Episode 340
340. What's the minimum effective dose of Pilates for strengthening?
How much Pilates do you need to do to get stronger?
Probably less than you think!
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Transcript
What is the minimum effective dose of strengthening and what does that look
::like on a Pilates reformer? Heath Lander.
::Hey, Raph. And yeah, what does it look like on a reformer and what does it look
::like in your reformer class?
::Well, all right. So what is the minimum effective dose of strengthening and
::what does that look like in your reformer class?
::So firstly, what is the minimum
::effective dose of strengthening like
::how what do we need to what's the
::least we can do with a client and give
::them a you know be 90 confident we've given them
::a sufficient stimulus to get stronger yeah
::but i think we should just step
::back you know going back to my rant the other week about
::pilates education globally what
::coming back one step from that is what why would
::we want to make our clients stronger and then what are we you know what are
::we what are we basing that on like what's the minimum effective dose for our
::client type broadly and i i keep coming back to the exercise physical activity
::guidelines which we don't need to go into great detail about,
::we have before and we can again,
::but within that it says two to three strength training sessions per week,
::but hold on, what's a strength training session?
::All major muscle groups go to near fatigue.
::That's all it says. So if we want to help people reach that,
::threshold for the benefits of physical activity at a guideline level,
::you just need to do all major muscle groups to near fatigue two to three times per week,
::presumably with enough break in between for the strengthening effect.
::Okay, great. What does that look like and what's the upshot of it?
::And I think it's important for us to remember as Pilates instructors that there's,
::That, those physical activity guidelines, if we can help people meet them consistently,
::we reduce their chances of dying of anything in the next 10 years by 50%.
::So the way I like to think about that is if you say to your client,
::do you want to die miserable really soon?
::The answer is always going to be not really. Okay, great. So what can I do to
::help you live a longer, healthier, happier life? One of them is make you stronger.
::And if you're not already doing consistent things.
::You know consistent strength training
::then all i've got to do is all
::major muscle groups near fatigue effectively in
::the two sessions i get to see you each week and it only has
::to happen once for that in for that effect to occur which
::isn't to say it's going to make you a bodybuilder or an elite athlete
::but that starts to meet the threshold of making your life
::better and if we work from there and think
::that then we think about what it means to help people get
::stronger then we start having a recipe for giving
::people incredible results from a class they fucking love
::yeah because let's face it most of our clients
::come to pilates not yet
::with a deep love of lifting fucking heavy for multiple sets every week like
::it's just not the avatar right so people come to us because they enjoy the movement
::of the bed or they want to find something that's low impact and they're like
::exercising lying down. Okay, great. Let's work with our avatar.
::Yeah. So, I mean, just to really put that in context, after not smoking and
::getting vaccinated against things like polio and whooping cough and stuff.
::Strength training is probably the equal number three with cardiorespiratory training,
::is the biggest single thing you can do to have a longer lifespan and also a longer health span,
::the span of years where you're actually able to enjoy life rather than lying in bed feeling unwell.
::And, you know, it really, in terms of interventions that we,
::you know, humans can do to increase the well-being of ourselves or others,
::like strength training is quite possibly, you know.
::Within the top two or three activities that you could do on a per hour basis
::in terms of its positive impact on every aspect of human flourishing.
::From health to longevity to cancer risk to dementia risk to mental health and
::happiness to life satisfaction to functional ability to, you know,
::staying independent longer into old age, the list goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on.
::But just to catch that, Raph, to dear listener, remember, as I was framing before
::Raph has gone into the details a little, what we mean by strength training doesn't
::mean 10 to 15 working sets of all major muscle groups every week.
::It means what I, the guidelines is if people do something and their form starts to suck and,
::Right. Then that's, you know, and you push them for an extra couple of reps.
::That's what we're talking about.
::It's not, yeah, so strength training is as strength training does.
::Right. So, you know, if we, if we agree that we want to help people live longer,
::happier, healthier lives, then by far the most powerful thing we can do for those people,
::assuming we're not a brain surgeon, you know, is to, you know,
::is to help people get stronger.
::And the way to do that in pilates
::is very very simple it's not very time consuming and like like he said actually
::there's quite a bit of research has come out in the last few years on what the
::minimum effective dose of strength training is like you know strength training
::is one of those things where there is a dose response relationship what that means is,
::if you do a little bit you get a little bit stronger if you do a lot
::you get a lot stronger and you know the relationship's not
::100% linear like if you do twice as much you don't get twice as
::strong but you get more strong than if you did half as much but
::the minimum effective dose turns out to be almost hardly anything you don't
::have to do a lot to get you know a substantial benefit over not doing any and
::so the minimum effective dose for a an adult who is you know under kind of 55 or 60 years old,
::is going to be probably one to two sets per week to near failure per muscle group.
::So that's a set where you push to the point where you almost can't do another one.
::Not because it burns, but because you just literally can't do another push-up.
::You're just like, can I do a cup then we didn't have the power?
::That kind of, you know, just can't do it.
::So if you can get all of your major muscles to that point of near fatigue,
::not where you're shaking not where it burns but where
::you almost can't do another one
::and certainly not another one in good form if you
::do that you know probably let's say two times a
::week to be on the safe side for the
::average healthy adult who is 55 or younger
::and probably if you're over 55 like add another one or two sets because when
::you get a little bit older the response is a bit blunted so you need to do a
::little bit more to get the same benefit so if you have a mixed group and there
::are people up to 60 or 70 in your class if you did like three or four sets per week,
::where the majority of people get to a point where they're like holy crap this
::is really freaking hard i don't know if i can do another one you're going to
::get like 98 of those people,
::measurably stronger over time and that will accrue you know that will those
::benefits that I listed off before will accrue to all of them.
::So then we want to think that through and we're talking to the skill of delivering
::this within a reformer class.
::So all major muscle groups means we need to hit arms and legs and torso and
::push, pull, which gets the front and the back of the torso combined with the
::arms and the legs, everything from the hip down.
::And we need to get to this point of near fatigue that Raph's talking about two
::or three times a week for our clients to accrue those benefits.
::So if we can get clients coming for two or three classes per week and do this
::for each of them at least once in the session, then that's when the benefits
::start to accrue. We can give them the minimum effective dose.
::And what I've seen over the last eight to ten years is the strategies that I
::developed to do that as I learned what we're talking about from RAF and implemented it.
::I started to build a client base that didn't really even realize how strong
::they had become because all they did was show up to Pilates.
::They didn't do one RM tests. They didn't really measure their strength.
::But then they'd come back to me and say, look, I went on holiday and did a class in another studio.
::And all we did was just like 50 reps of side-lying legs and all this balance stuff and it would burn.
::To near fatigue and when i think about what those movements i use are and how
::they differ to the movements that i talk about with instructors when we're trying
::to clarify the difference or
::what the effectiveness is is there are some hallmarks of those movements,
::and there's a bit of a paradox here and i'm going to wax lyrical for a minute
::so if you think about the people who demonstrate the the greatest strength just
::to go to the extremes to illustrate the idea,
::powerlifters who lift and move more weight than anyone else on the planet as
::a sport or whatever, apart from maybe the strongmen who pull trucks with their
::teeth, they do back squat, deadlift, and bench press.
::And all of those movements are compound. So they use multiple joints at once.
::They do it from a stable place. The earth doesn't move underneath them.
::And once they start to move the weight, it's the same weight.
::So if they're picking up 200 kilos, it's 200 kilos from the ground.
::As they pick it up, it's the same when they put it down.
::Obviously, the distribution is different for the muscles, but the actual load doesn't change.
::When we try and apply those benchmarks or those parameters to the reformer,
::we notice, huh, it's kind of hard.
::The damn thing's always moving around underneath you.
::The load changes as you move, the springs increase, decrease,
::and that changes the load depending on how many springs and depends on the movement,
::all of those things we've talked about a lot and we'll continue to talk about.
::And if we're not careful, we're doing movements that are unfamiliar to people,
::so they can't concentrate on just creating force, which is what deadlifters get to do.
::Push their feet into the ground, hold the bar really tight, pick the fucking thing up, right?
::And they're the people who get this, they're demonstrating the best way to lift
::weight. So how do we replicate that in a Pilates class if our equipment breaks all of those rules?
::We need to find something that's stable, where the earth doesn't move around too much.
::The load is roughly predictable and the movement's familiar and compound.
::So we end up, and this is where my passion point is about how to implement this
::stuff at a minimum effective dose, is look for push-ups, look for things that
::use the shoulder, the lats, the pecs, the triceps, the biceps,
::where it's stable, predictable, and people understand the movement.
::So push-ups off the foot bar, tick, long stretch, gives you your lats on a light
::spring, tick, and lunges, where you're connected to the earth and you can really
::start to apply some load by reducing the spring tension.
::And so what I've found, this is a personal reflection, is
::if I can implement that in essentially every class
::i teach and repeat it a few times so
::that if strong people are doing it i can tell them to lift their knees in the
::second cycle and that's the layering idea we talk about if i implement that
::in every class it only takes three to five minutes of the entire program so
::that gives me another 40 or 35 minutes where i can do all the fun stuff and i love the fun stuff.
::I hope that makes some sort of sense. Yeah. I want to just double click on the
::sort of long stretch and pushups thing because superficially,
::so there's two questions that I want to talk about there for a sec.
::Superficially, both of those kind of look like the same position, right?
::So hands on the bar, feet on the shoulder blocks, you know, using your arms
::to support your body weight, you know, basically.
::And I put the knees on the bed so it's more stable and I reduce the spring tension. Yeah.
::So essentially the same position, right? And so, you know, superficially they
::look like they work the same muscles, but actually in reality,
::depending on the spring setting, one's a push and one's a pull.
::And so I want to unpack that for a second.
::And then the second thing is kind of like, maybe we should discuss it first,
::which is like, okay, well, how can only three exercises,
::you know, work all of the main muscles and why not do, you know,
::isolation exercises, one for the biceps, one for the triceps,
::one for the lats, one for the pecs, one for the delts, one for the, you know,
::glute major, medius, glute minimus,
::quadratus femoris, etc.
::So firstly, to the second point, well, dear listener, pop quiz,
::how many muscles are there in the human body?
::How many muscles in the human body? And the answer is approximately 620.
::And I say approximately because the number of muscles varies slightly between
::people. There are some muscles that are present in some people,
::but not present in other people.
::Sternalis is one of those. Some people have it, some people don't have it.
::There are a couple of other examples.
::So anyway, about 620 muscles in the human body.
::Now, if we were to take it to the extreme and isolate each of those muscles,
::how many exercises would we need to do to get a complete whole body workout?
::We'd need to do about 620 exercises.
::Not very practical in a 45-minute to 60-minute Pilates session.
::In fact, if we think about 620 muscles, you know, we'd have to do like,
::you know, the left side of the, you know, flexor hallucis longus,
::and then the right side of the flexor hallucis longus, et cetera.
::So instead, what we do is, like I said, compound movements that involve multiple
::joints, and we can choose movements that work a maximum number of muscles in
::a very loaded situation.
::And so it turns out that if you do basically some kind of push with your upper
::body and some kind of pull with your upper body,
::that's going to pretty much work 80 to 90% of all of your upper body muscles
::to a useful degree where they'll actually experience enough stimulus to get stronger.
::So that's the first thing, is if we actually...
::Do an upper body push and an upper body pull, we work pretty much all the upper body muscles.
::And then if we do a lower body, some kind of squat or lunge,
::we pretty much work all of the lower body muscles.
::Now, is it possible to, you know, add a bit more work to certain muscles by
::doing isolation movements? Absolutely.
::But in terms of the 80-20 of strengthening people with the least amount of effort
::for the most amount of bang for your buck for every moment you spend strengthening,
::a push, a pull, and some kind of squat or lunge is the point of, you know, maximum,
::strengthening per minute of your workout.
::And you will spend like three minutes and get a whole body workout.
::So it's like, it doesn't get much more efficient than that. Now,
::could you spend three hours and get a better workout? Sure.
::But it's not going to be like a hundred times better. It might be like four
::times better in terms of like speed of progression.
::So that's the first thing. If you pick those three, you know,
::some version of those three big compound movements, some upper body push,
::an upper body pull, and a lower body lunge or squat, you're going to pretty
::much hit almost every major muscle.
::And then the second point is about long stretch and push-up.
::So a push-up, obviously, is a push movement. Yeah.
::And so as such, it's going to work, you know, those muscles on the front part
::of the shoulder girdle, your pecs, your anterior deltoids, it's going to work
::the triceps as well, serratus anterior, you know, a bunch of those other sort
::of shoulder girdle muscles.
::But a long stretch on a light spring is,
::Okay, so a light spring is defined as a spring where it's easier to push the
::carriage out than it is to bring it in.
::And what that specific spring is, is going to depend on your body weight.
::If you're heavier, then, you know, one full spring might be still a light spring for you.
::Whereas if you're lighter, maybe one full spring will be heavy for you.
::It'd be harder to push it out than it is to bring it back in.
::Sorry, harder to, yeah, push it out than it is to bring it back in. but if
::the spring is light enough that the
::spring resistance is less than your body weight or in other words it's easier
::to push it out than just to pull it back in that's what
::we mean by a light spring here and if it's a light enough
::spring then you're working not to put the carriage out so it's not a push you're
::working to pull the carriage back in it's a pull and so you're using your lats
::and then very likely things like your lower and middle trapezius.
::Your rhomboids, you know, et cetera.
::You know, probably a bit of pec minor and stuff as well in there as well,
::ceratis anterior as well.
::But there's nothing wrong with working those twice as hard. So when you do long
::stretch on a light enough spring, it becomes a pull movement.
::And hence, if you combine it with a push-up, works all of or you know let's
::say 90 percent of the shoulder girdle muscles in a useful way so there's your
::workout one set of push-ups one set of long stretch in a light spring,
::one set of lunges on each leg get that to the point where you're like oh that's
::really freaking hard i don't think i'm gonna do another one bam 50 minute class
::you've got 47 minutes left,
::what do we do for the rest of the class,
::Job done.
::And if we think about that, so I use that sequence of a push-up with a long
::stretch, you know, year in, year out, and I've had the results I was talking about before.
::And because we're facing the footbar and we've got the hands on the footbar,
::there are all the elements of wrists, et cetera, blah, blah, blah.
::So how long do you want to be there? but you can step
::off and do lunges and so in terms of how we think about
::clusters and programming generally what what happens
::here is you can do lunges and i know we've talked about this before
::but it continues to be something people ask me about so do lunges on one side
::come and do long stretch what long stretch do you do start with a version you're
::confident everyone can do a bunch of so you establish the movement you make
::it familiar so let's say you start one red i always use a low foot bar because
::tall people bang into the pulley arms.
::So you do your first cycle and you add your push-ups.
::And do you need to get everyone to near fatigue inside those 20 reps that time?
::No, because you've got plenty of time to come back again.
::So maybe you also include some knee stretches or, you know, something a bit more fun.
::Once you've established that people understand the long stretch and the push-up
::movement, then step off lunges on the other side.
::Once people have refreshed, both in terms of their wrist endurance,
::but also their muscular capacity for the pushing movement and the pulling movement,
::as Raf explained it, you come back.
::And at the second pass is where you would start to use spring tension or leg
::lifts like to a straight leg to increase the load.
::So if I've got Raf in my class and I can see he's got push-ups that much more
::push-up can pull capacity in that movement than someone else,
::I'll slide over to Raf and reduce his spring tension or maybe the whole group
::goes to a half spring and I might also ask him to lift his knees and make the
::push-up harder and the long stretch harder.
::That's two jumps at the same time, but it's two layers that I can use.
::And I'm just going to work that through the room. And then once we get some
::degree of challenge, is it in the optimal range?
::I'm not sure. We don't know. Yes, for some people, maybe not for others.
::Step off and do some other lunges. And then we come back and do it again.
::And it might sound like repetition, and it is, but little variations change the load input.
::As Raf and I have talked about, as the load increases, people's
::flow state increases as well people won't say
::we're doing it again they'll be like oh we're doing it again but they're in
::their flow state and it's easy to mix it up so then once we've done those two
::or three passes you could turn 90 degrees and do some woodchoppers or you could
::do the woodchoppers and give you people's push movement even more break and
::turn back to the foot bar so once you've understood or we've understood or i understood you,
::that I could hit those major muscle groups really effectively and go back and
::forth and affect them differently through body position and spring tension,
::then I could practice using them within programming.
::And this circles us back to if I repeat my programming, I get better at it.
::I can give a wider variety of clients more challenge, more effectively and efficiently.
::And the clients repeat it more often so they get more familiar with it.
::And dear listener, familiarity in the movement doesn't breed boredom.
::It breeds efficiency and the ability to work harder into the movement and to
::notice your gains, your progress.
::I think there's something kind of fundamental there that we need to continue
::to reframe, which is that the repetition in the movement doesn't breed boredom.
::You know, it's like, well, we can't let our coins get bored.
::Well if you conceive of pilates as entertainment you
::know like you maybe you do need to keep changing
::it all the time because if you went to see the same broadway show
::you know 365 nights a year probably at some point you probably would get bored
::um because that's passive entertainment but if you want to become a master at
::playing the piano guess what you have to fucking practice the same shit again
::and again and again and again and again and again.
::You know, a master is someone who's just done such a ridiculous number of reps
::that it's just impossible to not be a master at that point, you know? And so...
::And do master, do virtuoso pianists get bored when they're practicing?
::I don't think so because I think what happens is they become absorbed in the
::activity and they derive an intrinsic reward from doing the activity.
::It just is enjoyable to do it because they've mastered it.
::They're fucking awesome at it and it feels good to do something that you're
::fucking awesome at that's really difficult and it's right at the edge of your skill level.
::And so that is inherently intrinsically rewarding
::like it's it's rewarding for its own sake
::you know the activity is the reward and
::so it the exact opposite of the mindset of
::like we have to keep our clients entertained by you know being a dancing
::singing bear is we we
::can keep them rewarded and entertained by actually repeating the same things
::again and again and again as long as we make it harder and harder over time
::because they will get better at it and that is intrinsically rewarding.
::So take that variety, people.
::Well, dear listener, dear listener, I mean, case in point, you, right?
::I mean, if you're still listening to this and you haven't turned it off in disgust
::because we're talking about biomechanics and teaching Pilates yet again, it's like, well,
::how many times are we going to talk about biomechanics and teaching Pilates
::before you get bored of it? Probably like infinite.
::If you're like if i mean if you're still listening to this it must be infinite
::because we're up to episode 340 or something and you're still here so obviously
::you didn't get bored right and yet how many times have we talked about fucking
::long stretch on this show
::you know probably not quite as many times as we've talked about shoulder bridge,
::but but right up there right and it's like it's not boring when you find it fucking fascinating,
::you know like we could talk about this shit forever it's not boring that's the thing,
::Yeah.
::There's one client that comes to mind when we have this conversation,
::and obviously she'll remain nameless to protect the innocent,
::but she first started working with me as a client over a decade ago. What shall we call her?
::Client X, shall we? No, give her a name. Give her a name. Okay.
::Let's call her Barbara. Which is not her name.
::And so, yeah, Barbara began with me as a client over a decade ago.
::And until I left Australia 12 months ago, she was still regularly attending my class.
::Often to like almost every day I taught, she would be in my class and we had
::no personal friendship.
::I knew very little about her personal life or her life outside of the studio.
::In fact, once or twice I would bump into her in the street, not recognize her
::because she wasn't wearing active wear. I didn't recognize you with your clothes on, Barbara.
::Yeah right when your hair's down i don't know who you are because it's usually up when you work out,
::and you know i used to frequently think any
::day now she's going to get bored of my classes like any day now it's you know
::and she's she's also a client i've referred to when you know i've said make
::i make small changes to the session and she'd say oh we never did that exercise
::before and be like we totally did that exercise like last week,
::and the countdown in the lunge was different or the foot position was different.
::What comes to mind when we talk about this is the way she would approach the class.
::So as the years went on and my teaching evolved and I got better at this stuff
::and giving people strength and variability within the class of what Raf has
::just said is, you know, once you've done that bit of the minimum effective dose,
::you've got all this time.
::And I do movements that are not just focused on compound stable strength outputs.
::I do lots of more Pilates type stuff or higher range of motion or higher instability movements.
::What? It's not just long stretch for 50 minutes? No, not at all. Not at all.
::And in fact, as a sidebar, I think one of the things that have,
::the one risk of the focus that we have on building strength into our programming effectively is that we,
::you, dear listener, if you haven't done our classes, might lose sight of,
::I'm very, very passionate, I'm highly passionate about the reformer being used as a piece of,
::exercise equipment in a way that it's well suited to.
::So it's an unstable surface that does, there are things you can do on the reformer,
::for example, pancake splits or front splits, depending on the setup,
::which I think is worth the cost of the reformer.
::Like I think it's more valuable in some ways.
::Just the front splits. For certain movements. It's a fantastic front.
::There's no other front splits machine that I've ever found on the market that's
::like even a 10th as good as a reformer.
::Right. There are things like a squat rack is arguably a better investment if
::you're serious about strength training, but the reformer does things with a
::squat rack will never do.
::A reformer is one of those. We should use the equipment to use the equipment.
::Right. So using the equipment where its strengths lie, I'm a massive advocate
::of, you know, I sort of fall outside some of the conversations about treating
::the reformer as a strength training tool.
::It's like, well, if you're serious about strength training, like serious,
::like RAF is, you're not using a reformer, which is not to say.
::Hold on hold on i'm just you know and we do want to get back to
::barbara because i want to understand i want to hear the punchline on that but but
::i think okay the reform is the reformer series strength training tool like okay
::if you can bench press 140 kilos you know his arms in straps gonna make you
::stronger no probably not right but if you are like the average pilates client.
::Can you get stronger on a reformer fuck yes you
::fucking can big time and so for those
::people starting from a relatively low base getting up
::to well above average strength a reformer
::is a fan fucking tastic strength training
::tool but what where it reaches its limit
::is when you get sort of beyond sort of the above average
::level you just run out of springs you know
::you run out of resistance in most of the movements and so if you
::want to continue on to like truly elite levels of
::strength yeah okay the reformer kind of reaches its limitations
::there but to go from like couch potato to fucking kick ass like 45 year old
::adult you know like better than you know 75 percent of the people out there
::reform is fucking your thing it's awesome great great piece of equipment,
::And I couldn't be more aligned with what you just said.
::And the other dimension to that is, and this is where it brings us back to Barbara, is,
::The best workout is the workout you do.
::And so, you know, if someone, as Raf said more clearly than I did,
::there is a point of diminishing returns using the Reformer as a serious strength training tool,
::partly because it's an unstable surface, blah, blah, blah, the stuff we've already
::talked about, and partly because at a certain point, which is well above average
::of strength in the general population, you kind of run out of load,
::as it were. You kind of need more stuff to put on.
::You run out of weight plates in a sense.
::But until you reach that point, it's fantastic.
::And especially if you implement, you know, just these basic sort of constraints
::on the movements you choose to push into really hard, then you're getting,
::you know, it's fantastic as a strength training thing.
::And it also has these other dimensions. There are these other things,
::you know, the flexibility, the instability. And when you harness them,
::you can do stuff that you simply can't do on other pieces of fitness equipment.
::So we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
::And that's where, so the thing that, what I observed in Barbara was as she got
::stronger, she was able to do harder stuff.
::And as she, as the, as the years went on, what I noticed was the repetition of.
::And the things that we worked on that were repetitive became,
::at the risk of overstating it, like Raf's example of the musician.
::So she took her Pilates classes with me as seriously as someone practicing a musical instrument.
::She came in, she settled in, she was always a bit early, she was always on the same reformer.
::If someone else got the reformer, she'd kill them with her own shoe,
::pull their dead body off and climb on.
::You know she she had her routine and she
::took the movement very very seriously in
::her own sort of self-advocacy I was just a conduit
::I wasn't you know so it was it was it was an amazing thing to watch and it was
::it emerged from the repetition I teach essentially the same thing over and over
::and over and over again and incrementally getting stronger and discovering the
::strength allowed her to do bigger, more complicated stuff.
::And there was a kind of a symbiosis where my teaching got better watching clients
::like her because I think, oh, you can do that. Or maybe we could do this.
::And then, you know, that's where the reformer pack stuff emerged because I actually
::had to find something hard enough for those people because they'd actually moved
::to a point where their capabilities.
::Their capacities were greater than I could expect from any general class,
::which is a nice problem to have.
::And the Reformer Pack is a course of classes that you do for people who've already
::got a reasonably strong Pilates practice, who aren't necessarily contortionists or anything,
::but you get them to that point over weeks, months, and years in some instances
::where they do hit their first high bridge, their first full split,
::their first horseback, their first whatever it might be, teaser on the long
::box, grasshopper, blah, blah, blah.
::All of those super difficult, you know, old school contrology moves.
::Yeah, yeah, it is. Yeah. Do we want to talk about the Reformer Pack for a minute?
::No, but I do want to talk about the Online Pilates Studio.
::Yeah, great. Yeah. So, dear listener,
::you know, podcast is, it's a great medium in many ways. I love it.
::It's my preferred medium of communicating with you, dear listener.
::You know i mean i like instagram and everything but it's just way more work
::i mean i'd much rather come on here and have a chat with heath than sit at my
::computer trying to you know crank out a,
::carousel or a reel or something um but anyway the the the main drawback of podcasts
::is they're not interactive you know we can't see you we can't hear you we can't
::interact with you and in the online Pilates studio, we've solved that.
::And I mean, I guess this is kind of an ad, but it's like, dear listener,
::I want to put this in context for you.
::Our business does about 220,000 US dollars a month at this point in revenue.
::And so this online Pilates studio, I would say it would be less than half of 1% of that.
::You know, like this is not our core business. So it's kind of just a fashion project.
::But yeah, so tell us what the Online Pilates Studio is and why we do it and what it's for.
::The Online Pilates Studio is, as it sounds, an online studio where all of the
::training team, all six or seven of us, teach classes every week. And we teach...
::From the frameworks that we build our courses out of, what I want to say is
::that we teach the clusters that we teach in the programs.
::We do, but they vary because we're human and the people we teach are human, so it's not exactly.
::And we teach Matt and we teach Reforma and we also provide workshops on a cycle
::which explore concepts.
::And we've been running it for a few months now and in the new year.
::So if you're listening, you know, at some point in the time-space continuum,
::folks, currently it's late 2025.
::In early 2026, we'll continue to develop what we do in the studio. And...
::It's a it's a way for us to show people anyone who's
::interested what we're talking about on this podcast essentially it's it's it's
::it's our teaching practice made available online um i've been doing it i was
::doing it in contrology collective for the last few years and um,
::it's a what i've loved about it is the community the people show up they get
::the all the benefits that we're talking about in a podcast about in studio teaching,
::the same things accrue via an online session and you could be anywhere on the planet.
::Yeah. And like the key distinction, or one of the many, but I think probably
::the first key distinction about this is it's, this isn't like a parties anytime
::where it's all like pre-recorded.
::This is live reformer and mat classes.
::So hop on your reformer in your lounge room, hop on your mat in your lounge
::room, join Heath, join Tegan, join Hayley, join one of our team.
::And we will teach you through a class where we will give you corrections in
::real time and actually adjust things to your ability in real time.
::So this is a live interactive Pilates class, just like an in-person one, but it's just on Zoom.
::And it's one of the pieces of feedback I've had from people coming in recently,
::is it's been an opportunity for,
::to, to, to, for them as the client to be taught in the way that Raph and I keep talking about. Yeah.
::So all of this stuff we keep going on about, you know, that's what you're going
::to get in, you know, in, in the online studio.
::Yeah. And the, the one I'm thinking of was, you know, the Raph and I had a conversation
::sometime, not too far back sometime this year.
::And we were talking about, um, you know, refinements.
::And I I was talking about the feedback I'd had earlier about someone saying,
::I love your class, but I don't know why you don't give refinement.
::And I was thinking, pretty sure I do.
::And so more recently, I had some feedback from someone who'd heard that and
::they were like, now I get it.
::Now I get how you're saying two or three simple cues with as much as possible on the end.
::And all of a sudden, everything locks into place and I'm making the shape that
::I would have once expected 15, 20 cues to achieve.
::So it's, it's a, it's an opportunity to see, you know, the further into this
::journey we go, Raph, the more clear I am is that what we're doing is fundamentally
::different to what the rest of the Pilates industry is doing.
::You know, you know, we talk about where I grew up and all of that with you and
::how I didn't know where I, I didn't come in with luggage.
::And as a result, we'd come up with between us. You were like baby Yoda.
::You can tell by the ears. and the bald head and the wrinkles and.
::So the clearer I, the more I become clear that we are doing something that is measurably,
::different, you know, the Pilates, the online studio is an opportunity to see
::that in action with people who have had time to practice these,
::these, these, whatever we call them, concepts, frameworks.
::Come to a class with Heath. I recommend his Stretch Reformer.
::It's Thursday nights at 9pm till 10pm. It's just a little bit too late for me.
::Like I didn't come this week because it's, you know, it's just,
::that's way, that's like two and a half hours past my bedtime already.
::Yeah, I think we can make that one earlier. I don't think it needs to be that late in my morning.
::Oh, that'd be awesome. That'd be so awesome because I had to do a recording this week.
::But I have to admit the recording wasn't as good because I skipped through the
::back, which is the part I hate the most but kind of love the most at the same time.
::But without you there watching me, I felt like, oh yeah, I'll just take a little
::bitty break here. That felt like a minute.
::Uh 1.5 times speed um,
::Yeah, so I think, dear listener, I guess it is kind of a plug for the online
::studio, but not because we make money out of it. Far from it.
::But it's, what is it at the moment? It's like 59 US dollars a month for as many classes as you want.
::And you do get recordings. And you get recordings as well. All of them are taught
::live. Like we teach like a dozen classes a week at the moment live.
::And then we keep the last 10-ish recordings for each, you know, class.
::Um, but yeah, and there's monthly, there's monthly workshops and stuff as well.
::But I think the main thing that I really want to talk about and,
::you know, here we already talked about, which is basically everything that we
::discuss on this podcast about how to teach, like that's what you get.
::You know, if you want to actually come and experience this and discover like,
::okay, what is this actually like?
::It's come along to, come along to class and you don't have to come to Heath
::class. Like they're all as good.
::You know, they're all the same, not identical, but they're all the same principles
::or all the same frameworks, all the same clusters, all the same process of simple,
::direct cues, you know?
::And that's something that I think, you know, you really helped me perfect.
::I think maybe we kind of, you know, developed in parallel on this, but it's just really.
::Simplifying the, not just, I think the cues were the kind of like the trailing
::indicator, But like when I was growing up in Pilates, I would have,
::I was taught that like, you know, what's a cue for, you know, lift your leg.
::It would be like, okay, so engage your psoas and suck the hip into the socket
::and lengthen through the, you know, lower torso and elevate your ribs up out
::of your pelvis and reach the leg out of the hip socket, you know,
::towards the ceiling and imagine lengthening through the kneecap.
::It's like, what about just fucking lift your leg?
::Much better cue does all of the above and if
::someone was to think well yes but well i want the leg to be straight don't
::i need to tell people to lock their knee or whatever it is that you might want
::it's like yep sure but what if what if you're uh the way you thought about your
::cues was what's one thing i can ask you to do that makes you do multiple things
::so if you just lift your leg and try and touch the ceiling if people take that
::cue seriously their leg will end up straight.
::And so that's a, that, that's a way to think about your cues.
::Is there something I can say that makes you do multiple things?
::That's a better cue than one thing, something that makes you do just the one tiny thing.
::Right. It's kind of the, um, count the legs and divide by four thing,
::you know, like the, the, the old joke goes, you know, to, to farmers are walking
::past a field of sheep and one farmer says, yeah, I wonder how many sheep are in the field.
::And the other farmer goes, yeah, almost instantly says 187.
::And the first farmer says, well, how did you know so quickly it's like oh easy i
::just counted the legs and divided by four you know
::and the joke is dear listener he did
::it the hard way right just count their heads would be
::easier and so i think that we
::do that a lot in pilates we count the legs and divide by four it's like instead
::of giving one simple cue we give you know four complicated cues you know instead
::of just doing one exercise that works four muscles we do four exercises you
::know to work they work one muscle so we count the legs and divide by four an
::awful lot in Pilates, I think.
::And one of the things that Heath does really, really well is he just counts the heads.
::Sounds like, that feels like kind of the end of the conversation.
::Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. See you next time. Yeah, good talk.
