Teaching Teachers Blog
Pilates Train or Teach?
by Tracy Fitzpatrick
Pilates, or Contrology as named over 100years ago, is a fitness system of choreography and concepts. Its built on a foundation of integrity, which is why it has been around for so long. Many fitness trends have come and gone since I began teaching in the early 80's, but they don't last because their foundations are not sustainable over time. Pilates like dance and some yogas, will always be accessible forms of movement because their foundations are built on systems of integrity.
Pilates' choreography is under much dispute with various schools, yet arguments dissipate when the discussion shifts to the established concepts of the technique. The different schools are positioning themselves to establish control of what they say is the true technique. They want to be the Pilates Police of what in their opinion is the correct way to perform the exercises, and who Joseph Pilates appointed, or would have put in charge of his information. The rest of us must wait until the appointed Master Teacher surfaces to tell us what Joseph Pilates really intended. In the meantime we have clients to take care of and a job to do.
Most teachers understand through experience that the choreography is out dated for the masses. We know more about the body, and our lifestyles have changed drastically since Pilates was alive. Yet the concepts are timeless and transcend the dated choreography. The concepts are so universal they can be applied to any fitness program. We saw the fitness community begin to borrow the ideas of core training in the industry, when Pilates began its second rise in popularity in the early 90's.
Amidst this battle between the schools and the Masters lies a grey space in which instructors must teach and train their clients. Pilates Instructors from any school can work in this space but they must define their path as teachers and work very hard to improve their teaching skills. The best way to begin that path is by listening to their clients' needs and remaining open to receiving instruction from all schools of Pilates or any integrous movement forms. If we follow one self appointed charge of the technique our teaching and our clients won't thrive. If we force the traditional choreography on our clients our teaching becomes limited to corrections with no examination and growth in application of the concepts. We then limit ourselves further by qualifying our clients work, tell them they have mastered this technique and off they go into the world.
Many of the self appointed Masters say Pilates choreography is supposed to be done as it was originally choreographed and our focus as teachers is to teach the work as it was handed to us in its original form.
If we spend all our time teaching and preserving the choreography, what happens to the client? When a teacher allows the client to feel they have mastered the technique it can close that person down. Mastery is assumed just because a client has paid money and put in their time. Any type of movement should open a person up physically, intellectually, and emotionally. The work should be taught by the teacher and attempted by the client, and accomplished for that session or that moment.
I have studied this work for over 20 years; prior to that I was a professional modern dancer. As a dancer I can remember one ballet class and maybe a few performances in over 10 years where I can honestly say 'I had it'. I can't ever remember a time where I had that same feeling while practicing Pilates. Pilates challenges you to try to accomplish a set of goals, but if it is taught correctly once you achieve those goals you should be challenged further. Yes, you can capture moments of accomplishment as you pass through exercises but movement is energetic and exercises are not to be owned. Energy should be kept moving even if it is in thought form such as humility for the work and a feeling that you never really have it mastered. This unlimited type of thinking keeps us open intellectually and will transcend into physical form as well.
Pilates, like all movement exists in the moment. As in dance, when that moment is over its done and you are on to the next experience. The problem arises when we try to capture that moment, own it, or repeat it. Movement is in the moment as an expression of energy moving through the body. When you go to your next exercise or your next session, you are in a new moment. Thinking one has it mastered or owns the the work closes down the flow of energy that expresses as a balance between thinking and doing. The inner conversation of the mind and body gets interrupted in that moment. Instead of feeling the physical body internally participating in the exercises and the mind applying the practice of the concepts, the exercises get perfomed correctly externally and validation is needed from the teacher. What am I doing, feeling, thinking becomes am I good, did I do it right, am I a good student and energy moves from internal source experience to an external subjective doing.
I remember the shock on my clients faces when after close to 10 years of study I came into the studio one day and exclaimed to them that we had a big problem on our hands. They of course, curious to what I meant asked why. I told them that we had a big problem because now they know Pilates, and because they know it, they do it, and thats a problem. They have taken the work and externalized it into exercises done well, exercises they are good at, exercises they need praise for, and with all that they have forgotten their own internal dialogue. That dialogue is a question they must ask themselves which is, 'What am I feeling?'
Clients come to us because they want benefits and results. Pilates will give them what they want, if the instructor trains the client and applies the work to level the client is at. The importance should be placed on the client's needs first through a clear assessment of their physical and emotional state. Once the teacher knows where the client is at they can train them to achieve to accomplish the clients goals and honor who they are.
The majority of our clients don't come to us to learn Pilates. They come to us for various reasons and with particular needs but rarely do they come to be taught Pilates. With all the fuss about the right way to do Pilates we forget that the original choreography is only half of the technique. We need to remember the instruction of the concepts, and their sensational application in teaching. Variations made to the original choreography while honoring the concepts are a practical solutions to training clients in this technique. Honor the clients physical state first. Train them to give them the results and benefits second. Teach third.
In my experience, I can give a client a taste of everything Pilates has to offer in about 5 sessions. After that, they are hooked, curious, or we just connect as people. Once the relationship is established, the training begins. The client is feeling results on the first day and seeing them around seven to ten sessions, some sooner. When a client is feeling the work and results are appearing, I am in business because the client wants something from me and all I have to do is deliver it. How do I answer to the Masters and the self appointed boards of those who know better,the books and DVD's that advertize they are the only correct information on Pilates?
I don't. It is my own responsibility to increase my own personal knowledge of the work and the human body.
A tradition is not kept alive in a governing board, in officials with rules and opinions, or in videos and books. Pilates lives on in the passion of those that teach it, carry the knowledge at their level of teaching with integrity, and in remain and pass on a humility for the work rather than a pride in it. By doing so, the teacher and the student remain open.
Where does teaching Pilates fit in? First I have to define myself as a teacher to know who I am. The knowledge of Pilates was given to me by my teacher. I have carried that knowledge and developed it with principles of personal responsibility. I teach with integrity and maintain a commitment to learn and grow in the work and concepts. Through experience and years of work, and remaining open, I apply Pilates teachings with respect to the individual.
When I learned Pilates I was a professional dancer. I was extremely strong, but humbled by the strength I lacked to do the work. I had hoped to have classes full of people like myself. But, the reality was my first real clients were all post rehabilitative and going through intense chiropractic treatments. Those first few months teaching were the hardest ever, but I began to adjust the work immediately so that the clients wouldn't have such strong reactions to their work outs. These people who weren't able bodied had to have variations of the work in order for them to even attempt it. So with knowledge and respect of the work I eased my way off the path to enable clients to get results and remain pain free.
Today my regime has a successful time tested formula. After five sessions of introductory for them, and assessment work for me, training begins. I train them to get results and to experience and feel the work on a sensory level. I give them the controls by letting them gauge their own exertion levels. I try to keep the teaching of the work to a minimum. Corrections are informal and encouraging. They actually feel the exercises as applied to their needs. I choose exercises and variations that support the person. I don't make clients execute exercises to please my eye. I help them to understand their own internal dialogue and encourage them to stay there by not demanding external execution of exercises with corrections. That way the workout becomes about them and not about me.
Each person is honored and supported. They are allowed to make mistakes because if I choose the right exercises for them they won't get injured. I encourage them how to do it right while they are moving and don't stop them to force my point. If they can't do an exercise, I give them something they can do that still fulfills their needs. When they do feel the work, I become encourage them to move into that space.
Many people react to sensations Pilates creates. I notice this more with two sensations in particular burning and shaking. When clients feel energy as a burning sensation, they mentally and emotionally go to the future in fear and worry or eager and happy they will experience soreness the next day. Shaking usually sends them to the past with fear, sadness, or self judgement that they are weak. I help them by bringing them back to the moment, help them to understand they are in dialogue with energy moving through the body and to stay with the experience. This sensation of energy is new to them. Once they get in touch with it they can use it to heal and or transform their bodies. I encourage them to go into it, experience the connection to their muscles. Doing so safely will give them the results they desire and put them in touch with their physical state of being.
They are in full sensory training mode, feeling Pilates and their body, and working to achieve results. This is in them, for them, not being done to them. I encourage them in their internal dialogue by not asking them execute Pilates exercises for me. I stay out of the subjective experience and continue guiding them back to their bodies. When they experience movement as an inner dialogue and learn how to use it to get results then they become curious and open to learning Pilates as a discipline. Once the client begins to inquire about the discipline,then I shift the workouts to a blend of teaching and training.
When you begin to teach Pilates as a discipline you lose the benefits of training. The first thing you lose is the work out and rapid results. The body doesn't heat up as much, they aren't challenged by the flow of moving from exercise to exercise, and they don't get the benefits of pushing through the stagnation of energy in the body because they have to stop to learn. When they learn the technique as a discipline they gain more confidence and are more willing to participate in the intellectual aspect of the work.
I like to challenge myself and balance the workout between teaching and training. They are being taught the mind body connection from someone who is teaching it through the mind body connection.
Instructing Pilates becomes just as important for the teacher as it is for the client. As the teacher tries to lead the client towards physical balance, the teacher has to remain in balance herself. The workout has to have balance and stand on its own with integrity. It must have a beginning, middle, and end. It must have a point to it as if you were having a conversation with that person. You are in fact having a conversation with their body and it must make sense. The teacher's state of mind has to be in balance with the client's state of being for that hour. Most importantly the teaching and training has to be in balance between the sensory experience of the work which can take just one session and the intellectual grasp of the work as applied to the concepts which takes years.
(copywrite 2007, all rights reserved)
Pilates Train or Teach?
by Tracy Fitzpatrick
Pilates, or Contrology as named over 100years ago, is a fitness system of choreography and concepts. Its built on a foundation of integrity, which is why it has been around for so long. Many fitness trends have come and gone since I began teaching in the early 80's, but they don't last because their foundations are not sustainable over time. Pilates like dance and some yogas, will always be accessible forms of movement because their foundations are built on systems of integrity.
Pilates' choreography is under much dispute with various schools, yet arguments dissipate when the discussion shifts to the established concepts of the technique. The different schools are positioning themselves to establish control of what they say is the true technique. They want to be the Pilates Police of what in their opinion is the correct way to perform the exercises, and who Joseph Pilates appointed, or would have put in charge of his information. The rest of us must wait until the appointed Master Teacher surfaces to tell us what Joseph Pilates really intended. In the meantime we have clients to take care of and a job to do.
Most teachers understand through experience that the choreography is out dated for the masses. We know more about the body, and our lifestyles have changed drastically since Pilates was alive. Yet the concepts are timeless and transcend the dated choreography. The concepts are so universal they can be applied to any fitness program. We saw the fitness community begin to borrow the ideas of core training in the industry, when Pilates began its second rise in popularity in the early 90's.
Amidst this battle between the schools and the Masters lies a grey space in which instructors must teach and train their clients. Pilates Instructors from any school can work in this space but they must define their path as teachers and work very hard to improve their teaching skills. The best way to begin that path is by listening to their clients' needs and remaining open to receiving instruction from all schools of Pilates or any integrous movement forms. If we follow one self appointed charge of the technique our teaching and our clients won't thrive. If we force the traditional choreography on our clients our teaching becomes limited to corrections with no examination and growth in application of the concepts. We then limit ourselves further by qualifying our clients work, tell them they have mastered this technique and off they go into the world.
Many of the self appointed Masters say Pilates choreography is supposed to be done as it was originally choreographed and our focus as teachers is to teach the work as it was handed to us in its original form.
If we spend all our time teaching and preserving the choreography, what happens to the client? When a teacher allows the client to feel they have mastered the technique it can close that person down. Mastery is assumed just because a client has paid money and put in their time. Any type of movement should open a person up physically, intellectually, and emotionally. The work should be taught by the teacher and attempted by the client, and accomplished for that session or that moment.
I have studied this work for over 20 years; prior to that I was a professional modern dancer. As a dancer I can remember one ballet class and maybe a few performances in over 10 years where I can honestly say 'I had it'. I can't ever remember a time where I had that same feeling while practicing Pilates. Pilates challenges you to try to accomplish a set of goals, but if it is taught correctly once you achieve those goals you should be challenged further. Yes, you can capture moments of accomplishment as you pass through exercises but movement is energetic and exercises are not to be owned. Energy should be kept moving even if it is in thought form such as humility for the work and a feeling that you never really have it mastered. This unlimited type of thinking keeps us open intellectually and will transcend into physical form as well.
Pilates, like all movement exists in the moment. As in dance, when that moment is over its done and you are on to the next experience. The problem arises when we try to capture that moment, own it, or repeat it. Movement is in the moment as an expression of energy moving through the body. When you go to your next exercise or your next session, you are in a new moment. Thinking one has it mastered or owns the the work closes down the flow of energy that expresses as a balance between thinking and doing. The inner conversation of the mind and body gets interrupted in that moment. Instead of feeling the physical body internally participating in the exercises and the mind applying the practice of the concepts, the exercises get perfomed correctly externally and validation is needed from the teacher. What am I doing, feeling, thinking becomes am I good, did I do it right, am I a good student and energy moves from internal source experience to an external subjective doing.
I remember the shock on my clients faces when after close to 10 years of study I came into the studio one day and exclaimed to them that we had a big problem on our hands. They of course, curious to what I meant asked why. I told them that we had a big problem because now they know Pilates, and because they know it, they do it, and thats a problem. They have taken the work and externalized it into exercises done well, exercises they are good at, exercises they need praise for, and with all that they have forgotten their own internal dialogue. That dialogue is a question they must ask themselves which is, 'What am I feeling?'
Clients come to us because they want benefits and results. Pilates will give them what they want, if the instructor trains the client and applies the work to level the client is at. The importance should be placed on the client's needs first through a clear assessment of their physical and emotional state. Once the teacher knows where the client is at they can train them to achieve to accomplish the clients goals and honor who they are.
The majority of our clients don't come to us to learn Pilates. They come to us for various reasons and with particular needs but rarely do they come to be taught Pilates. With all the fuss about the right way to do Pilates we forget that the original choreography is only half of the technique. We need to remember the instruction of the concepts, and their sensational application in teaching. Variations made to the original choreography while honoring the concepts are a practical solutions to training clients in this technique. Honor the clients physical state first. Train them to give them the results and benefits second. Teach third.
In my experience, I can give a client a taste of everything Pilates has to offer in about 5 sessions. After that, they are hooked, curious, or we just connect as people. Once the relationship is established, the training begins. The client is feeling results on the first day and seeing them around seven to ten sessions, some sooner. When a client is feeling the work and results are appearing, I am in business because the client wants something from me and all I have to do is deliver it. How do I answer to the Masters and the self appointed boards of those who know better,the books and DVD's that advertize they are the only correct information on Pilates?
I don't. It is my own responsibility to increase my own personal knowledge of the work and the human body.
A tradition is not kept alive in a governing board, in officials with rules and opinions, or in videos and books. Pilates lives on in the passion of those that teach it, carry the knowledge at their level of teaching with integrity, and in remain and pass on a humility for the work rather than a pride in it. By doing so, the teacher and the student remain open.
Where does teaching Pilates fit in? First I have to define myself as a teacher to know who I am. The knowledge of Pilates was given to me by my teacher. I have carried that knowledge and developed it with principles of personal responsibility. I teach with integrity and maintain a commitment to learn and grow in the work and concepts. Through experience and years of work, and remaining open, I apply Pilates teachings with respect to the individual.
When I learned Pilates I was a professional dancer. I was extremely strong, but humbled by the strength I lacked to do the work. I had hoped to have classes full of people like myself. But, the reality was my first real clients were all post rehabilitative and going through intense chiropractic treatments. Those first few months teaching were the hardest ever, but I began to adjust the work immediately so that the clients wouldn't have such strong reactions to their work outs. These people who weren't able bodied had to have variations of the work in order for them to even attempt it. So with knowledge and respect of the work I eased my way off the path to enable clients to get results and remain pain free.
Today my regime has a successful time tested formula. After five sessions of introductory for them, and assessment work for me, training begins. I train them to get results and to experience and feel the work on a sensory level. I give them the controls by letting them gauge their own exertion levels. I try to keep the teaching of the work to a minimum. Corrections are informal and encouraging. They actually feel the exercises as applied to their needs. I choose exercises and variations that support the person. I don't make clients execute exercises to please my eye. I help them to understand their own internal dialogue and encourage them to stay there by not demanding external execution of exercises with corrections. That way the workout becomes about them and not about me.
Each person is honored and supported. They are allowed to make mistakes because if I choose the right exercises for them they won't get injured. I encourage them how to do it right while they are moving and don't stop them to force my point. If they can't do an exercise, I give them something they can do that still fulfills their needs. When they do feel the work, I become encourage them to move into that space.
Many people react to sensations Pilates creates. I notice this more with two sensations in particular burning and shaking. When clients feel energy as a burning sensation, they mentally and emotionally go to the future in fear and worry or eager and happy they will experience soreness the next day. Shaking usually sends them to the past with fear, sadness, or self judgement that they are weak. I help them by bringing them back to the moment, help them to understand they are in dialogue with energy moving through the body and to stay with the experience. This sensation of energy is new to them. Once they get in touch with it they can use it to heal and or transform their bodies. I encourage them to go into it, experience the connection to their muscles. Doing so safely will give them the results they desire and put them in touch with their physical state of being.
They are in full sensory training mode, feeling Pilates and their body, and working to achieve results. This is in them, for them, not being done to them. I encourage them in their internal dialogue by not asking them execute Pilates exercises for me. I stay out of the subjective experience and continue guiding them back to their bodies. When they experience movement as an inner dialogue and learn how to use it to get results then they become curious and open to learning Pilates as a discipline. Once the client begins to inquire about the discipline,then I shift the workouts to a blend of teaching and training.
When you begin to teach Pilates as a discipline you lose the benefits of training. The first thing you lose is the work out and rapid results. The body doesn't heat up as much, they aren't challenged by the flow of moving from exercise to exercise, and they don't get the benefits of pushing through the stagnation of energy in the body because they have to stop to learn. When they learn the technique as a discipline they gain more confidence and are more willing to participate in the intellectual aspect of the work.
I like to challenge myself and balance the workout between teaching and training. They are being taught the mind body connection from someone who is teaching it through the mind body connection.
Instructing Pilates becomes just as important for the teacher as it is for the client. As the teacher tries to lead the client towards physical balance, the teacher has to remain in balance herself. The workout has to have balance and stand on its own with integrity. It must have a beginning, middle, and end. It must have a point to it as if you were having a conversation with that person. You are in fact having a conversation with their body and it must make sense. The teacher's state of mind has to be in balance with the client's state of being for that hour. Most importantly the teaching and training has to be in balance between the sensory experience of the work which can take just one session and the intellectual grasp of the work as applied to the concepts which takes years.
(copywrite 2007, all rights reserved)
The real CEO and my true teacher my son.