Will Pilates kill my gains?

Question

I am planning to start pilates for better posture and also weight training. I am planning to go to pilates in my rest days. But I am concerned with two things:

1) Will pilates kill my gains? Because I have heard that in your rest days, you have to sit still. Otherwise, you will kill your gains.

2) Is Pilates + Weight Training a good idea? My way of thinking behind this combination is the following: I need to better my posture. If I lift with a bad posture, there is a big possibility that I will worsen my posture. Hence, I will use pilates as my posture corrector and safely do my lifting. Do you think that this is a sensible idea or am I completely on the wrong track? If I am on the wrong track, could you give me some recommendations?

Answer 1

1) Will pilates kill my gains? Because I have heard that in your rest days, you have to sit still. Otherwise, you will kill your gains.

Generally on your rest days you want active rest. As such, pilates will be great.

2) Is Pilates + Weight Training a good idea? My way of thinking behind this combination is the following: I need to better my posture. If I lift with a bad posture, there is a big possibility that I will worsen my posture. Hence, I will use pilates as my posture corrector and safely do my lifting. Do you think that this is a sensible idea or am I completely on the wrong track? If I am on the wrong track, could you give me some recommendations?

Honestly I think your motivation is wrong, but the end will be fine. Pilates will help your posture, and so will strength training. What will make your strength training helpful however is not pilates, but rather doing your lifting correctly. Put more bluntly: pilates isn't going to (directly) make you a safer deadlifter.

Use an effective and proven strength training program that will prescribe rest days. On your rest days, feel free to do pilates.

Answer 2

The answer usually varies, but if we are talking about exercises such as swimming, running, walking, and biking(cardio, more commonly known as) then the answer is no as long as you are not doing an insane aerobic workout. For example, say that you are running 3 miles every other day. Will this hurt you in the long run? No. But now say that your friend is running 10 miles every single day. Assuming your friend is not extraordinary genetically gifted or is squatting for 8 hours every other day, eventually his/her leg muscles would shrink in size. This is because the muscles require more oxygen to be circulated through them so they shrink down to be able to push the oxygen cells closer together. So in other words, say this: If someone is reading 150 pages out of a book every day without eye breaks, they are more likely to develop blurred vision then someone reading 20 pages a day with no eye breaks(assuming these people are reading about 40 pages an hour). So, to make a long story short, yes if you are taking cardio or pilates to an extreme level it will kill your gains. But doing it moderately, or even at a somewhat advanced level, it will not as long as you say you won't swim over 5 miles a day or bike over 50, etc. When they tell you to "sit still," they mean to not lift weights.