The latest fitness misinformation is making the rounds on TikTok, but I’ve seen it crop up elsewhere, also. Young women are singing the praises of Pilates (sometimes along with barre, yoga and walking), saying that it helped them lose weight and tone their muscles where lifting weights didn’t. Something about cortisol. And I’m here to tell you, as a certified personal trainer, weightlifter, and person who’s been to a pilates class once or twice: This is total crap.
pilates won’t give you ‘more time,” Muscles more “thin” or more “toned”
When you strengthen your muscles, you are not giving them more “muscle tone.” The tone would only mean that you are flexing all the time. You’re also not making your muscles “longer”. They’re the length they are, silly goose, because they’re attached to your bones at each end.
And you’re not making them “leaner” because muscles are made of muscles, and “lean” refers to a lack of body fat. You can lose fat while strength training, but the type of strength training doesn’t really influence this.
What are the real differences between Pilates and weightlifting?
Pilates is a form of strength training that grew out of physical therapy-like rehabilitation programs for people with injuries. Emphasizes core strength, controlled movements, and learning movement patterns:not just moving the most weight or doing the most reps, but moving your body the “right” way. In these respects it is very much like certain types of “functional training done with kettlebells and foam rollers, but with a different repertoire of movements.
Mat Pilates is done on the floor, like yoga, with little or no equipment. There are plenty of free Pilates videos online, varying widely in quality. Some are just basic exercises you do while lying on your back, often mixed with yoga moves, and are scoffed at by serious Pilates folks. Others are more varied and deep.
Then there are the often expensive classes conducted with equipment. Sometimes you use things like springs anchored to the wall, but the fanciest and most modern classes are done with something called a Reformer, a machine with a sliding track. We have a brief guide to what to expect in a Pilates class here.
A good Pilates workout will work your muscles and can help build strength over time. Pilates is usually No a good option if your main goal is moving heavy weights or building a ton of muscle. People who go from heavy lifting to Pilates often say they lose muscle mass.
Depending on the type of classes you take and if you’re really trying to challenge yourself, you can get anything from an unhelpful little routine to something that builds enough strength to stay healthy and feel more functional on a day-to-day basis. life. To be fair, the same goes for many light strength training classes and routines (barre, yoga, classes where you move weights). Your results are a combination of whether the class is good and whether you challenge yourself appropriately.
Does cortisol prevent me from losing weight?
okay, so let’s dig into the misinformation. The story you’ll hear from many TikTok talking heads is that they used to do weightlifting and/or high-intensity interval training (HIIT), but couldn’t lose weight or were unhappy with their appearance. They may also notice that they were tired or sore or not enjoying their workouts. They then switched to Pilates and walking, and the weight was immediately gone.
The explanation given, and please remember this is completely fictional, is that heavy lifting and HIIT increase the levels of a stress hormone in your body called cortisol. Cortisol tells your body to hold on to body fat. (There will probably be some extensive biochemical details here.) And so doing easier exercises will allow your body to lose weight.
Related, you’ll see influencers talk about how cortisol makes you gain or maintain weight during certain weeks of your menstrual cycle, requiring you to plan your training around your cycle; or that certain foods or lifestyle habits cause “hormonal imbalances” or make you gain weight in what they call a “cortisol belly.”
It is true that cortisol levels are associated with stress, that stress is sometimes correlated with weight gain, and that medical conditions that affect cortisol it can affect the way your body uses fat and energy. But none of this applies to what you can expect when doing weight training at the gym.
Cortisol levels in the blood rise after high-intensity exercise, but these levels return to normal within an hour. We also adapt quite quickly to high-intensity exercise, since exercise physiologist John Hough points out here:WHis research group’s work showed that after 11 days of high-intensity cycling, those transient cortisol spikes were greatly reduced. (Other research backs this up.) In other words, we get better in physiological stress management, the more practice we get, which any athlete or coach could have told you.
Exercise-induced cortisol release is simply not considered a significant factor in weight gain, when talking to actual endocrinologists (hormone specialists) or scientists who study exercise or metabolism. Not to mention that neither Pilates nor strength training is new; if weightlifting caused people to put on body fat, this would be a long-understood phenomenon that athletes and coaches would already know how to plan and fix, and not some shocking new TikTok trend the world is grappling with now. .
If Pilates isn’t special, why do all these women say it worked better for them?
There are many reasons why right now It is the perfect time for this trend to catch on.
One of the main reasons is that it is a response to a trend that has been going on for years, where a thick body type is all the rage, and weightlifting has been popularly touted as the way to build your butt. (This trend what’s more includes a ton of misinformation, including the idea that “hip dips” are an aesthetic defect and that they can be completed with certain exercises; both statements are complete nonsense).
When an idea is popular, being part of the backlash against that idea can drive engagement. I scrolled through a batch from Pilates TikTok to write this article, and this is clearly an opportunity that many influencers are taking advantage of. One young woman in particular said that she saw results from “two weeks of Pilates” that she hadn’t seen in years of strength training. (I don’t care what you’re doing, two weeks of anything it won’t transform your body.) This video was followed by a flurry of reaction videos with dismissive responses to people who didn’t believe his claim. The algorithm is clearly rewarding her for this (one of her videos was among the top results of my Pilates searches), but she’s not an expert on exercise, health, or anything else. She posted a video of her doing her highly requested Pilates routine and by her own admission, it’s just some basic exercises that she picked up from free YouTube videos.
also having written about TikTok strength training trendsI can guarantee that many of these people who claim weightlifting “didn’t work” for them weren’t lifting heavy or properly. Overhead squats aren’t going to give you a lootabs are not going to give you abs, exercise does not make you lose weightand most people who start strength training use weights too light to make a difference. Scroll back through any of these Pilates enthusiasts’ profiles and you’ll see their previous workout routines. it’s educational
Another thing to keep in mind is that when someone tells you what they are doing now (even assuming they’re telling the truth), their body was largely built by whatever they were doing. prior to. If someone was lifting heavy and recently switched to lower intensity exercise, they are still benefiting from the strength and muscle they built earlier.
And finally :Tthe idea that these people to enjoy your current routine more than a previous one may very well be true. If they were forcing themselves to do HIIT (or other styles of grueling workouts labeled as HIIT), of course they hated it HIIT sucks, fake HIIT sucks, and if you only do it because you think it’s the best way to lose weight, you’re going to resent it for making you suffer and not even work.
Something similar happens with lifting, to be honest: IIf you’re always in the gym lifting as hard as you can, you’ll get pretty fatigued. At first it will be easy to go heavier with each workout, but very soon you will reach a point where this will no longer work. If you follow a well-designed strength training program, it will prevent burnout and frustration, but most people don’t. So again, switching to a different form of exercise can make you happier. That’s not because heavy lifting is doomed to make you miserable, but because you got out of a frustrating situation and switched to something you liked.
There is one last aspect of the craze of this pro-Pilates moment: Pilates classes are expensive as fuck. Small classes and private lessons are part of why it’s so much “better” than other types of training. You get a lot of personal attention and learn to engage your muscles precisely the way you intend, which can be legitimately helpful. But this has a monetary cost. Same goes for the specialized equipment (you won’t find Reformers at Planet Fitness), plus the prestige of doing a workout currently popular with wealthy white women. You pay for all of that.
To summarize: Pilates is considered better than sweating it out in the gym because it’s trendy and exclusive; it’s easier and possibly more fun than doing previous exercise tendencies wrong; and it is also the new thing to talk about on social networks. If you prefer Pilates and can afford it, enjoy! But if not, trust me, you’re not missing out.
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