Episode 337
337. What are lunges for?
The humble lunge - there's a LOT more there than meets the eye. We go there - biomechanics, cueing, how to layer it and why most instructors don't get the full value from it.
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Transcript
There are two basic ways to adjust the challenge in any exercise,
::assuming that you're on a reformer.
::One way is to adjust the equipment.
::We can adjust the foot bar, the spring setting, the carriage position,
::the gear bar, the stopper, the rope length, etc.
::To make it harder or easier. And the other is to adjust the body positioning.
::So we can lean the torso, move the foot, straighten the legs,
::bend the elbows, those kinds of things.
::And there are some exercises where it's just way easier to do one or other of those things.
::And there are some exercises where it's pretty easy to do both of those things.
::And one such exercise, Heath Lander, is the humble lunge, or should we say the mighty lunge.
::Yeah we should say the mighty lunge especially in in the in our reformer world where.
::Depending on the kind of dumbbells you may or may not have in the studio,
::and legs being so strong you tend to run out of load if you're using footwork
::for leg strengthening so your lunge you have to be good with the lunge or even
::in the the unimaginable case where you might not even have dumbbells in your studio.
::Exactly. You might just have a fitness circle, some toning balls,
::a mini stability ball, some flex bands, and a hope and a prayer.
::Yeah. So, all right, so what we want to talk about today is.
::It's a general principle, and the principle is something about how to adjust
::either the body position or the equipment setting to really add challenge,
::and we can use that in reverse.
::We can decrease challenge to an exercise because there are many or several right
::ways that you can do it that all work, and there are many ways that don't work.
::You can change the equipment settings, you can change body position in such
::a way that it doesn't make the exercise actually more or less loaded.
::It just makes it different.
::And my observation, and I'm pretty sure your observation as well,
::is most Pilates instructors, maybe not you, dear listener, but most Pilates
::instructors choose the latter.
::They do variations in body position and equipment setting that actually don't
::enhance the move in any meaningful way.
::They just make it different.
::So we're going to fix that.
::All right. So when you're lunging, what's it for?
::Yeah. that's exactly when I've worked through this in workshops that's exactly
::that the conversation as it were is called why do we lunge and I think.
::As I said before, you need to work your lunge in your programming and as an
::instructor if you're serious about giving people strong legs,
::because if you are, you're going to run out of load in your footwork.
::And there's lots of reasons to lunge, but if we're focused on adding load,
::then the question is, where do you want the load to go?
::So you need to, and this brings us to the spring tension question. So if you don't...
::Hold on, hold on. Before we jump in there, hold that spring tension. Hold that thought.
::Essentially, you know, what I learned in four years of exercise science degree
::is that a lunge or a squat or a footwork or a step up, basically any pattern,
::any movement pattern where you are extending your hip and extending your knee
::at the same time, lunge, squat, step up, et cetera,
::works pretty much every muscle below the waist in terms of glutes,
::quads, your adductors, your abductors to a greater or lesser extent,
::depending on whether you're lunging or squatting.
::They work more in a lunge, less in a squat.
::Your calves, you know, so your deep calf muscles, et cetera.
::So basically, if you squat or lunge, you're pretty much working every muscle
::in your lower body. You know, there's an argument to say that you're not substantially
::challenging the hamstrings.
::But, you know, let's put that to the side for now. And so essentially,
::it's the lower body workout par excellence is any kind of squat or lunge variation.
::So where I was going with that, though, is that if your spring tension goes up enough,
::as you push the bed back, that force in a horizontal, no, no, no, in a lunge.
::So if you go to a one and a half, two spring lunge, the effort of put,
::as this bed goes out, the spring tension increases and pushes you forward.
::Well, well, hold on, hold on, hold on. I think we, I think we're,
::we're like three steps behind that still.
::So like, you know, the question is like, what's a lunge for?
::Yeah. And the answer is it's, it's for strengthening the lower body.
::Okay. Yeah. But it's like, well, why would we lunge? why not just do footwork
::or legs and straps like froggy press or something, you know?
::That's my first question. Ah, okay.
::So, well, if you, as Raph just said,
::hip extension, knee extension, hip flexion, knee flexion, aka a squat pattern
::or a lunge pattern, is footwork.
::Lying down on the bed takes out your body weight.
::So all you've got is spring tension so you however much load you're managing
::your body doesn't count anymore because you're lying on a bed that rolls easily back and forth,
::so you've only got the amount of spring tension or load that the springs create
::which is different for all springs and all beds but let without getting too
::nerdy about how much springs equal,
::for full springs is is like raf raise what do you weigh now raf 100 kilos 890
::kilos Precisely 100 today. I weighed myself this morning.
::So 100 kilos lean, strong, full springs. And stiff.
::And stiff. I'm doing your reformer stretch class in a couple hours. Okay.
::So full springs is barely, if it is, it is barely Raph's body weight when he does footwork.
::So it's essentially the equivalent of doing body weight squats. Right. A bit weaker.
::Exactly. So, and the only, the only example that could really argue against
::that is if you get a deconditioned 55 kilo person, that's, they're going to be, you know.
::So if you're, if you're wanting to add load to a squat pattern and you're using
::footwork, you are going to run out of load.
::You're going to run out of springs. You're going to run out of springs.
::And even when you go to single leg, you're still going to run out of springs at some point.
::You know, it's going to take a little bit longer, but you are going to run out
::of springs and you're probably going to have people like extremely uncomfortable
::in their upper traps before you run out of springs, you know,
::a lot of times. So it's like footwork is great.
::Single leg footwork is great. Froggy press is great, but they're just not,
::you know, once people get to like average or slightly above average levels of
::leg strength, it's just like you run out of springs.
::Yeah. And so you need to have a lunge. You need to lunge.
::You need to lunge. and you know just make
::the to say it explicitly and clearly a lunge is
::is your first progression to a
::single leg squat or it's a single leg squat so you're biasing the load of a
::squat to one leg and so that's so it's double body weight double yes it's some
::progression towards double body weight which if you don't have heavy dumbbells
::in your reformer studio and no judgment whether you do or don't,
::you need to be able to increase the load because a body weight squat is, you know, as Raph said,
::once you've got essentially average strength, you're going to do 20 plus body weight squats.
::So now you've got to find more load. So the lunge is where you've got to be.
::I would even argue that with, even with relatively heavy dumbbells,
::like it's not that effective at adding like, like any, basically any load that
::you can carry in your arms is going to be fairly insubstantial for your legs,
::because your legs are just that much stronger than your arms.
::And so you've got to, you've got to lunge. You've got to split the legs.
::Got to lunge. Um, all right.
::Does that get us to where I was headed off? Yeah. So, so what are lunges for?
::So they're for basically every muscle below the waist, the glutes.
::Let's, let's include the hamstrings because they're not terrible for the hamstrings.
::They're just not awesome for it.
::The glutes, the hamstrings, the quads, the calves, the adductors and the abductors,
::you know, basically every muscle below the waist. That's what that's for.
::All right, now I think that whilst that's important for people to know because
::people get fixated on little movements within lunges,
::let's also say that there is a lunge you can do on one spring,
::give or take, where you keep your legs roughly straight and the bed goes out
::as far as you can and it starts to look like a front split.
::And then there's a lunge you can do where your front knee bends
::forward to the toes and your hips go low and
::you bow forward or or shakara even
::beyond your toes beyond the toes right and it and to look at it it looks like
::a lunge uh like a squat right so the front leg is in a squat movement pattern
::or you can do a front split where the legs are essentially all completely straight
::and it looks like a front split pattern.
::Right. And...
::So when we start to think about lunges, I've found it helpful to think of those
::two patterns as being variants of a lunge in a reformer class,
::because it helps you see what people are doing.
::I would say there's a third version in my mind that is similar to the knee forward
::version, you know, the bent front leg, but you keep your knee directly above your ankle.
::So it is a bent front leg but your your shin
::stays vertical and your your thigh
::goes backwards rather than your knee going forwards and so that is you know
::substantially similar like it's like 80 similar to the front one but it's going
::to change the bias of which muscles work a bit more versus a bit less in the
::movie yeah and it sits kind of in the middle of the two that i've put on the table, correct?
::Yeah. And yeah, yeah, it does. Well, I would say that the other one,
::the sort of the split, you know, where the front leg straightens out is in fact
::a fantastic hamstring exercise.
::Whereas the other two are probably pretty, you know, mediocre hamstring exercises. Yeah.
::I'm nodding emphatically here while Brett talks, by the way.
::Yeah. Whereas the bent front leg version are probably like way better quad and glute exercises.
::Compared to the split version, which is probably a pretty mediocre glute exercise
::and probably not even a quad exercise in any way, shape or form.
::Right. And right now, where our conversation is right now is like one of those
::nodes on the London Underground poster, where there's about nine different lines
::going off from the node. So...
::What we've established is that there are movement patterns. Raf's just started
::going down the rabbit hole of which muscles are biased to in those movement patterns.
::And as soon as we do that, we could probably talk for a couple of hours.
::And each of those lunge patterns is affected differently by spring tension. Right.
::So we can bias the movement.
::So basically all variations are going to essentially work most of the muscles below your waist.
::Okay but depending on which version you choose
::you're going to emphasize particular muscles a
::bit more a bit less okay the split version is going to emphasize the
::front leg hamstrings and back leg hip flexors a little okay the
::as well as the adductors the the bent leg bent front leg versions uh when your
::knee goes further forward that's going to emphasize the quads a bit more okay
::when your knee stays backward that's going to emphasize the glutes and the adductors a little bit more.
::Both of them are going to work both of those muscle groups, but it's just going
::to be 60-41 way versus 40-60 the other way.
::So we're not necessarily talking about increasing the load overall at this point.
::It's just increasing the load on one muscle by decreasing the load on a different muscle.
::It's a distribution question rather than a… Right.
::So it's not the case that knees forward is harder or easier than knees backward.
::It just emphasizes a different body part.
::But this is important for the group instructor because if you call a lunge on
::one spring and your clients put their front foot where they put their front
::foot and you watch them do their lunge,
::depending on what you ask for and what you see will tell you about what your
::clients are able to do and or what they've understood of what you want them to do.
::So you can you can do the lunge on one
::spring and let's say half the class have got their
::knee going slightly behind the heel well let's say a third
::another third have got their knee above the heel because they've been taught
::not to take their knee forward of the heel and then the third group have got
::their knee going forward of the heel to and beyond the toes none of them are
::bad none of them are wrong but those three groups are having a different experience
::as you do your 15 20 reps Right.
::So the heel behind the heel, the knee behind the heel group will be feeling
::it mainly in the front leg hamstrings.
::The knee on the heel will be feeling mainly in front leg glutes and the knee
::in front of the toes will be feeling it mainly in front leg quads.
::You know, that's a generalization.
::And depending on what you do with the back leg, those first two examples,
::they'll feel a lot more hip flexor.
::Right. And so your mileage may vary because it also depends what's happening
::with your torso and how heavy the spring is relative to your body weight and
::where your foot is positioned on the floor.
::But, you know, in general, as a rule of thumb, that's what you'll experience.
::And so… And so just to go too much further with that, the other thing in the
::example I was giving is I said your feet go wherever, right? Right.
::And so if Raf is 100 kilos and six foot and he puts his right foot with the
::toes level with the base of the foot bar and there is another 100 kilos,
::six foot person who's roughly the same strength,
::and they put their foot forward of that,
::then they're working with less spring tension. So.
::And this is where it starts to tease out. And when I teach lunges,
::what I would do and encourage people to do is get people moving.
::So we're on one spring, put your right foot on the floor, left foot on the shoulder
::pad, lunge the carriage back, stand up.
::I don't care how they lunge because I know that with one spring,
::it doesn't matter. Their foot's on the floor. I want to see what they do.
::But as I see what they do, then I'm going to refine what I ask for.
::And that might include, everyone bring your toes to this point,
::or Raf, bring your toes to this point.
::And then also- And when you say this point, you're thinking about basically
::moving forwards in general.
::Usually it'll be moving forwards so that I bring more weight into the front leg.
::Right. And more weight into the front leg and, like you said,
::less spring assistance.
::Less spring tension. because the spring is helping you stand back up in that
::exercise, which is assisting the glutes, quads, et cetera, et cetera,
::et cetera, to stand you up.
::So it's actually, the more spring tension means less load on those muscles.
::So when we bring the foot forwards, that means that the carriage doesn't go out as far,
::which means that the spring is not stretched as much, which means the spring
::doesn't develop as much tension, which means you have less support,
::which means more of that load of your body weight goes onto the glutes,
::quads, adductors, et cetera. Plus gravity.
::So foot forward equals harder.
::Right, for the front leg.
::And harder for the back leg means less hard for the front leg.
::And then it brings us back to why do we do lunges? And if we do lunges to strengthen
::the leg and we want to use roughly the distribution of a squat,
::we want to pick on the front leg and the back leg is kind of like your support
::leg or your- It's just stop you falling over.
::It's just stop you falling over. And if we could, we'd chop it off and make
::you do single leg squats.
::Right. And then you'd have to hold that weight of that other leg on your shoulder,
::and that would make it even harder.
::Yeah. And so at this point, if we just think quickly about what Raf just said,
::when we do lunges... Not the legs on the shoulder bit. Yeah, yeah. Describe that.
::If we think about why do we do lunges, if it's to strengthen legs,
::then the Google pin that you're heading for would be the lightest possible springs with the foot forward,
::with the hips going as low as possible, give or take, and the bed moving as
::back as little as possible because the further back the bed goes,
::the more spring tension there is, which is what we call the law of the spring.
::And that's always true, but how it affects the movement varies.
::So which is, now this is very different to how a lot of people think about lunges.
::When you say, how do you make a lunge harder?
::The answer is add more springs. And it's like, well, not if you're trying to
::strengthen the front leg. Yeah.
::Well, yeah. So if you think about a lunge as a, as a essentially a one legged
::squat, you know, a half of a squat.
::Well then, and you, you know, understand that with the back leg on the carriage,
::the spring is pulling the carriage back in, which pushes you up to a more of
::an upright standing position, which assists you. So it makes it easier.
::Therefore, more springs makes it easier to stand up. And in a squat,
::standing up is the hard bit.
::Going down to the easy bit coming up is the hard bit and so
::the springs assist you so the more springs we have the more
::assistance you get and therefore the easier it is
::on your glutes quads blah blah blah now we can add more springs to make it easier
::we can also move the front foot the foot on the floor further back towards the
::pulley end of the reformer to also make it easier because that means that you
::start with more tension on the springs because your back foot pushes the carriage is out further.
::And then as you lunge deeper, the carriage goes out further because you're starting
::from a more extended position.
::Therefore, you have more spring tension because one of the key things about
::springs that we all must understand as Pilates reformer instructors is that
::spring tension increases as the spring stretches.
::So the tension on the spring when it's at half extension is not the same tension
::that when it's at three quarters extension. It actually increases as you extend it.
::And so if you only extend it a little bit, the first six inches,
::you hardly get any resistance.
::But the next six inches, you get a fairly substantial resistance.
::And then the third six inches, you get a lot of resistance.
::So if you can cut off the last six inches, you're cutting off more than just
::like 10% of the resistance. You're cutting off like 50% of the resistance probably.
::And I don't know that exact number, but it's going to be a pretty substantial
::portion of the resistance.
::So moving the standing foot, you know, three or four inches forward on the floor
::has a very dramatic effect on the load on that front leg. Yeah.
::I've found working with instructors that that's one of the biggest concepts,
::and they're interconnected concepts.
::One is that the further forward the front foot goes, the less spring tension
::there is, and that couples with the understanding that less spring tension makes
::the front leg work harder.
::Right. And then one of the, and Raf, you said in there a moment ago that more
::spring tension makes it easier for, and then you just listed the muscles.
::And one of the things that we've worked a lot with on people to help them understand
::is one and a half to two springs absolutely is harder on the quads of the front
::leg and the hip extensors of the back leg and even the calf.
::But if you end up if the spring as and as raf said
::if you bring the foot back and or increase the spring tension enough
::you will not be able to get enough depth
::for there to be a meaningful range of motion and you'll
::have to put your hands on the foot bar now that's awesome that leads to what
::we could call a power scooter which is what i teach is like once we've established
::scooter on one and a half springs now go to two springs now to go to two and
::a half now go to three if you can and you could adjust the front foot to make that achievable.
::But if you're not using a foot bar, you've got your head up the person in front
::of you's butt. Yeah, yeah. Right?
::And the reform is sliding across the floor. Yeah, and or the reform is sliding away from you.
::So you can use a lunge pattern on more springs to work harder,
::but you're very much changing the load distribution.
::It becomes kind of power endurance scooter stuff.
::Right. And so to biomechanically dissect that just a little bit,
::When you're doing a lunge, which I would describe as, you know,
::a spring that is lighter than your body weight so that it's harder to stand up than it is to go down.
::What that works is basically everything in the front leg that we talked about.
::When you switch the springs or when you add enough spring tension that the spring
::is heavier than your body weight, so in other words, it's harder to go down
::than to come back up, then you essentially completely change the exercise.
::And it's one of those exercises where it really is just working completely different muscle groups.
::It becomes more about the back leg pushing the carriage out,
::hence scooter, and also So the quads of the front leg pushing the carriage out,
::but your quads are working, when you have a scooter with a heavy spring on,
::you're actually straightening your front leg to push the carriage out rather
::than bending your front leg to push the carriage out.
::So it's a completely different movement, right? It kind of looks kind of similar,
::okay? And it's in roughly the same body position in terms of like your foot
::placement is, you know, can be the same.
::But in terms of like biomechanically, it's just a completely different movement.
::You're working in different, completely different sets of muscles, basically.
::So nothing like like i said nothing wrong with a scooter love a scooter awesome
::exercise but it's not a harder version of a lunge it's a completely different
::movement as you're working opposite muscle groups essentially so you could take
::a rest from your lunges by doing scooters,
::because essentially you work in the back leg instead of the front leg mainly,
::yeah all right that i i just i mean i.
::We've got a lot of listeners at a lot of different levels of experience and training.
::I don't mean this as a lowball, but in all the workshops I've run,
::this is a concept that continues to be sticky for people.
::I think Raf caught it well there.
::Raf defined a lunge as where it's harder to stand up than it is to go down for the front leg.
::And in pilates world i think we we call a lot of things lunges without thinking
::really critically about what's
::going on and what's hard in the movement and what's making it hard so.
::I wouldn't suggest you sharing any of this with your clients because they don't
::really care. They just want to get a good workout that makes their legs stronger.
::But for us, being clear that if you've got a person with their foot well behind
::the foot bar and they're lunging the carriage back and struggling to get low
::because the spring tension is so great it's lifting them out,
::they are not doing the same exercise as a person who's got their foot forward
::and is working really hard to get up out of the lunge.
::They're quite literally doing different exercises, even though to the untrained
::eye, it looks very, very, very similar.
::Right. And so I think a really good kind of illustration of this would be to
::think about something like a rowing movement.
::Okay, so if you just think about, you know, sitting, pulling on,
::you could be pulling on springs or a flex band or a cable machine, whatever,
::and you're sitting up straight, your elbows are narrowed by your side,
::you know, your arms are bent 90 degrees, and your conduit is pulling backwards
::and then pushing and then releasing until your arms are straight out in front of you.
::Then you pull until your elbows are behind your torso. Then you release to your
::arm. And so you're pulling, right? It's a pulling movement.
::Now take that exact same movement pattern, but just turn around and face forwards
::and just turn it into a pushing pattern, right? So you're pushing and you're
::pushing, you know, like, like a, um, you know, kneeling facing the foot bar.
::Now you've got the straps in your hands, you're pushing, right?
::Exact same movement, exact same mind of motion, opposite muscles.
::It's not the same exercise.
::And so I think that's the same principle with the lunge, with a light spring
::versus lunge with a heavy spring.
::Like it looks the same, right? You know, we can say that the knee is flexing,
::the knee is extending, the hip is flexing.
::You know, the movements are the same, but it's not the same exercise. Different muscles.
::Yeah, point well made. And you could also say, depending which language of Pilates
::you're speaking, you could say chest expansion and reverse chest expansion or arm circles.
::Movement can look incredibly similar, the exact same switch of muscle groups.
::What we're doing with the lunge, if you're not careful, what you can do or you
::can inadvertently do is do that switch, but the movement looks exactly the same.
::You haven't turned around. around you're in you so and that that that's what
::i was saying before about getting people moving,
::because it doesn't it doesn't mean it's wrong it's
::not dangerous it's not bad if there is disparity in what people are getting
::but to be an to be an excellent group reformer teacher you want to be able to
::curate the outcome for the group you do and and and and moreover like if you,
::once you understand clearly like what you're
::doing with an exercise like are we working the front leg or the back leg is like
::the base level here right everything that
::you do to make that movement harder to add layers like it's only going to work
::if you're actually working the bit you think you're working right so if you're
::doing something to add load to the front leg for example leaning the torso further
::forward right well if you're not actually loading the front leg you're loading the back leg,
::that's actually going to offload the back leg. It's going to make it easier.
::So, you know, it's really important that you are clear which bit you are in fact loading.
::And the way you can know that is a very simple test. Is it easier to go up or is it easier to go down?
::If it's easier to go up, you work in the back leg. If it's easier to go down,
::you work in the front leg.
::And so, you know, generally lighter springs, front leg, heavier springs, back leg.
::And once you have that, then we can start to adjust the body position to add more load.
::And if we were to adjust the body position to add more load,
::assuming that we've gone,
::in Raf's example, with a setup that makes it harder to stand up than it is to
::where we're biased to the front leg,
::then the body position that we'll do would be bring the foot back or bring the bed in.
::And this is that like sort of
::nerd factor alert speaking specifically
::about when you teach a lunge on a reformer if we're on a half spring and we've
::done what you we've we've implemented what raf and i are talking about we've
::got it set up so that you're lunging it's hard to go up and easy to go down
::on the front leg the further back the bed goes the easier this because of the support,
::the whole load distribution problem becomes, if you bring the bed in and stay
::down and then stand up, which is difficult to cue to a group because no one
::wants to do it because they know intuitively that it's harder.
::If you lunge down, stay down, pull the bed in and then stand up,
::that's a way to make it harder through the movement for that muscle group.
::And if you do do that, what you'll notice is the moment you say bring the bed
::in, people's knees want to bump the bed and they'll go, oh, I know what I'll
::do. I'll stand up more. And you think, no, no, no, no.
::Wind your knee out of the way, keep your hips low. And then we come in and stand up.
::So that, that would be, you know, taking the position of the foot and the spring
::tension, and then looking for ways within the lunge to bring more load into the front leg.
::And so that's one way is, which I love, you know, lunge back,
::push the carriage out, stay low,
::keep low, bend the back leg to bring the carriage in, hold, okay,
::now stand up, go again, lunge out, push the carriage away, et cetera.
::So that's one way. Let me nerd factor on that. So the layer from what that is,
::I think, you know, would be eventually, you know,
::But essentially, you don't use the bed, right? Are you going to lift your back foot?
::Well, you'd keep your back foot on and you just go down, touch the back knee,
::stand up. Down, touch the back knee. Okay, great. Down, touch the back knee, hold.
::Now lift the back leg off and bring it to your chest like a flamingo.
::And then stand up if you can.
::Yeah. And it's hard to cue that, right? People don't want to do it. It's difficult.
::It's a challenging piece of sequencing. But if you practice it and do it,
::you will get that moment in a group where everyone just goes,
::holy crap, what are you doing?
::And then they come back and say to you.
::I want to double click on that because I think there's layers of genius in that
::little sequence there, which you've cued me through and I've experienced it.
::Because when you get, just to recap, dear listener, the sequence that Heath
::just described is, okay, don't push the carriage out. You're starting in a lunge
::position, but you're actually just going to just essentially descend vertically,
::okay, without pushing the carriage out.
::And then you're going to, in that position, you're going to lift your back leg
::off the carriage and tuck it
::into your chest, okay, without standing up at all. You're still low, okay?
::And from there, we're going to stand up, right?
::And so the extra genius, so the genius there is firstly, we're keeping the carriage
::in so we're not getting any spring assistance, okay?
::Then the second part is, well, then you lift your foot off the carriage so you're
::not even getting the carriage taking the weight of the supported leg there so
::you're actually increasing the amount of body weight that your standing leg is supporting, right?
::So you get like a 30% increase to your load on that leg because your legs are pretty heavy.
::And then the third thing is, as you're cueing those people and they're at the
::bottom of their lunge and you're saying, okay, now I want you to hold where
::you're, keep your standing leg exactly where it is. Do not raise up.
::Okay. The leg that's on the carriage, just float it one inch up for me.
::Now bring your thigh in towards your tummy and squeeze it there hard. Okay.
::That took me about 10 seconds to say, during which time you are paused at the
::bottom of the lunge in the hardest part.
::Right. And that is the third layer of genius.
::And with it with a piece of programming like that that is very demanding both
::on your teaching and on your clients everything that you know raf laid out there
::when going back to one of our recent conversations about what a layer is so
::each of them is a layer so you would do the lunge,
::establish the hip and the knee relationship getting low etc if people are making
::that look easy. They're not looking super challenged.
::Then you'd add the scooter with the knee winding out of the way.
::If they do that looking easy, great.
::And so, sorry, just, just, just to quickly make sure that we're clear on,
::cause we used the word scooter before of like as a back leg movement,
::but you can, the scooter is essentially the front leg stays still,
::the back leg pushes in and out.
::Right. And if you've got a really light spring, if you've got a really light
::spring, that's still a front leg exercise. Yeah.
::So there's the, the light spring scooter would be a layer.
::And in this case adding load to the front leg and then the hold where you stand
::up and down and touch the knee that would be another because you've taken out
::the spring tension then there's the the lunge down and stay in a flamingo leg
::put the foot back on stand up there's another layer and.
::These sort of what might seem like very incremental layers
::are necessary because you're trying to get 10 to 15 people to
::understand what you mean and achieve some success and
::give you feedback about whether they can or not and ultimately you eventually
::might add the final layer that wraps it and if you did 10 of all of those layers
::you've done 55 fairly strong layers and everyone's smoked which brings us back
::to our clustering concept where now you've got that's that's 15-20 minutes of programming plus,
::because you're going to do one or two layers on the right leg.
::Then you do the same two layers on the left leg and probably some long stretch
::in the middle and come over and do the next two layers if you can on the right
::leg or drop back to the previous layers if you can't, and then go and do the other on the left.
::And if you just think that through, that's 25 minutes of programming.
::And I guarantee you, your clients are not bored. They're like,
::holy crap, we're on a train going to hell here. yeah they're muttering under
::their breath for Don Tootin.
::So, yeah, I think we've done a reasonable job in that moment,
::Raph, of like that is the, we've talked through the biomechanics and the muscle
::and the load distribution of it all.
::And we've also been able to capture, like that's a piece of programming that
::I use a lot, but I also wanted to just like, it's hard to make that work at a group.
::You've got to really, as an instructor, you've got to really work for it,
::partly because it is hard and no one really wants to do the hard thing.
::Well, I think it's, I think it's like, it's, it's, it's, it's like a lot of
::things that are extremely simple once you understand them,
::but not at all obvious or easy before that, that it's very, very easy to do it wrong.
::And when I say wrong, I mean, just in a way that doesn't actually load the bits
::you're trying to load and where people do the whole sequence and at the end
::they go, yeah, that was okay.
::I didn't really feel it much, you know, because you had their foot in the wrong place on the floor.
::Maybe you didn't have the right spring setting for them maybe they
::weren't you know going to the right depth they weren't
::holding in the right place they were pushing into the carriage leaning their
::back knee on the carriage too much you know like there's lots of ways they can
::get it wrong and kind of cheat and once you get it right and getting it right
::means being very intentional about your instructions,
::about where to place their foot.
::How many springs to select, how far to push the carriage out,
::when to pause, when to raise the back leg, all of that kind of stuff,
::and to be very, very clear and direct with your instructions so that as they
::raise their back leg, they're not also straightening their front leg.
::The more precise you are with your instructions and the more precise they are
::with their movements, the more they'll feel it and the more they'll walk out
::on rubber legs at the end going, holy crap, you know.
::That was awesome. Yeah. And so it's one of those exercises where.
::When you cue it really well, it comes across as very, very simple,
::but it's really freaking hard to make it look that simple.
::I think I've told you this before on a podcast, so apologies if I'm repeating
::this for you people, but I taught that sequence in a class, plus obviously some
::other things in the class.
::And a client who had a lot of years of Pilates experience came up to me afterwards,
::Pilates experience elsewhere and said um hey
::that was that was an amazing class like you've really properly smoked
::me i haven't worked like that that was great i'm like wow without
::but why don't you do refinements like why don't why
::don't you talk about like details and i
::was like yeah that's all we did talk about
::and and the reason that's funny
::for me dear listener is just that but what
::i learned it took me a long time to learn it but now i feel pretty clear
::on it and that's what we try to teach is where you
::put people's bodies and
::by that i mean how where you the movements that
::you take them through and its relationship to the spring tension is most effectively
::described by put this here put that there now move that to there and go up and
::down but when you get that right that does all of the things that we're we're
::taught at pilates school to try and do by saying squeeze this,
::engage that, move that, lengthen this.
::But that's not the effective way to teach it. The effective way to teach it
::is to understand the effect of what we've been talking about for each movement
::and then just cue it like a seven-year-old would understand it and make them do a bunch.
::Right. And we didn't even get to talk about torso lean or arm position or really
::much about foot placement either, but we're out of time.
::Thanks, Raph. So maybe we've got a few more Lunge episodes in us. I don't know.
::At this rate, it'll be the year 3000 before we get through all of the exercises.
::We've got time. Good talk. See ya.
