Baby Pilates. Hipster Trend? Or brain-changing baby exercise?
Babies are natural Pilates experts. In fact I’ve taught a lot of Pilates classes over the years, and a baby’s natural form will put most adults to shame.
My baby is a hipster.
So it’s Pre-crawling |Baby Pilates| for this #titbittuesday friends! And this time it’s in blog form!! Woohoo! I’m back! (The guilt I mentioned in my last email obviously got the better of me. I thought I better kick my butt into gear and write you guys a proper blog!)
So on my long-awaited return (ha ha), I’m going to let you in on a little secret......
This EXACT stage, this pre-crawling-crazy-baby-acrobatic-experimentation-phase, this ‘Baby Pilates’ phase is NOT A HIPSTER TREND! It is actually one of the most important periods in a baby’s life for their gross motor learning AND their cognitive (brain) development.
This stage will influence their body awareness, postural control, balance, co-ordination and strength like no other time in their lives. And it’s wired into their little brains. No lycra necessary.
Yep, that’s right.
It’s not the getting up and standing and walking stage.
It’s not the teaching them how to throw-and-catch-and-kick-a-ball-stage.
It’s not even necessarily the actual crawling stage (but that is a pretty incredible time too: you can read more about my thoughts on crawling here).
It’s the wonderful stuff that happens BEFORE crawling and most definitely before walking that is SO crucial for a baby’s learning. The learning how to move-forward-whilst-on-their-belly-stage. And it only lasts a couple of months.
Whaaatt?! But all they do is roll and spin around and push up on their arms and stuff you say! How is that life-changing?
Well. Let me elaborate. When trying to learn the task of crawling, a baby’s brain needs to change and develop thousands of new brain connections to learn such a specific and very complex action. And by crawling I mean 4-point crawling, commando crawling or bear-walking; don’t get too caught up on which one. Either of those 3 are good, though we tend to see 4 point crawling as the “norm”.
The learning comes from all of this EXPERIMENTATION. Experimentation with different postures and movement patterns: rotating, twisting, turning, flexing and extending. A baby will experiment with thousands of repetitions of weight-shift from one side of the body to the other (we’re talking 30,000 a day guys) without actually moving forward at this developmental stage. It’s this huge PROBLEM SOLVING component of learning-to-move that has such an enormous impact on your baby’s future development.
Because problem solving is at the heart of learning.
So my take home message for any parents and parents-to-be?
The best way to help your baby to learn and develop these here impressive baby Pilates skills is by giving them every opportunity to teach themselves. But this means they need to get acquainted with the floor.
Let your baby play and experiment on the floor as much as possible. From week 1.
And this is the clincher:
There is no need for fancy baby developmental equipment. No need for ‘standers’ or ‘sitters’ or ‘jumpers’ or ‘walkers’. These items could do more harm than good.
However, don’t feel bad if you need to pop your baby in a bouncer so you can cook dinner or have a shower or put the groceries away. I absolutely used my bouncer with my boys for short periods during the day. It’s just life. You can learn more about the ‘container hopping’ phenomenon here.
But putting your baby in certain positions on the floor, playing with them in ways that will support the natural progression of movement, now THAT will help them learn about their body. That will help turn them into little Pilates Pros. And it all starts with tummy time. Baby having trouble with tummy time? I can help you out with that.
Check out my stories on Instagram today for an example of Baby-Pilates in action. It’s so cool to watch.
And my favourite piece of baby equipment that will get your baby moving from the very beginning? A baby play mat (see pic below). It will set the wheels in motion from as early as week 1. It’s pretty much the only piece of equipment I recommend for a new bub.
Other than a cot. Yep you’ll probably need one of those.
And don’t forget my book packed with hundreds of targeted exercises to help facilitate your baby’s gross motor and cognitive learning is on sale this week at 25% off by using code STRONGERSTART. You can learn more about it right here.
Such a small investment for your baby’s future (I can bet you’ve bought a baby t-shirt for more than that).