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.
Mentioned in this episode:
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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.
