All Body Control Pilates™ exercises will start with a drawing up of the pelvic floor to about 20% of full capacity, (think of using the muscles you use to stop mid-flow on the loo. It makes sense, doesn't it - not only to retain continence, (and there are lots of leaky people about, worrying about the consequences of coughing, running, even laughing ), but also to offer a base of support to your body. When you draw your pelvic floor on, the transversus muscles, which act like a corset around your middle, will come on automatically, and as these draw on they will fire off the little, important, stabilisers which run all the way up the spine, and which make the spine a stable structure . Give a thought to how that benefits back pain. It certainly does me the world of good - and many of my clients, like myself, have experienced the reduction in pain, and the growth in confidence in our backs. Now I spend my working life lugging heavy equipment around, and bending over clients, with not a twinge - and yet before I started Pilates I was a candidate for a microdiscectomy following a badly slipped disc (I said no thanks, by the way, on being told there were no guarantees, and that the spine was still a bit of a mystery to the surgeons!).