Basketball Star Jason Kidd Wished He’d Started Pilates Long Ago

Pilates · Fitness

by Henry Abbot (Men’s Journal)

Basketball Pilates Buff and NBA All-Star Jason Kidd and his wife Pilates enthusiast Joumana have great bodies. Their secret is Pilates. Back in 2001 Joumana Kidd told Jason to try it. He put her off for a few years. He confesses “my first thought,”, “was that it couldn’t be that hard.” His first session with Pilates specialist Susan Whitlow turned out to be “a real eye opener,” he recalls. He kept at it, and noticed amazing things happening to his NBA-abused body. In addition to getting stronger and more flexible, he says he felt “ready to go tackle the challenges you’re faced with. It’s almost like coffee or something. It gives you a little kick.” “The more I got into it and the more I understood it, the better off I felt,” says Kidd. “And then the thing was, I just wanted to keep doing it.” Before long, Jason was stealing Joumana’s Pilates appointments. He learned quickly and his shape changed. He loosened everything up, he re-sculpted his center, and he did really well.”

He began working from the inside out, developing and balancing muscle groups he had never even focused on before and that has been doing wonders for his game. In addition to the obvious benefits of stretching and strengthening everything, Pilates, he says, has made him “focus on the part of the body that you’re working, and that has translated into the mental part of my game becoming stronger.”

Then, thanks to regular sessions on the Pilates machines in his basement and at the team’s practice facility, he says. “I just try and keep a fine line of a little iron and a lot of the Pilates machine,” in addition to the exercise he gets on the court. Thanks to the fact that Kidd found Pilates at about the same time as team Strength and Conditioning Coach Rich Dalatri, the Nets became the first NBA team to embrace Pilates. Several of the players now have the equipment at home, which may have contributed to the Nets’ staying almost injury-free. Kidd finished a close second in league-wide MVP voting thinks Pilates deserves some credit. That’s why he says it’s a good bet that in the injury-riddled NBA, “Pilates is not going to be a secret for long.” At 34, Kidd is having perhaps the best season of his career. It is unusual that a player his age is still considered one of the best at his position in the world and has actually improved as of late. But that’s what Pilates does for athletes that are looking for the edge.

There is simply no better workout for building deep internal core strength, developing long and lean muscles that are resilient under stress, preventing injury, and for fine tuning mental focus and deep core strength allows the body to move from a center/anchor that, enables Pilates Buff Jason Kidd, arguably the best Point Guard / Basketball players in the world seemingly defies gravity and continue playing long and strong. Real Men Do Pilates.