Total Gym Pilates: Strength Meets Flow
Part 3: Core Moves to Ignite Your Center
Maria Sollon, MS, CSCS, PES
There’s core work… and then there’s Pilates. It’s not just about crunches or ab strength. It’s about teaching your body to move with intention, control, and effortless flow. At the heart of it all is your powerhouse: the deep core connection that stabilizes, supports, and fuels every movement.
Part 3 of Strength Meets Flow focuses on core-driven movements to ignite your center with precision, control, and flow. With the incline, glideboard, and cables on your Total Gym, these exercises transform Pilates classics into full-body challenges that elevate posture, sharpen body awareness, and deepen core engagement.
✨ Missed Part 1? Click here to learn how the Total Gym mimics a reformer and transforms your home practice, including 5 foundational movements to get started!
Why Core Work on the Total Gym Feels So Different
Unlike traditional mat work, the glideboard along with the incline on the Total Gym create a unique instability that forces deeper engagement. Here’s a few key points of why it works and why it feels so different:
- Core Stability + Balance: The moving glideboard demands constant inner balance for deeper core activation.
- Incline = Springs: Resistance from the incline mimics the spring tension of a reformer.
- Gravity + Bodyweight: You are both the mover and the resistance.
This is where Pilates gets powerful, for real results! So get ready to take your Pilates core training onto your Total Gym and to power up your strength!
3 Core-Powered Pilates Moves On Your Total Gym
This focused sequence may look simple with just three movements, but each one is deliberately chosen to connect mind to muscle, activate deep stabilizers, and train the spine with both strength and length. By moving with precision and control, you’ll discover how Pilates transforms your core into the true source of power, stability, and flow.
Set Up: Low – Medium Level, Cables Attached
Directions:
- Utilize the Pilates Principals: Alignment, breath, and core control.
- Move slowly and intentionally: quality over quantity
- 8-10 reps per exercises, 1-2 sets is perfect.
- Use your breath to guide each movement, keep your spine aligned, and your core engaged throughout.
- Incorporate Part 1: Foundational Movements for a dynamic warm-up and Part 2: Toe Bar Moves to progress your Pilates training.
- Double Leg Stretch
- Lie supine on the glideboard (belly up), cables in hands, knees hugged to chest, and head slightly lifted to start.
- Inhale: Keep head lifted and lower spin imprinted into GB as you extend arms and legs in opposition.
- Exhale: Circle arms around towards shins and draw knees back in to chest
- Repeat slowly for control
Focus: Deep abdominal activation, coordination, breathwork.
Tip: Anchor your tailbone, hollow your belly, and let your breath guide the flow.
- Leg Lowers
- Lye supine on GB with knees in tabletop and arms extended from chest holding cables.
- Maintain an imprinted spine throughout the exercise.
- Inhale: Keep the arms still while lowering one leg at a time towards the rails.
- Exhale: The leg returns back to tabletop to repeat.
- Advance: Extend legs straight, lower towards rails, then lift back towards hands to tap the shins to fingers.
- Play with the movement to alternate small and large circles in both directions.
Focus: Core stability, shoulder control, breath coordination
Tip: Let the motion come from your center, not momentum. Your arms are moving, but your core is what’s working.
- Swimming
- Lie prone on the glideboard (belly down), cables in hand, arms extended forward.
- Press into the cables slightly to lift upper torso into extension and drawl belly away from GB.
- Alternate lifting opposite arms and legs, simulating swimming.
- Keep the glutes and lower back engaged; move with length and control.
- Advanced: play with movement tempos, slow vs faster speeds to challenge your muscles.
Focus: Posterior chain activation (glutes, back, shoulders), core extension control
Tip: This is not a momentum drill, it’s about igniting your posterior chain by lengthening while lifting the spine. Think about reaching longer through the upper and lower body in opposition.
Mind-Body Takeaway
These three cable-based exercises blend classical Pilates control with the dynamic feedback of the Total Gym. Move with intention, let gravity challenge your center, and feel how true strength begins in the core.
But this is only the beginning. Pilates principles, paired with the glideboard, gravity, and cables, create endless opportunities to build deeper strength and sharper awareness.
Next Up: Part 4 shifts the focus to lower-body integration using the leg pulley system. You’ll strengthen, stabilize, and lengthen with purpose to to unlock your inner strength that supports you from the ground up.
Stay consistent, stay curious, and keep moving with control.
Maria
@GROOVYSWEAT
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