Episode 342
342. 3 Pilates exercises walk into a bar...
What do flamingo, arms in straps and knee pulls have in common?
They look different. They feel different.
They’re secretly doing the exact same thing.
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
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Transcript
All right, this is it, ladies and gentlemen. We're finally, finally at that
::very, very special episode. You've been waiting for it.
::We're not going to talk about shoulder bridge or long stretch today.
::Today, very special day. We've got a treat for you. We're going to talk about
::flamingo and hands in straps. If we get there.
::All right. So, firstly, what has Flamingo got to do with hands in straps?
::Or, indeed, reverse knee stretches. I'm all a gog.
::Well...
::The relationship, there's lots of things that they have to do with each other.
::If flamingo is our end point, where a flamingo... Firstly, just give us a real
::quick version of what flamingo is.
::Okay, so you're facing the foot bar, you've got one foot on the floor,
::your hands are on the foot bar, and your other foot is on the shoulder pad.
::So you could say it's almost like a scooter or a lunge setup where you put your hands on the foot bar.
::And you push the carriage out and then as the carriage comes in
::your front foot floats and you bring your
::knee to your armpit and your heel to your butt so you can hide the leg like
::a flamingo can i just bring my knee like halfway up
::to my belly button instead that'd be fine that's totally
::fine yeah it's all about the effort not the
::outcome and so then the foot goes back down and the
::bed goes out so it's kind of got a reciprocal rhythm to
::it um and yeah so if you
::know flying splits it's a a leg
::inside version of flying splits it's a variation on
::the same skill right and arms in straps lying on your back hands
::in straps head on the headrest stretch down
::head up one or two legs long call it a hundred variation right yeah head head
::head up straps down reverse knee stretches the other part of our conversation
::is knees against the shoulder pads hands on the rails and one way or another
::facing the pulleys um in a quadruped head position and one way or another,
::which we'll discuss, the bed comes towards your wrists.
::So you pull your knees to your wrists or your wrists to your knees or a bit of both.
::All right, great. So what do these things have in common? So dear listener,
::what do you think they have in common?
::Why are they the same? How are they the same? All right, Heath, enlighten us.
::Well, the easy thing to say, the quick answer to how they're the same is that
::they're using the same muscle grip.
::It's the same fundamental system of muscles that create the movements,
::armpits, abs, hip flexors.
::All right. So if we think, because I'm not sure how obvious that's going to
::be, probably people are on the spectrum of most things.
::So for some people, that'll be like, yeah, do tell me something I don't know.
::And other people will be like, what the, what? I haven't thought about it.
::So when you're, think about flamingo, okay, hands are on the foot bar,
::back foot's on the shoulder block, front foot's on the floor next to the carriage.
::Okay. As the carriage comes in, the front foot comes up, knee comes to your armpit.
::Okay. you're pushing down with your arms so
::you're essentially you're pushing down with your arms and you're
::pulling forward with your back leg now we're assuming that the there's a relatively
::light spring on the carriage here like if you've got you know half spring one
::spring something off that ilk right so you're pulling the carriage forward with
::your back leg and you're pushing the foot bar downwards with your arms.
::Whereas, if we think about legs and straps, lying and back, hands and straps,
::you're pulling the straps down with your arms, you're pulling your legs up with
::your hip flexors, right? So it's basically the same muscles.
::Reverse knee stretches, you're kneeling on the carriage, knees against the shoulder
::blocks, facing the pulleys, hands are on the rails, you've got a couple of springs
::on, you're pulling your knees towards your hands, pulling your hands towards your knees.
::It's the same basic movement pattern okay so
::shoulder extension hip flexion spinal
::flexion in all three movements same movements and also same muscles working
::because sometimes when you flex it's not always the flexors working so for instance
::in a roll down when you're standing it's actually your back muscles that are
::working but in this case all these three exercises,
::it's the same muscles it's the same basic
::movement pattern hip flexion spinal flexion shoulder extension bam so there's
::these three exercises are basically the same in that way so why is it why is
::it in your view useful to even think about that apart from just like nerd factor 99.
::Well, in, in our other multiple takes to get the podcast on the road today.
::This is take 80 fucking three people. Like, oh my God.
::Do you think this sounds like so natural and so it's like we don't need it?
::No, look, we, we're laborious. This takes ages.
::This is like a Coen Brothers film. Every word. We don't get it right. We'll start again.
::Um, the, well, we launched into Flamingo because I got excited because in the last conversation,
::the last podcast we were touching on
::dissociation and then and i
::i actively rebel against how much dissociation i was taught in pilates school
::and that sometimes translates to people thinking i don't teach or i think dissociation's
::bad and i absolutely think dissociation's not bad it's fucking amazing because
::that's our ability to do different things with our body consciously as a skill.
::What I've reacted against is the sort
::of dogmatic infusion to Pilates that dissociation is A, by definition,
::better than an integrated movement, like an intuitive movement,
::and B, that it's associated with efficiency and or safety.
::And we could probably park the safety one because we've done a lot on that.
::But in terms of efficiency...
::When I've said to people, why do you teach reverse knee stretches as a dissociated movement?
::And that would mean that you lock the shape of your spine, hip,
::knee and move only from the shoulder or vice versa.
::Or lock the shoulder, spine and pelvis and move only at the hip and a little
::bit of the knee. At the hip. Yep. Right.
::So sorry, just to back up a step, hold on to that thought, right?
::So people, you know, you, you love dissociation, but you think we get sort of a monomania for it.
::So hold on to that thought. But just thinking about, you know,
::how you could teach each of these three movements.
::So we said that the, the, the flamingo, the arms in straps, the reverse knee
::stretches, they're all shoulder extension, hip flexion, spine flexion, right?
::So that's what you would describe as an integrated movement because you're moving
::all of those body parts into an integrated shape, right? that we're sort of
::curling in towards a tuck shape.
::Whereas there's a different way, neither better nor worse, inherently just different,
::to teach all of those movements, which is a more dissociated one,
::where you move the shoulders or the hips but not the spine.
::So you might do your flamingo in a neutral spine. You might do your arms in
::straps, keeping your lower back neutral and keeping your hips bent 90 degrees.
::You might do your reverse knee stretches, keeping your spine neutral and just
::flexing your hips. So why not just do that?
::Yeah. Well, the reason to not do that, that I would argue, before we even get
::into whether it's safe or more efficient, is I'm a group reformer teacher.
::And I'm, so if I'm teaching 15 people and I want to get them moving because
::it's a movement session, I want to get them moving so they understand the fundamentals
::of the thing that we're doing.
::And then if there is refinement that is necessary, it's going to be exponentially
::more efficient, play on words, and effective to refine a movement once people
::have the understanding of the basics.
::And said another way, if I want to teach knee stretches to a group,
::reverse knee stretches to a group, kneeling on the carriage,
::kneeling on the bed, knees against the shoulder pads, hands on the rails.
::So there's my start position.
::Hands under your shoulders, knees under your hips if I really need to double check.
::Pull the bed to touch your wrists and release.
::Now that's going to get me 80% of the people in the room doing 80% the movement
::that I want in three statements, four or five statements maximum.
::So then the whole room is moving.
::And then I can make sure, if I care, that everyone's got their elbows locked,
::that their hands are far enough forward that it's challenging to get to bed to the wrists.
::Because I'm interested in, are they getting an appropriate load that there's
::something happening in their body at a kind of load slash strength input?
::And, or I can then refine the movement and decide, well, if I wanted to teach
::dissociation, I could stop everyone and go, okay, now you've got the idea.
::What I want you to do is, and adding that refinement towards the dissociation
::is easier because they've got an understanding of the basic movement.
::They've got something to refine from.
::When I was taught Pilates, we were teaching refinements, the details before you did the basics.
::And so you spend five minutes explaining. it's really important that you keep
::your armpit, you know, well, I wouldn't have said armpit.
::I would have said your glenohumeral joint needs to be stabilized while you pull
::the bed with your hip flexors to bring the knees underneath you.
::That's really important. Try and keep your neutral spine while you do it as well.
::Right. And I just want to- I've been talking for three minutes and no one's moving.
::I just want to say there that, you know, we've had this conversation off air
::and on here about the, I would say the conflation,
::basically the confusion between or the smushing together of different concepts
::into the same, collapsing into the same concept,
::the conflation of stabilize and keep still and dissociate.
::And so, you know, I think typically in Pilates when we say stabilize,
::you don't say it, I don't say it, but we, the royal we, say stabilize,
::other Pilates instructors.
::What they actually mean is keep this body part still like keep your hips still
::you know they say stabilize your hips or stabilize your pelvis whatever they
::mean don't move it that's not actually what stabilize means biomechanically
::but let's not go there today.
::But you know when we say stabilize by and
::large i think we we actually confuse the term and we
::we actually mean just like keep your freaking arms still but
::why don't we just say that you know keep your arms still and move your leg um
::so but why i mean all right well let me put on the other hat why even bother
::do you know i mean what the fuck's the problem with rounding your spine in reverse
::knee stretches or flamingos or arms in straps Peace.
::Why even bother i mean what what's what's the point of stabilizing what's
::it for well in all three of the
::movements i would i would
::argue vehemently that they are you would
::flex your spine that you wouldn't try and stabilize neutral like neutral i don't
::care for it like it's not pilates it's it's you know you're i'm being a little
::bit up the spectrum on saying that but Like, I wouldn't bother stabilizing.
::I think there's a pretty fucking strong case for saying neutral is not Pilates.
::I mean, dear listener, read Joseph's Pilates books.
::Find the word neutral in any book anywhere. It ain't there.
::It's not a thing in Pilates. And then when someone says to you,
::but Joseph didn't have science, because in the 90s, blah, blah,
::blah, then our subsequent answer would be, nor do you, if you still think that.
::Right. Well, the 1990s science didn't have 2025 science, which we do now,
::and we've moved on from neutral.
::So good. We all agree that science is important. So none of us like neutral anymore.
::There's nothing wrong with neutral. Neutral's fine. Neutral's great.
::It's just a place. It's just a, yeah.
::So, so. So we were talking, you said, why wouldn't you flex the spine?
::Why wouldn't you stabilize in neutral and just dissociate your hips and your
::shoulders in those movements? What's wrong with that? Yeah.
::Well, when I would dissociate,
::when I would teach dissociation, it's going to be about making the movement
::that I'm trying to teach more efficient for the people doing it.
::And this would be the difference between bent leg bed pull, aka reverse knee
::stretches where we're not teaching dissociation slash stabilization,
::and the flamingo. And in a flamingo.
::If you keep your back legs straight, like quite literally lock your knee,
::whatever spring tension you create by pushing the bed out,
::is increased and makes it easier to float your body.
::If you bend your back knee and let it come back in, which a lot of people do
::when they're learning the movement, the spring tension reduces and so you get
::less assistance and actually you're sort of trying to lift your body up from
::your armpits and your abs.
::You don't get the advantage of a long lever applied to the hip flexors.
::So if I'm teaching you flamingo, the back leg needs to be locked.
::That way the movement becomes more accessible.
::You become more efficient. You can do more of it. You can take more challenges
::within it. That's the skill of flamingo.
::But you're not getting better at that by learning to dissociate the armpit and
::the shoulder in bent leg in a reverse knee stretch.
::And in a reverse knee stretch, the movement is get the bed to your wrists and release.
::And for me, it's a stage before a straight leg bed pull where you would lift your knees to straight.
::And I'm always surprised at how many people have never taught
::or found this movement and you go like let's
::call it a down face dog front plank pull the
::bed out with straight legs it's just exactly the same movement pull
::the bed towards your wrists with straight legs it's a straight leg version of
::the bent leg and it's a that is a movement where it's you can do that with bent
::legs like that one's not like the flamingo because you're not using the back
::leg to get your body up you're using two legs punching down and if your knees
::bend, it doesn't really matter.
::But when you come to the flamingo, there's actually this skill dimension where
::you are better at flamingo if you understand the back leg being locked.
::And that is dissociation.
::One of the things that I, it took me a really long time to realize this,
::but if we assume that the equipment settings that we're asking for are safe,
::right? So you're not calling elephant on zero springs.
::So if we're calling a bent leg bed pull or a reverse knee stretch on one,
::maybe one and a half springs or even a half spring, whatever,
::just ballpark. Everyone can do a few.
::If you give me a simple game, just pull the bed to your wrists and release,
::pull the bed to your wrists and release.
::What people do, which might be considered wrong, is usually the sensible,
::intuitive human solution to the problem.
::They're doing the thing that makes it easier, because that's what humans are good at.
::We find the path of least resistance if all else is equal.
::People are fundamentally lazy. Well, if there are two ways to do the same job
::of work, pull the carriage four inches towards the pulleys, and one of them's
::easier, by definition, that is more efficient.
::Right. And people will find their way to that.
::And it took me, I was like, oh, cool. This is like fucking mind blowing, right?
::Like if I just set up the constraints and I know it's safe and I say,
::do that thing, people will show me the most intuitive, sensible, efficient way.
::It's so interesting. Like that reverse knee stretches movement is a really good
::one to, to sort of, to, to think about because like, okay, we, we,
::you know, and I teach, used to teach this dissociator putting foam rollers on
::people's backs and turning balls on people's backs and all, you know, all kinds of things.
::And. And ball between the knees. Yeah. Ball between.
::And one behind the knee at the same time. Yeah, that's right.
::And, um, you know, like, and there's nothing wrong with doing it dissociators.
::Like it's, it's a kind of a fun skill challenge, right?
::But if you think about it, like, all right, it's literally just a hip flexor
::pull on the carriage, right? If you, if you're moving the hip and not the pelvis
::or spine, it's like, well, why?
::I mean, if, I mean, we do teasers, we do roll-ups, we do all kinds of things
::involving spinal flexion and loading the hip flexors in a hip flexed,
::spine flexed position, like.
::It just doesn't make any sense to me why you would just all of a sudden go on a spine flexion bad,
::when we're kneeling facing the pulleys for some reason when it's
::like but in a teaser it's awesome you know um yeah that's just that i never
::really understood that and i think there is a you know i i think you know the
::people who say uh to you you know why don't you teach dissociation it's like
::well, you totally teach dissociation.
::I mean, I've done quite a few of your classes and we've talked a lot about biomechanics and stuff.
::And when we talk about, say, some of those conversations we had about lunges, for example, okay?
::If you're doing a lunge on, whether it's a scooter on a heavy spring or a lunge
::on a light spring, okay? Okay.
::Where your torso is relative to your standing foot really matters, right?
::Whether your torso is in front, above or behind, like makes a massive difference
::to the load on different parts of the lower body, right?
::So you and I are both very intentional about where we cue people's torso and
::where their grounded foot is relative to the foot bar.
::You know, those things are very important and that is
::dissociation you're moving your if you're doing a scooter you're
::moving your back leg keeping your pelvis and your
::spine and your front leg still you know or vice
::versa if you're doing a lunge right and so yeah
::that's totally dissociation and we we like we're you know i would say verging
::on draconian in the way that we you know cure that so yeah it's just but the
::point is like you said before the reason for that is it's more efficient now
::i just want to sort of parenthesize efficient here,
::because efficient can have two sort of meanings in this context.
::And so one is what we said before, like if you've got a job of work to do and
::there's two ways to do it and one of them's less effort, well,
::that way is more efficient, right?
::If you can pull a carriage four inches backwards with less sweat,
::you know, that's a more efficient way to do it.
::So that is one valid definition of the word. Another thing though is to think
::about it from the sense of like, okay, if we want to work your left glute.
::Right? What is the most efficient way to do that?
::Would it be to put as much of the load of the body onto the glute as possible,
::or would it be to spread the load across like 78 different muscles?
::Right? So if we want to target, you know, even if it's not the glute,
::if we just want to say we want to target the lower body,
::right, or the hip extensors of the standing leg, well, there is a more efficient
::way to do that, and that would be hinging the torso forwards,
::bringing the foot, you know, forwards, reducing the springs tension on the carriage, blah, blah, blah.
::There's a few things that we would do, which we've talked about at great length,
::and a lot of them would involve dissociating different body parts, right?
::So there's absolutely a time and a place for dissociation, okay,
::but just not every time and every place.
::You know, sometimes you need to associate or integrate things together because
::real movements, you know, in real life, mostly integrated movements. Yeah.
::Yeah. So let's just, going back to that idea, going back to bent leg bed pulls,
::reverse knee stretches,
::when I've talked about this with people, one of the things I've had,
::I can remember this question, someone said, yeah, but if I just say pull the
::bed to your wrists, what I often get is people bend their elbows. Yeah.
::True that. Right, right. And same in regular knee stretches.
::If you say pull the carriage forward with your knees, they're like,
::yeah, no worries. And they'll just do a push up on the foot bar. Right. And-
::you know, for a long time, I would have thought that was, they'd done the movement wrong.
::And what I was putting on as a way to think about things is if the equipment
::settings and the position is safe for people to solve the problem in their own way,
::in other words, you know, there's no falls risks involved, then what's wrong
::with bending your elbows?
::In fact, what that teaches you as the facilitator is that if someone doesn't
::know how to do Pilates, like if they haven't been taught to do a non-intuitive
::movement rather than an intuitive movement,
::of course they bend their elbows because it gives them access to more muscles
::to distribute the load through their system more efficiently.
::So then when I teach you to do it, inverted commas, right with a straight arm,
::I'm teaching you dissociation.
::And then for me, it's like, well, why would I bother?
::And that's what you said, what's wrong with it?
::Fundamentally, if the mission is get as much load to your wrists as possible.
::Yeah. Fuck it. Bend your elbows. If you want, I don't care. Like,
::in fact, when I do a pull off the crossbar, it's like, don't worry about straight arms.
::Just get your three springs. The bed is close to your wrists as possible.
::Cause I'm trying to fatigue you quickly through your whole system,
::but bent leg bed pulls with straight arms is the most, um, it's the safest way.
::And it also scales to flamingo to do the straight leg bed pull.
::So I'm going to teach you straight arms in the bent leg version because there's
::less consequence of failure you're not going to hurt yourself,
::you can't fall forwards your knees are on the ground, aka bed.
::And we learn the skill of straight arms. Because if I ask you to do a straight
::leg bed pull and you bend your arms, there's a good chance you're going to face
::plant between the rails.
::Right. I would also argue just from the same standpoint that I talked about
::lunges a moment ago, that actually if your goal in bent leg pulls,
::reverse knee stretches, is to work the hip flexors and the abs predominantly.
::Because in that system where you're working hip flexors and abs and shoulder
::extensors, It's like the shoulder extensors are like a bazillion times stronger than the abs.
::You know, I mean, how much can your lat pull down versus how much can your ab curl, you know?
::Right. So- Hence, people go look for their extensors, right?
::Look for their shoulder.
::And so if you say it's verboten to use your shoulders and you have to use your
::abs and hip flexors, all of a sudden it's harder, aka less efficient from a
::biomechanical standpoint, but more efficient from the standpoint of like we're
::actually targeting those abs and hip flexors, right?
::So if that's your goal, then it is better to keep the arms as still as possible.
::Right. And so what we're saying, or what between us we're kind of teasing out
::is, again, assuming the equipment settings are safe to play,
::give people the movement, the problem to solve.
::The way they solve it is the way that it works for them. And interestingly,
::they'll usually bend their elbows.
::But if we're doing this to target the abs and hip flexors and or scale to bigger
::movements, blah, blah, blah, like Flamingo,
::then we have to teach them to be inefficient in the overall movement in order
::to be more efficient in our outcome that we're trying to achieve.
::Right. All right. And this is where we segue into Pilates is a system where.
::And exercises, that's why we draw these parallels between these exercises like
::flamingo and arms in straps and reverse knee stretches, you know,
::call them whatever you want to call them, but those basic movements.
::Because all of them are, you know, one of the layers on the way to more advanced flexion moves.
::Right and we could think teaser you
::know we could think horseback you know
::we could think pilates push-ups you know
::there are lots of examples right if there's there's just cat there's flexion
::cat stretch right um and you know and so like if we think about pilates as a
::system And that, you know,
::in we're working up towards a teaser on the long box, for example,
::it's like, well, you, when you're doing your arms in straps,
::why would you keep your pelvis neutral when in order to do a teaser,
::you must posteriorly tilt your pelvis, right?
::So why would you practice doing it the way that's going to actually work against
::you when you get to the more challenging move?
::You know, why wouldn't you just actually practice the same skill in a more limited range?
::I don't have an answer for you. Oh, okay.
::Well, unless I missed your question. No, no, no. I don't think you did. Yeah.
::I mean, did we already have the conversation about the line of,
::we did, yes. So in fact, this is how we ended up here, right?
::This was talking about hands in straps. Yeah.
::Right. So if we're teaching hands, maybe that was your question.
::If we're doing hands in straps and you're pressing your hands to the bed with
::your spine in neutral, that is not going to take you very far in this system of movement.
::You don't get better at teaser by doing that. You don't get better at teaser.
::You don't get better at bentley bedpools. You don't get better at any of the
::flexor system flexion movements because you're just not doing them.
::You're not doing them. Whereas if you press your hands to roughly the height
::of the foot bar and you bring your knees to your eye sockets and try to get
::your lower back pushed through the bed,
::you're going to start developing the ability to lift your hips and your shoulders into that flexed shape.
::And then all of a sudden you can start to make those rounded shapes where the
::shape is held together by the flexors.
::And you might use some kind of abdominal muscle whilst you do that too,
::I think I've heard. Right.
::And yeah, so that's where hands in straps,
::if you don't treat it as a, you've got to press the hands into the bed and you've
::got to keep your knees in neutral, spine and neutral knees above the hips 90
::90 blah blah blah if you accept it as a tuck position.
::That's where it starts to become okay when i see you
::do that i'm also looking at you do teaser well
::if i mean you know here was the breakthrough for me and i think it was for you
::too that you know we started out our career thinking about these 500 different
::exercises that we'd each learned as completely separate exercises just like
::you know they're okay there's there's arms in straps and then you know there's
::this other random exercise called teaser and they've.
::Like saying there's goldfish and skyscrapers and they're
::just they've got nothing in common whatsoever uh but
::in reality that well what really flipped the
::switch for both of us i think was realizing that's like hold on
::now arms and straps just like is teaser
::just it's just an easier version of teaser
::it's like it literally a baby teaser like
::no box no straight legs you only
::curl up a bit rather than killing it all the way but apart from
::it's like it's it's teaser and so once you
::see that you can't unsee it and then you're like
::holy shit everything's teaser you know
::it's all teaser and you're like oh hold on no swan
::dive isn't teaser okay but then you're like okay but yeah but what about shoulder
::bridge shoulder bridge is just swan dive oh grass grass up the swan dive cat
::stretch is swan dive everything's swan dive or like there's only swan dive and
::teaser that's it and you're like oh hold on what about side bend you're like
::and eventually you get to this point where there's like there's like four or
::five moves in the whole world,
::and everything is just a baby version of
::one of those things you know just you know to a greater when i say baby version
::it's a layer on the way to that thing you know shoulder bridge is a layer oh
::shit i said we weren't going to talk about shoulder bridge all right all right
::we're going have to start this whole episode again now. Yeah, it's for the 84th take.
::So, all right, stay away from shoulder bridge. I will not say shoulder bridge.
::I will not say shoulder bridge.
::So, yeah, so the arms and straps just is a, it's one of the stepping stones on the way to teaser.
::And if you think about it, ladies and gentlemen, you know, out there in the
::Pilates stratosphere, it's like, you think about teaser on the long box and
::take the box away, bend your knees, bam, arms and straps, you know.
::So let's, let's, let's, and let's, so Raph's just done a great job of like pulling
::the camera right out and seeing that there's only two or three or four exercises in total.
::And then if we zoom in on what we've just said, and just quickly think about
::the difference there, because there are differences between hands and straps and teaser.
::And the teaser, and if you haven't tried it yet, folks,
::put one spring on and give it a fair crack, and you can probably roll to a pretty
::darn good teaser with a few efforts without the box, right? So you can do teaser off the carriage.
::And when you do what one of
::the differences between hands in straps where we're calling the hands above the
::shoulders and teaser will be usually the hand if
::especially in a classical teaser they're they're below the shoulders in a in
::a t position rather than above the shoulders in a you know pointing your fingers
::at the ceiling you put the t in teaser right and when you hit the t and teaser
::and when you if you especially if you well not especially but when you come
::and look for tees are off the carriage,
::very, very hard to do with your hands above your shoulders.
::But when your hands are lower, it gives you a better line of pull.
::You can pull your hips up more easily.
::So it looks different, but it's the same muscle systems working around a different
::distribution of challenge.
::And this, you know, this, this just before, like you, you,
::one of the things Raf's talked about in a couple of the recent podcasts that
::I think is really important for us to understand as Pilates instructors is this
::concept of general strength and how it then applies to specific skills.
::So if you make, and I've seen this play out over years, and when Raf said something
::about four, five, six months ago, it unlocked something I'd been trying to make sense of.
::For years and years, I've taught the same hands in straps sequence,
::let's say 60% of all my classes.
::And every time someone makes it look easy enough, I add more spring tension.
::And we just very, very similar, almost the same.
::Tuck, followed by single legs, followed by double legs, followed by straddles
::with some variations in to mix it up a little bit. And when you get stronger,
::add more spring tension.
::And what I realize now is that's built people's general strength.
::There's their armpits, their abs, and their hip flexors consistently over time.
::And then what that gives them is this pool of strength that they can then assimilate
::new skill challenges more easily.
::So then when I go and say, we're going to try this funky little thing,
::teaser off the carriage, put one spring on, those people are just like, what do you want me to do?
::It takes them like three reps, maybe six. They go, oh, arms in a T.
::Oh, and I leave my legs out to begin with. But then when I press,
::I pull my knees to, oh, and I popped up. Oh, okay, cool. Yeah,
::I don't even need to bend my knees now.
::But I built the general strength through the consistent repetitive programming where I add load.
::And then when I go and do something funky that requires a different skill,
::which might also be a dissociation skill, they've got this pool of strength.
::They're like, oh, cool. Yeah, I can do that. No problem. How many do you want?
::And that's what you see when you have someone come into your class who's
::never done Pilates before but they've done a lot of gymnastics or ballet
::or martial arts or yoga or whatever it might
::be and they're like oh fuck that was really easy on your first class you
::know and that's because they've built they've
::got a base level of strength and flexibility and body control
::from doing those similar but not identical movements and just to finish up uh
::here's a non-exhaustive list of the episodes where we have examined in detail
::the concept of stability. Episode 14, what the fuck is core stability?
::Episode 29, scapular stability? Episode 47, pelvic instability,
::what Pilates instructors need to know.
::Episode 169, why stability is not a useful word in Pilates.
::Episode 258, the case for retiring stability as a concept in Pilates.
::Anyway, you can check out some or all or none of those if you want to know my
::deeper thoughts and some of the literature around those concepts of stability.
::But for now, I'm sorry, I did break the taboo and mention the exercise that
::shall remain nameless that we talk about a lot on this podcast.
::But um that ladies and gentlemen is what
::flamingo arms in
::straps and reverse knee stretches have in common and why they are the same and
::it's in fact they're also the same as teaser elephant and a whole bunch of other
::exercises that involve hip flexion spinal flexion and shoulder extension can
::i just put a can i can i just put a an end note on it yeah,
::so of course um.
::Because this is something a lot of people have asked me about.
::In flamingo, the back leg being straight is, is the skill that makes you more efficient.
::So if I can get you to do that, you will unlock, that was the PTSD term,
::but you know, you'll unlock that skill more easily if you can keep your back leg straight.
::And then one of the things that's, uh, challenging in a, especially in a group
::class about teaching that is when people are doing flamingo, if you haven't,
::already established with them what a straight leg means, Flamingo is not a great
::place to teach them because they're solving lots of problems.
::The bed's moving, their body weight's in their hands.
::It's like learning to juggle chainsaws when you haven't juggled tennis balls, right?
::So because they can't see their back knee and there's a whole bunch of variables
::that can, you know, blah, blah, blah.
::So then when we teach footwork and we push the bed out and lock the knee,
::or when we teach feet and straps and you do straight legs and you keep your knees locked,
::if you draw people's attention to that when they're doing it,
::just say, okay, making sure the knee's locked, that's really good.
::Barbara, that's exactly what I mean.
::If you're going to teach Flamingo in that class and they've already experienced
::a locked knee, then you've got something you can refer back to.
::And sometimes that sounds kind of pedantic. Like people think,
::just teach it in the Flamingo. It's like, yeah, sure, you can.
::But if I've got 12 people who know it and four people who don't,
::I'm taking a risk thinking, yeah, I can definitely teach it in Flamingo.
::If I teach it earlier, I am reducing the chances of that person not succeeding
::at the more complicated movement.
::And, you know, my, one of my, my big thing is everyone rides together.
::So if I want to teach flamingo, I want to make sure everyone gets it.
::And so if I want to teach it and I don't know you, I will make a point of pointing
::out that your knee is locked here in footwork or here in feet and straps so
::that we've got a shared language.
::When I pull the flamingo out of the hat, which has got a whole bunch of other stuff going on as well.
::And again, that's essentially dissociation.
::It's like, push the bed out, bring the bed back. I want you to lock your knee.
::You know what you're doing with your body.
::But if there was an argument for teaching dissociated knee stretches,
::it would be, is that skill going to transfer to something later?
::And the problem with knee stretches where it was all dissociative,
::I couldn't see where those, keeping neutral doesn't transfer well to something else.
::But learning to lock your knees really does.
::And if you were really going to take that legs in straps kind of parallel to the next level,
::you would teach something like a short spine okay legs locked lift the legs
::roll the hips up roll up to a full shoulder bridge or shoulder stand should
::i should i said it it's obsessed um,
::roll up to a fully flexed kind of jackknife you know shoulder stand then bend
::your knees to your eyeballs and roll down and then push away.
::And so that is, now, a little bit different muscular emphasis depending on how
::many springs you got on and what your body weight is and so on and so forth.
::But basically the same movement as your flamingo, as your reverse knee stretch, as your arms in straps.
::Yep. Basically the same movement. So it's just another layer of the system.
::And once you've understood, like once you've got your client understanding that,
::or yourself, if you, I'm going to, about to go to Pilates hell,
::I'm going to suggest that you do your feet and straps on a variety of spring tensions.
::And as that spring tension comes all the way down to zero, when you start doing
::what I would call a naked short spine, which is short spine with no straps.
::Now you're going straight to Pilates hell, naked short spine.
::It's like, I can't unsee that now.
::Yeah. Yeah. Well, it gets people's attention.
::Just, could you warn me next time before we do that naked one in class?
::I just have to quickly, you know, go off camera to get my… Put your courtesy shorts on.
::Maybe a pair of sunglasses.
::Good talk. See you later.
