Devin Mangum, HS through University Baseball
“As an athlete, Pilates has taught me how to control my body and connect with the ground better.
I believe that truly being able to control your body movements against gravity is the most difficult athletic task. It is much easier to lift weights, even heavyweights than it is to properly do a Pilates move. With weights, I just attacked the lift as aggressively as possible and made sure that I breathed during the exercise. Over time, lifting weights seemed to get easier the more I did it. Pilates were the exact opposite. The more I learned the moves and how to carve out my body, pull my core in, and up, it continued to get more difficult.
I remember a specific story when I was performing the single-leg squats while holding the cables. I, for the life of me, could not do more than two on each leg, even though I could squat a ton of weight in the weight room. I had such a bad habit of only using my legs for squats, rather than incorporating my Powerhouse. It was so extreme that I could not control my body well enough to do more than two.
It surprised me and made me extremely aware of the truth of learning how to properly use your Powerhouse in athletics versus using your pecs, arms, shoulders, or legs for every athletic movement.
Brooke was extremely supportive throughout my baseball career. She would consistently ask me how I was performing, how my body felt, or if there were any specific aspects of my game that I would like to improve athletically. She would come to some of my games to support me and see for herself how well I was moving on the baseball field. She was easy to communicate with while learning how to perform certain moves in Pilates and relate them to how they would translate to the baseball field. Her athletic background most likely helped with that, and it made every workout that much more exciting and easy to understand.
She had the perfect mix of being a coach and teaching while asking me questions for what I would specifically want to work on.
We would go weeks at a time working more specifically on shoulder health, lateral movement, or spine stretching among many things. Another part that I have enjoyed about being coached by Brooke for so long is that she spoke to me like a coach during workouts.
Brooke helped me grow mentally as much as she did athletically.
At an average height of 5'9, it was important for me to get the most out of my body, and working with her allowed me to do that. When I was 14 years old, I could only throw about 70mph, and run a high 7-second 60-yard dash. I did not have any real hitting power either.
My throwing velocity increased an extreme amount over the years of working with Brooke.
By the time I went to college, I could throw 90mph from the field, and run a 6.4-6.5 60 yard dash. My hitting power benefited just as much, too. While there are obvious factors in terms of throwing more, such as physical maturation, I truly contribute a lot of my growth to her training. My flexibility and power were immensely improved by doing Pilates with her.
Her teaching led me to stop using ice as a recovery method and do a daily Pilates stretching and exercise routine to get my body moving. I have recovered better than ever after removing ice from my recovery routine and doing my "100" and other Pilates exercises in place of it. Ice stagnates the muscle’s recovery process, while moving replenishes new blood and blood flow to allow the muscle to heal itself. I hardly got sore, and when I did it healed much faster than it did while I was using ice.
I have now spent at least 8 years training with Brooke.
