in the entire study. That's an extreme example, not an expected result.

 

[kenhui]

@anon103 I still feel like it doesn't make sense to do targeted exercise to a muscle that you don't want to grow.

 

[myfaith87]

@jnicole It would only make your obliques grow a lot if you did those moves excessively and added weights, like weighted Russian twists. Personally I think it takes a lot more work than you would expect to get to that point

 

[hanny]

@jnicole I did notice that the oblique work in Pilates made my waist a tiny bit boxier. I think it’s one of those things that no one else would notice though, and I certainly still can’t be said to have a “boxy” figure.

It was well worth it though, because now I have a much stronger core which has improved my overall fitness.

 

[dawn16]

@jnicole You work out the sides so that they're strong, because a strong core helps with everything. You don't work out a muscle to make it smaller. That's not how strength training works.

That said, pilates specifically usually doesn't change your figure.

It's well-known that you have to put in a ton of effort to bulk up anything you want to make bigger. Your core is no different.

 

[nerissa1969]

@jnicole Body weight exercises like Pilates are unlikely to build enough muscle to increase the width of your waist. If you were doing 10 variants of crunches every workout with a 45 pound plate in your hands maybe, but Pilates is just going to strengthen your core, which is good for you and may even assist with your appearance goals. Regular core exercise, in my experience, leads to increased muscle tone (literal muscle tone, the amount it's partially contracted "at rest") which can lead to a "tightening" effect on the waist much earlier than you would expect any other kind of results from the workout.

If you're currently an hourglass shape while a bit overweight, it's likely that you'll still be an hourglass when you slim down (everyone becomes an apple if they're heavy enough, but "boxy" slim figures tend to become an apple with virtually any extra weight), so losing fat is probably the most impactful strategy to reach your goal. Cardio helps with that but diet is the bigger piece. As for squats and deadlifts, they will build your thighs/glutes/hips which can only help to accentuate the hourglass. It sounds like your intended program is suitable for your appearance goals. The only thing I might add is some upper body exercises, especially shoulder exercises, which can make the top half of the hourglass pop more.

 

[neyimi6589]

@jnicole It takes a lot of work and time to build up the amount of muscle that makes a person look boxy, so that really isn't something that you need to worry about. People need to deliberately work towards the body look for it to happen. Frankly, wanting to avoid any exercises that could contribute to it (even though it won't be a risk for you) is part of why you're getting down voted. As people are pointing out, you need to have a strong core for general fitness and life long mobility, so you don't want to avoid it.

Looking for influencers that have the body type you're trying to achieve is probably another part of why you're being down voted. A lot of those influencers give unrealistic or downright dangerous advice.

Start with the wiki for this subreddit and work on getting fit, the go from there.

 

[aishaaa]

@jnicole There are four tenants of Pilates:

1) Elongate

2) Lengthen

3) Extend

4) Stretch

 

[dawn16]

@aishaaa Can’t tell if this provided as an office reference or general information

 

[truth_seekers]

@jnicole The structure of the core muscles will not make you look boxy if you have wider hips to begin with. Have a look at an anatomical picture of the core muscles, and which muscles are beside them. If you have an hourglass frame, you will still have an hourglass frame with a different percentage of muscle and fat.

 

[nula]

@jnicole Hi hun. Welcome to the fitness world! Your planned routine is exactly the same as what I’m doing now (running/pilates/weightlifting) and I’m thrilled you’re doing this combo because I love it and think it is the best.

Now, as for your question. Whenever people ask “how can I get this body”, the answer is, sadly you can’t. Bodies like Frida Aasen are genetic (as is yours), and no matter what kind of training or diet you do, you won’t look like that. Your body has its own way of building muscle and losing fat, and your end goal will look different.

I can talk about my example. I am of medium height, with thicker, stockier limbs, small boobs? wide hips, flat butt and a very small waist and lean torso. From the front I look conventionally like an hourglass, from the side I look like a pancake. I had always wanted to have long, slim limbs and would have traded anything for that (even my torso/waist).

But training had other plans - it turns out that my limbs just simply have a high potential for building muscle and they got bigger with training. My calves grew by a lot even though people keep telling me calves are hard to grow, but so did my thighs, forearms, biceps. There’s nothing I could have done to prevent this, and while it took me even further away from what I had considered to be my “ideal”, I had to just accept that this was how my body wanted to grow, and it didn’t look bad!

In your case, since you are an hourglass now, it is unlikely that with training you would become “boxy”. But there’s no way of knowing what kind of hourglass you’ll be until you go on and train and see the end result. But it will be worth it!

 

[bethany35]

@nula I love hearing about other women who naturally put on a decent amount of muscle. Some of us don’t have to live in the gym to do that and I get annoyed at how common that myth is.