The warm up exercises are designed to mobilise, lengthen and stretch the muscles in preparation for more demanding movements. Use them to familiarize yourself with how your body feels as it moves and to focus on your breathing and posture before moving on to the main exercises.

It is important to stretch the spine in as many planes of movement that you possibly can, which we tend to do standing up. The following is a list of exercises for a standing warm up (although not all warm ups have to be carried out in a standing position)

Balancing exercises are an important part of the Pilates standing warm-up, as balancing requires your core to engage, it warms the body up due to the demand on the leg muscles, it can strengthen the muscles in the feet, ankles and legs. Practice helps your balance to improve allowing you to achieve more challenging exercises and progress further in your Pilates practice.