Pilates Mat exercises have been considered very beneficial, especially for those who want stronger abdominal muscles and a stronger core. By core I mean the abs and the lower back. Pilates, as Joseph Pilates made it to be, is a low intensity group of exercises that are suppose to strengthen your muscles.

Usually, exercises are done with Pilates machines, but Pilates Mat exercises are more challenging simply because your body doesn’t rely on the support of the machine to do the work, making it shoulder the work that you are making it do. This results in a variety of developments, more so, on the abs than any part of the body, and we all know that that piece of fat under the navel is really hard to get to.

The other benefit of a Pilates mat exercise is its sheer lack of exercise equipment. Unlike other Pilates exercises, this only requires, as the name says, a Pilates mat. And you’re ready to go, of course every exercise requires some sort of instructor, either a real one, or a video, to tell you what to do, or if what you’re doing is correct, which brings us to the question of do I really need an instructor?

And the answer is yes, every exercise needs an instructor, even something you might think as simple as a Pilates mat exercise won’t look very simple once you’re in a hospital bed. Pilates mat exercises can be very advanced body work, and doing it wrong can as with every type of work out, give you injuries. A Pilates mat instructor has to be certified by a qualified school and make sure that your instructor has real qualifications before you take Pilates mat classes.

So when we touch on the issue of a Pilates mat instructor, we ask what would be best. A DVD or a real one? Essentially, most Pilates experts recommend a real instructor, an instructor can point out what your doing wrong, can position you correctly if you don’t have the right posture, and can personalize the exercise you’re doing specifically for your body’s needs.

However, there are lots of Pilates mat exercise videos out there that have been getting good reviews recently. Some people have gone on to say that it’s as good as the real instructor, well to each his own, but my suggestion is, if you can afford a real instructor, then get one.