Motivational profile of the Pilates method practitioners in Barueri - SP

Abstract

The Pilates method is based on contrology, which consists a program of physical and mental conditioning with strength exercises, flexibility and muscular endurance through unique equipment, developed through a “spring system”, and floor exercises. Throughout years, the method has been showing intense massification, establishing different methods with increasingly diverse applications, which can compromise their objectivity. In this way, the present study had as objective to verify if at present the objective of the Pilates practitioners agree with the proposals of the method. Sixty-four subjects, mean age of 43.61±12.66 years, who had been practicing the method for more than three months, were studied at least twice a week in one-hour sessions. All were evaluated through a questionnaire composed of ten questions developed by the authors themselves. It was found that physical fitness was the most desired goal, followed by the search for prevention for musculoskeletal diseases, showing a harmonization between the proposed method and the reasons for their search, regardless of how the method is used. However, half of the interviewees did not know the existence of different approaches between the Classic Method and Modern Method, which corroborates the literature. Practitioners of Pilates while not know differences in methodological approaches, trust and use the method, aware of its purposes, but this is a trend in discrete propensity.