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Episode 347

347. Why “Quiet the Big Muscles” Is Wrong

Special shout out to Adam McAtee for this post

Citations in these episodes:

  1. ep 278 Does Pilates strengthen your little muscles?
  2. ep 216 Why knowing which muscles are working in a movement is a waste of time
  3. ep 160 Can we even feel muscles activating?

Mentioned in this episode:

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Transcript
::

We've got a controversial topic today, and that is, well, Heath,

::

fill us in on what the controversial topic is.

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Well, I've recently gone back into the Instagram world, and over the last few days,

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our erstwhile companion and team member, Adam McAtee, what is he,

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evidence-based Pilates,

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caused something of a rupture in the matrix by calling out a large-scale education provider.

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Oh, Bassie. The remaining name is Bassie.

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Yep. But the Body Arts and Science, who put a post up.

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To be fair, or to be clear, it was a post from their equipment manufacturing

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page as opposed to their education page.

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And they... made some comments, which the posts now have been taken down together,

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but they were talking about the importance of little muscles having their time

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in the sun and that Pilates was great for, um,

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Pilates was powerful because it allowed little muscles to be developed and big

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muscles to be downregulated.

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Well, yeah, sorry to interrupt. I've got the post here in front of me.

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It hasn't been taken down.

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Um, so yeah, look, I'm going to read it out. It's a little bit on the lengthy

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side, but bear with me, dear listener, because then we'll all have the context.

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So this is from Adam McAtee Pilates. God bless Adam.

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A lot of claims in the Pilates, and I'm just reading verbatim from Adam's post

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now, a lot of claims in the Pilates space sound scientific, but there's a reason

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many of them don't include citations.

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The evidence simply isn't there. And when education is built on shaky explanations,

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it doesn't just confuse instructors, it affects how clients move, train, and trust us.

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Take the idea of, quote, tiny stabilizers. They don't exist.

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The human body has larger and smaller muscles, and they can act as movers or

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stabilizers depending on the task.

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Smaller muscles often move joints directly, like the infraspinatus during shoulder rotation.

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Larger muscles can act as stabilizers too, like the quadriceps helping control

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the patella during knee extension.

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Small muscles aren't being ignored or shut off during movement.

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What usually happens is this. During bigger, dynamic exercises,

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we feel the effort of larger muscles more.

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That sensory feedback tells our brain this is working, but feeling something

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more doesn't mean the other muscles are inactive.

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For example, during push-ups, it's common to feel fatigue in the chest,

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shoulders, or triceps. It's rare to feel burning near the back of the shoulder

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blade where the infraspinatus sits.

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Yet research shows the infraspinatus is working hard during push-ups,

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and it works even more as load increases.

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It does not turn off. It ramps up, and it gives a PMID, which is a PubMed.

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That's an academic database ID, so basically he's giving a citation there.

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Back to the post. This is why real science matters.

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Science keeps us honest, it keeps us accountable, and it requires us to update

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our beliefs when new research emerges.

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That means changing explanations, refining cues, and sometimes updating manuals.

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Unfortunately, many Pilates education companies don't do this.

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It's easier not to, but easier doesn't mean better.

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You deserve education that respects your intelligence. Your clients deserve

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teaching ground in reality, not myths.

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At Evidence-Based Pilates, we constantly update our content and we're not going to do this.

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To reflect current research and show you exactly how to apply it to Pilates.

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Right, so that's the copy.

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And so here's the carousel. Basically, he says, Pilates instructors deserve

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better education than this.

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And he basically shares a BASI post, which basically the BASI post says,

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Fun Friday fracked, your large muscles love to take over.

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Pilates uses instability to quiet them, forcing the tiny, often neglected stabilizers

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to do the work. This is how we fix imbalances.

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And then Adam says Bassey claims that Pilates targets

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smaller muscles by quieting larger muscles to correct muscle imbalances

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this is not true they provide zero data if they did it would look something

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like this for starters tiny stabilizers don't exist the body has both larger

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and smaller muscles they can act as prime movers or stabilizers depending on

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the demands of a specific movement and smaller muscles are not neglected here's what the data shows,

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this paper and he provides a citation reviewed shoulder muscle activity during

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common rehabilitation exercises.

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Oh, that's the one we looked at in the diploma by Escamilla et al.

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They found that both small and large muscles work during all exercises.

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When you add more load, they all work more.

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Unlike Bassi's claim, the data shows that big muscles don't take over and,

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quote, shut off the smaller ones.

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Smaller muscles increase activity when load increases.

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For example, as you progressively load a standard push-up, the rotator cuff

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increases in activity. just like the pectoralis major and anterior deltoid.

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This isn't just true for the shoulder. This other paper, and he provides another

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citation, found that deep hip rotators are active during squats.

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This is why companies like BASI don't provide citations when making these claims,

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because they don't exist.

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Real science matters. It keeps you accountable to support the narratives you

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spread, and it's the ethical thing to do.

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Okay, that's Adam's post. So now you have the context, dear listener.

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And so, yeah, what's going through your mind about that, Heath?

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Well, I was,

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I guess it was timely for me because having gone back into the Instagram universe,

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I was just, my head was spinning with the amount of horse shit that I was saying.

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I mean, I say that slightly tongue-in-cheek because everyone's coming at it

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with the best of intentions and I'm aware of that,

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but just the amount of posts that are associated with things that are not supported,

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But, you know, just this stuff about little muscles and stability and pelvic stability.

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I just, you know, it's just that same thing again. It's like,

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oh, we haven't moved on. He's still now in 1998.

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Yeah. So I was refreshed to see, it was refreshing to see Adam calling that

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out and people getting involved and people not being afraid to say,

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yeah, bummer, you know, trained there.

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Just a pity they haven't moved on you know good people old

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information which i think that's i think that's my

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kind of take it's like so much of what i see is like good people with the best

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of intentions just function operating on old information yeah it's it's intriguing

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to me you know i used to find it kind

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of like frustrating and you know infuriating i guess the the amount of,

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bs in the pilates world and you know dear listener it's not exclusive to pilates

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world i mean there's It's the same in personal training, fitness,

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even exercise physiology and physiotherapy.

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I forget it. Don't even talk to me about yoga, you know.

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But it doesn't – I just find it more kind of interesting now.

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I mean, there's a very large amount of misinformation.

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And I have to just think that I think most people in the fitness and Pilates

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world, and in the Pilates world, I think in particular, just don't have the.

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I guess the mental map, the epistemology of like how you learn stuff,

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of to know like how to judge good quality, you know, what's true and what's

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not, you know, in the realm of exercise science.

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And, you know, so I think a lot of people I think can be forgiven for that,

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but not educators. I think once you put yourself out there as an educator,

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I think it's like if you're a doctor and you don't know how to wash your hands

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properly, it's like, that's on you, dude. Like, you know.

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Yes. Yeah. So, you know, I think good on Adam for speaking the truth.

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What's, you know, I guess what are your, I've always had kind of mixed feelings

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about directly calling people out like that.

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Like on one hand, I feel like it's really, if someone has to do it,

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right? I mean, if someone's just saying something, it's just plain fucking bullshit, right?

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And they've got it, like, that needs to be corrected.

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And then on the other hand, it's like, well, it doesn't actually do anything,

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and all it does is cause ill will, you know?

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So, yeah, so like, where do you sit on that?

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Uh, well, I'm, I'm, I'm a fairly non-confrontational person by nature.

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So, um, and I also assume best, I'd like to think I assume best.

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It's funny considering you're a bouncer for all those years.

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Yeah, yeah. Maybe that's why I was able to do it. Um,

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and I, it's, again, I, you know, props to Adam. I think he does a good job of it.

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I think when he does do it, he does it in a, an even, even handed way.

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And he presents an evidence-based position.

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You know, he doesn't slander people.

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He's not acrimonious about it. No, he attacked the argument, not the people.

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But, I mean, it's... It's not the person. And it's... What he said is,

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I mean, what Adam said is pretty much incontrovertible. You know, like...

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You know, the post from Bassey was 100% misaligned with... You know,

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it wasn't just a little bit wrong. It was like...

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180 degrees rock, you know, on the exercise science.

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The thing, one of the things that it made me think about, slightly off your

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question, is, you know, we ran the diploma for a long time, and the further

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along we went, the more evidence-based it became.

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And I don't mean that we weren't evidence-based at the beginning, but the more,

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in fact, really, when we went online,

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you started to build lectures that

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were directly referencing the evidence on a topic it wasn't sort of squeezed

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in around repertoire like it was when we were doing all the the apparatus stuff

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and you know what we saw was that.

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Your, when I say your, I mean RAF, your appetite and propensity for working

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your way through research, which in order to do that, you've got to work your

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way through Google Scholar.

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Some students really took to it, but a lot of students just,

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you know, one reason or another didn't take on that skill. And frankly,

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I'm, you know, I don't read science for relaxation quite the way you do.

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And a huge part of how we've worked well together is that you,

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you have that appetite and skill.

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And I've been able to apply that in my teaching where I'm busily running a studio

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and there's been a kind of virtuous loop there. Well, I mean,

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I don't, I don't teach high bridge for fun, you know, the way you do.

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Yeah, right. We've got a complimentary. So part of why we make a great team. um.

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And yeah, so where I was going with that was that the thought I'd had is when

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the little muscle, big muscle thing is a really compelling story.

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Just like the disc bulge popping out the side on your plastic skeleton is a compelling narrative.

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And so it's a sticky narrative.

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And I've just quite literally just finished filming the last video for our new

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version of our certification. and that video was things that people say in Pilates land.

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And it was, you know, addressing the fact that there are things that people

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will say that we don't teach. Yeah, yeah.

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And what I was thinking on this thing was that, you know, the narratives are

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sticky and often the evidence is not.

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And so I suppose the one thing I thought was,

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you know, So what we can do well as educators is put evidence into a narrative

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that sticks because what we've seen is that, as an example,

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so the osteoarthritis story,

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inverted commas, that you told in the lecture about the sponge in the water.

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That's a sticky narrative and you tell that to instructors

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it sticks and they tell their clients and it sticks and it

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helps to replace bone on bone you know because

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bone on bone is a sticky narrative so i guess

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what i was sort of ruminating on is that one of the

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things that we can do well as educators is

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one use good information and

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then find good sticky ways of of of

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sharing that with people and i guess i suppose i

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feel like i'd love to see more of that in in you you

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asked me what i think about calling out and i think

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you know i don't know how you do that when you're calling someone out but at

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least in terms of education making things work for people's learning is maybe

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the long what's it's the long cycle version of calling out the stickier we can make good information,

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that the long tail result would be people don't get caught up in these narratives

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around small muscles, big muscles.

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Disbulges popping out on skin, bone on bone and all of that.

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They were my thoughts about it. I think, you know, for a company like Bassie,

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and I don't know thing number one about Bassie. I've only seen their public stuff.

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I've never met Rayel or talked to him or been involved in that in any way.

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But, you know, I can only imagine that,

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you know, when you've created a whole brand and certified probably tens of thousands

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of instructors and taught seminars and workshops and whatever,

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for decades, you know, founded in these concepts of, you know,

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small stabilizer muscles and using instability to correct imbalances.

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And all of these other essentially made-up dysfunctions that aren't real things.

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It's really hard to suddenly change. You know, like it's hard on a logistical

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level because you've got tens of thousands of copies of your printed manual,

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your DVDs, your course materials.

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Like, I mean, we've just finished updating our Pilates set, right?

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You just didn't film the last video today.

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That's a, how long did it take?

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Like how many hours do you think it took collectively for our team to rebuild

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that program with new content?

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Hundreds hundreds right yeah and

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and we've got an organization

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organized around doing that right right we've got a small team that is you know

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agile and you know and a content 100 digital and we all work you know essentially

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um so we don't have like you know 2 000 certified trainers around the world

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in different time zones speaking different languages,

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not connecting on the internet just using paper materials whatever

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so just logistically very very hard to

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turn the ship when you've got you know that volume of stuff out there but also

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just like from a brand perspective if your whole brand is built on you know

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you must stabilize um and correct muscle imbalances and all of that and then

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at some point 25 years in you're like i actually sorry that.

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Wasn't really a thing and we're not going to do it anymore.

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It's like, it's really hard to switch your position.

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So, you know, I mean, I can see how the incentive, you know,

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like they're not incentivized to actually, you know, to change.

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Like what's the benefit of them changing? It's like, great, now they get to

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spend, you know, a million dollars on rebuilding their entire curriculum from

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the ground up, and they have to go to everybody they've trained and say, we trained you wrong.

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I mean, I guess the good thing would be they could then say,

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and now you have to retrain in the new way, you know, and do our new course,

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because you're all by the time.

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Yeah, here's our updated course at a discounted rate. You can all retrain. Yeah.

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Well, there you go. We just solved world peace.

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We just pass it on to them. I'm going to suggest that in the thread in Adam's post.

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Um yeah but i think for educators it's really difficult and i think the thing

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that has that we've been that has really enabled us to continue to update without it being a problem,

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is and turning it into a feature not a bug really has been that we took the

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position that we don't have a position that our position is based on whatever

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best evidence is and we just do that And so when that changes,

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we just do whatever the next, you know, what the current guidelines say.

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So that's like, it's no big deal whatsoever from a cultural perspective when we change.

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Although there was a little bit of a cultural change when we changed their motor

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queuing, you know, external queuing thing a year or two back.

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But, you know, it was pretty low, low amount of hassle, really.

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Yeah, I don't know. Like I haven't read the comments on that,

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that post, like what, what were the, did you read through the threads?

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Uh, I stopped after a couple of days, but yeah, um, was, um, um, um, um, um, um, um,

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Yeah, there wasn't a lot of back and forth. It was mainly, what I read was mostly

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in support of Adam, Adam's response.

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And I don't remember reading much in support of the position.

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And I think that probably reflects the fact that it wasn't the education page,

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it was the equipment's page.

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Maybe. I mean, that's just what I, that was my assumption. um well it's funny

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because he i think he tagged um bassy in the post oh yeah,

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um i mean i but having said that i completely agree with what you said earlier that,

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you know as an educator and or a company a company associated with the educator

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it's you know behooves us to do better yeah.

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Yeah, it's interesting.

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So, yeah, I guess, I mean, I don't know, like, you know, every now and then

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I sort of feel like, yeah, maybe I should sort of call out some of the bullshit,

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but then, like, there's actually a few people I follow because they post that kind of stuff,

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like the stuff that is not true.

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And it's kind of like wobbling a loose tooth or something, you know, or scratching a scab.

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When I watch it. And I sometimes use it for inspiration for these episodes that

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I'm like, okay, I'm never going to mention that person, but we're going to talk

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about this and here's how it works.

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And yeah, that's not what I saw in the post.

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But every now and then, like once every couple of years, I think,

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I just can't let this one go. It's just total crap.

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But it hasn't been enough to tip you over the edge to become like,

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bless his soul, Pa O'Dwyer.

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Pa O'Dwyer, yeah, no. I don't think the Pilates world's ready for Pa O'Dwyer.

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Did you hear he passed away? Sad day. It was a sad day. I followed him.

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He was a funny guy. Yeah. Yeah.

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Yeah, I think, I don't know, Heath, like, you know, in my more optimistic moments, I feel like,

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well, it's just inevitable, you know, in a thousand years, we're not still going

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to be saying small muscles, you know, stabilize and balance,

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you know, it's like at some point it's going to change, you know,

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the narrative's going to change.

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So it's just a matter of like, what do they say?

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Science proceeds, you know, one death at a time. And that's basically,

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I'm just paraphrasing there, but basically it's like, as the old,

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guard of academics, you know, retire and die, and the new generation come in,

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that's how the beliefs change.

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Like, you don't actually change people's minds, you just wait till they retire.

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Till the old minds die. Yeah. So, you know, maybe that's it.

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And it's like, okay, we've got to measure progress in decades, not weeks, you know.

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Oh, great, I put out a post. Why are people still saying this bullshit?

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You know, I posted about this last week.

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Well I mean while we're on the topic I think I'd love to think and chew a little bit on why,

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in this particular topic is compelling it's fascinating for instructors and,

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It's something that I find we have to explain a lot.

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So, you know, let's use some of our time to sort of think.

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So Adams explained it really nicely, and he referred to the paper,

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which explained it really clearly, that the muscles all work more according to load.

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And then where I think a lot of instructors have questions and need to think

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on is the nuance that you can work an individual muscle more by lining,

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you know, lining the bones up against the load in a particular way.

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Or you can work, so you can work the entire rotator cuff and the pecs,

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et cetera, to push up and all of the muscles contraction increases as the load

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increases and the load is distributed through that team of muscles.

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And if, if, if all else remains the same at the same distribution and you can do a movement that.

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Roughly isolates infraspinatus or subscapularis or anterior fibers of deltoid.

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Like you can pick on muscles or sections of muscles.

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So those two things are true at the same time.

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I would say, I don't 100% agree with that.

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I would say that you can't ever really isolate a muscle.

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You can, like if you do so. Right, so you're not shutting everything else down.

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No, no, it's not possible to isolate a muscle. You know, I can say that like unequivocally.

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I don't think that's at all controversial in exercise science.

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You know, everyone would be like, yeah, do. Like, of course you can isolate a muscle.

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You can put a muscle in a, you can put the body in a, you know,

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an alignment and create a movement, you know, with a resistance on a particular

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angle that will preferentially load that muscle.

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You know, so that muscle will have more load than if you turned the arm a slightly different way.

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And you can turn a muscle from a stabilizer into a mobilizer,

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depending on the action.

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So for example, if we think about, say, the anterior deltoid and the infraspinatus,

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you know, so the anterior deltoid's in the front of the shoulder,

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it's one of the big front shoulder muscles if you do like a push-up or something,

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it's one of the major prime movers in that movement.

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Whereas the infraspinatus, which is on your scapula, which is one of the four

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rotator cuff muscles, when you do a push-up, the deltoid is the prime mover

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and the infraspinatus is the stabilizer.

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And what that means is the deltoid bends, you know, changes the angle of the

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joint. It flexes the shoulder, right?

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And in doing that, it actually creates a force vector that essentially pulls

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the arm bone out of the shoulder socket.

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And so in order to keep the arm bone in the shoulder socket,

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you use the infraspinatus and the other rotator cuff to suck it back into the shoulder socket.

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So the harder you activate your deltoid, the more it tries to pull the arm bone

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out of the socket, and therefore the more you have to activate your rotator

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cuff, including your infraspinatus, in order to not have your shoulder dislocate

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every time you do a push-up.

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So anything that trains the deltoid also trains the infraspinatus commensurately.

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And the more you load the deltoid, the more it pulls the arm bone,

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so the more the infraspinatus has to compensate, right?

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But in that role, the infraspinatus is a stabilizer and the deltoid is a mobilizer.

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And when we switch to something like a rotation, like a typical rotator cuff

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move, like with a flex band where you're doing external rotations of the shoulder,

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well, then the infraspinatus,

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along with the teres minor, becomes the mobilizer, the prime remover,

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and the deltoid becomes a stabilizer.

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So the infraspinatus wants to pull the arm bone out of the socket,

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and now the deltoid has to stabilize and prevent that happening.

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So both, and then the harder you work the rotator cuff, the more you're going

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to work the deltoid to stabilize. But here's the thing.

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The deltoid is like, you know, six times the size of the infraspinatus,

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right? So if your infraspinatus is working in your like shoulder external rotation,

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okay, the amount of force that it produces relative to how big the deltoid is, is pretty small.

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Right? So it's going to, you know, imagine like a, you know,

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tiny kitten trying to, you know, rip your shoulder out of its socket and a huge

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polar bear trying to keep it in there. It's like, okay, the polar bear's not

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going to be working that hard.

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Okay. But if the polar bear's trying to rip it out and the kitten's trying to

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keep it in, well, the kitten's going to be working really freaking hard.

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So I would say that in a push-up, it's a great deltoid exercise.

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It's also a great infraspinatus exercise.

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Whereas in a shoulder external rotation, it's a great infraspinatus exercise,

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pretty lame deltoid exercise. Okay.

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And just catch that, Raph, because what you did there is you used the terms

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stabilizers and mobilizer or stabilizer and prime mover.

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And, you know, dear listener, that's an important thing to understand,

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I think, and Raph could probably say it more clearly than I am,

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is making a movement wobbly and then trying to not wobble, which is what so

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much of what we talk about in terms of stability in Pilates,

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is not what Raph is talking about.

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The stabilizer in this instance is creating an equal and opposite force in a

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movement that's being driven by another muscle.

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So the stabilizer is not the thing that stops you wobbly.

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The stabilizer is the thing that creates structural stability at the joint while you create force.

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And what a great and important key distinction there because we use the word

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stability and we think instability as in being on something wobbly, like a BOSU.

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Something is the opposite of stability and therefore you must

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use more stable stabilizing muscles it's it's not true uh

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and so you know when you are when when

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i use the term stabilizer muscle in the context of a push-up

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i mean what i said like literally preventing the

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humeral head the top of the arm bone from shearing out of the shoulder socket

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the glenoid fossa right so that's that's what i mean by stabilize when i say

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that you know the infraspinatus is a stabilizer in that movement and that is

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you know the biomechanical you know agreed meaning of what a stable what it

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means to stabilize a joint.

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If you have a frank instability of a joint, that means the joint dislocates

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easily. You know, someone who has repeated shoulder dislocations is said to be frankly unstable.

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But when we talk, we use the same word, stability, but we use it in reference

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to like, okay, doing a push-up with your hands on a BOSU, say,

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then the way we stabilize, so when your hands are on a BOSU,

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it does increase the amount of muscle activity that's.

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That you require, but it doesn't somehow magically target some set of stabilizer muscles.

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Because as we just saw in that example of a push-up versus a rotator cuff external

::

rotation, different muscles become the prime mover or the stabilizer depending on the movement.

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You know, in a push-up, the deltoid's the prime mover, the rotator cuff is a stabilizer.

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In an external rotation movement, the rotator cuff's the prime mover,

::

the deltoid's a stabilizer. So there's no such thing as a, quote, stabilizer muscle.

::

There's just like muscles that stabilize in particular movements,

::

and they're prime movers in other particular movements.

::

And it's just they do whatever role is required.

::

And so when you have your hands on a BOSU and you're trying to stabilize whilst

::

you do your push-up, all you do is you require all of your muscles to be stabilizer

::

muscles because every joint in that chain, you know, the wrist,

::

the elbow, the shoulder,

::

the scapular thoracic joint, they're all less stable, right?

::

So what do you do there is you have to co-contract.

::

You contract your biceps and your triceps around the elbow.

::

You contract your anterior deltoids and your posterior deltoids and your triceps

::

and your cricobrachialis and your pec minor and your pec major,

::

et cetera, et cetera, around the scapula.

::

So basically, you're contracting everything more. it's

::

not selectively targeting somehow like

::

the small muscles and this is like you know if if you went into an exercise

::

science lab and told them this they'd be like yeah and like so it's like of

::

course you know this is completely and utterly uncontroversial right when you

::

are on an unstable surface.

::

You know, think about it. You stand on a BOSU, what happens to your leg muscles?

::

Like, you co-contract your quads and your hamstrings and your calves and your

::

hip flexors and your reductors and you, like, everything's working harder,

::

right? Everything's working harder.

::

You're not magically just targeting something like your popliteus or something

::

behind your knee, but, you know, or your VMO or something.

::

It's like, it's just, that's what stabilizing is, is you brace,

::

you co-contract, right?

::

Because on a BOSU, whether it's your arms or your legs, you're more likely to

::

move, right? It's like there's more wobble, right? It's harder to stay still.

::

And so how do you make yourself stay still? Well, you co-contract.

::

Like think about a plank, right? That's what a plank is. You co-contract.

::

So it's like, well, the more unstable it is, the more you have to co-contract.

::

And so that's just, and if you want to stabilize, if you're like,

::

imagine you're on a BOSU and someone's like walks past and pushes,

::

you know, the BOSU, wobbles, it's like, is your infraspinatus going to stop?

::

No, you have to massively contract your triceps and your delts and your pecs

::

and your lats and all of that in order to stay on the BOSU, right?

::

It's like, it's heavy work.

::

And so the more unstable it is, the more you're going to activate your big muscles.

::

And then the more you activate your big muscles, the more you're going to activate

::

your small muscles. So all the muscles are going to work. Oh my God.

::

All right. See what you did? You got me on a soapbox.

::

Yeah, that's what I was trying to do.

::

So anyway, where does that leave us? There's no such thing as like small stabilizer muscles.

::

There are big muscles and small muscles. There are muscles that stabilize in

::

a given movement, but it's not always the small muscles.

::

And anyway, you can't target the small muscles and there's no point in targeting

::

small muscles. I mean, oh my God.

::

Just like, think about it, people. Think about it, Bassey.

::

Like, if the job of the small muscles is to stabilize when the big muscles work,

::

well, wouldn't the small muscles work when the big muscles work?

::

Like, so then wouldn't working the big muscles also work the small muscles?

::

I mean, it's like, I can't see how that's not obvious.

::

Well that that brings me back i guess to you know

::

that's the curse of your knowledge and i feel like that's the

::

thing that when we do a good job of educating on this stuff we are we we we

::

provide accurate and alternative metaphors is often the case i mean doxy like

::

the story that you tell rather than the information, is what sticks.

::

I can't remember who said it, or some YouTube thing, someone probably famous,

::

and I don't know who, but the thing was that humans are problem-solving storytelling

::

monkeys, and I just think, I just love that.

::

When something's got a story, it sticks more. So something can be true and.

::

Uncompelling as a narrative and not stick as well as something that's untrue

::

that is compelling as a narrative.

::

And I think that's, it's, you know, it would be nice to think that we all filter

::

for accuracy, but clearly that's not true.

::

And our Pilates internet space sort of confirms that.

::

I, you know, something that's been on my mind a fair bit of the last few weeks

::

is, I think there's a broader kind of chunked-up concept behind this,

::

and it applies in every realm that I've sort of bent my thought onto in this.

::

So I follow a lot of exercise science, you know, people on YouTube and social media and stuff.

::

But I also notice this for sure in Pilates, not in the science side of Pilates,

::

but just in Pilates in general.

::

I noticed it in so many different areas of life that people just over-optimize, okay?

::

And this is like when you become a connoisseur.

::

So for example, coffee's an example, right?

::

Like there are people out there that spend time.

::

Half an hour, you know, grinding the exact 73 beans, you know,

::

and setting the grind temperature and whatever.

::

I don't even know all the words for it, right? But then they make this like

::

super artisanal coffee.

::

And it's like, honestly, I reckon 99% of people couldn't even taste the difference.

::

You know, when you go from like weak dishwater to like a half decent coffee,

::

it's like, okay, you're 99% of the people who are like, great.

::

That's awesome. I can notice the difference. But then when you go from a half-decent

::

coffee to a $500 a cup coffee, it's like most people, I just think if you gave

::

them a blind test, they couldn't tell the difference.

::

And in fact, we know this from wine research, and I presented a bunch of this

::

in the diploma, that when you put the same wine in an expensive bottle, it tastes better.

::

And when you put white wine in an expensive bottle and put red food dye in it

::

and feed to wine critics they give you they tell you it smells like cigar box

::

and you know uh blackberries.

::

Um you know so so like we

::

over optimize and we do this in exercise science as well

::

and so it's like well if you

::

want to get stronger like just lift

::

heavy shit you know a couple times a week to the point of near failure right

::

do a push a pull and a squat okay great now you know 75% of everything that

::

you need to know in that 10-second statement, almost everything you need to know.

::

And the other 5 billion gigabytes of data that you could learn on this topic is going to add 25% more.

::

And so I think we just weigh the fuck over-optimize.

::

And there are people arguing about which angle your elbow should be in when

::

you're bench pressing to maximize the activation.

::

It's like, for fuck's sake, just like get another plate on the bar and you'll

::

10x your results, you know, compared

::

to like worrying about the freaking angle of your elbow, you know,

::

or where your mind is in your muscle compared to, it's like,

::

just push the damn bar up, you know.

::

And I think it's the same in Pilates. We just obsess over, it's like the rotator fucking cuff.

::

It's like, whatever, just do a push-up. It's all going to work.

::

Like, it's all going to work.

::

Like, we're just, we're way overthinking this shit. We're just way overthinking it.

::

Like, just do a push-up. And I know this aligns 100% with the way that you teach.

::

And, you know, that's another reason we get on like a house on fire is because,

::

you know, I love your cues. I'll just like lift your hips as high as possible.

::

Great. That just says, like, if you do that, you're going to,

::

like, it all works, right? There's nothing else you need to do.

::

Like, don't tell me which fucking muscle to activate, because if I'm lifting

::

my hips as high as possible, I'm already doing it, you know?

::

Like, you can't not do it.

::

I mean, dear listener, jump on a reformer, put on two springs,

::

put your heels on the bar, lie on the carriage, put the headrest all the way

::

up if you want, lift your hip up as high as you can, keep the carriage on the

::

stopper. I dare you to not feel your hamstrings.

::

You know like try like try and relax your hamstrings in that position,

::

i challenge you you know it's like you can't so it's like you don't need to

::

cue you don't need to cue like just yeah anyway sorry another another like i

::

just i just think we overthink it we just overthink it like it's not important

::

you know like just cue the movement you want.

::

Yeah and my sort of little bit that I'd throw into that,

::

is as you're yeah we over optimize

::

the way i think of that is so often what i see people doing my brain

::

says you're gilding the lily so you're going to spend three hours talking about

::

the activation of this that and the other when you do a roll-up and what what

::

the position i would push back on with that is well when your clients can do

::

x number of roll-ups that are smooth.

::

Make it harder. Don't just make it harder by thinking about things,

::

actually change the, add load or change the movement so that it's heavier.

::

Right. So go to teaser, which just brings us back to this thing that we're always

::

on about, but where does it go rather than how, what muscles are working? Look, all right.

::

And this, this is, cause I've been thinking about this, this a lot actually about the skill thing.

::

Right. And so I think this is a whole other episode, but I just want to sort

::

of flag it here so that we can sort of bookmark it and remember it,

::

because I really want to talk about this in more depth.

::

So in Pilates, we talk about, you know, a lot on this show that there's only

::

three sort of fundamental aspects of movement that we can work on,

::

strength, range of motion, and skill, right?

::

And it's like everything else is some version of one of those, right?

::

And we could say, like, if you want to be really pedantic, you could say within

::

strength, okay, there's speed, power, endurance, blah, blah, blah.

::

But it's like all of those are like some component of strength, right?

::

And so basically there's strength, there's range of motion, there's skill.

::

And i think two things that we agree

::

on is number one in a pilates we way over optimize

::

on the skill part right it's like at you know at the

::

expense of strength and you know drastically and range

::

of motion to a large extent as well especially when you think about something like you

::

know bent knee fallouts you know where you're lying on your back you know knees bent

::

feet on the floor you know letting your knee fold out you know six inches

::

keep your pelvis still it's like oh for fuck's sake you know like you

::

know do a side split um but i think

::

even within the skill domain i think we just we

::

we don't we actually don't do that very well either because i think what happens

::

in is we actually we don't understand that doing teaser is a skill now you need

::

strength and range of motion to be able to do that skill right but it is a skill

::

right even if you have the strength than the range,

::

you can still suck at teaser, right?

::

If you've never practiced teaser, right?

::

And so doing teaser well, smoothly.

::

Is a skill but and so that's where

::

the skill comes in making the teaser look easy right now

::

you have to have strength and range of motion in order to be able to

::

access that skill to learn that skill but like where i think we get super confused

::

a lot in pilates is we just we optimize for the skill component by just adding

::

weird fucking shit that we saw on the internet like squeeze a ball behind your

::

knee or do it now with a flex band wrapped around your torso so it's mimicking

::

some fucking bullshit fascial line or something that doesn't exist, right?

::

Like that's not actually systematically building skill towards the skill of doing teaser.

::

You're just now doing footwork with some fucking thing wrapped around your leg, right?

::

That's not actually, like it makes it harder because it's like you've got an

::

extra thing to concentrate on and don't let the ball fall from behind your knee or whatever.

::

So like, I guess that's a skill, but it's like, it's a dead end.

::

You're not building towards something. You're not actually building skill.

::

You know, in a systematic way. Yeah.

::

So we need to do an episode on that because I think we talk a lot about strength.

::

But I mean, and I know that we've talked before and, you know,

::

people have said to you like, oh, why don't you cue alignment?

::

It's like, what the fuck do you think I am cue? It's like, lift your hips as high as possible.

::

What about that isn't aligning your body differently?

::

You know, pull the carriage onto the stopper.

::

Like, well, that's creating this particular alignment that you want to see in that move.

::

And so teaching this skill. I mean, we've done that episode where we talked about that.

::

But when I teach a shoulder bridge, almost always I'm using the heels.

::

And some people say, is that because you're trying to bias to the hamstrings?

::

Don't get that's a red herring i'm using the heels because if i ever get you

::

to high bridge you're going to be pulling like crap to get the bed in against

::

the stopper so we're practicing that pulling in and and you get you know like

::

that's why i do it because it's not to get.

::

Optimized for hamstrings it's because when you pull the bed in and you go to

::

high bridge you don't want to be on your tiptoes because just about everyone

::

cramps you're going to be in your midfoot and we're practicing.

::

So it's the skill that's going to scale up. Right.

::

But I'm not going to tell you that because we're just doing shoulder bridge.

::

Right. Well, you're building the skill of high bridge and some people in the

::

room will never get there, but they'll get some part of the way there.

::

You know, they'll improve their shoulder bridge to some level.

::

And maybe semicircle and maybe head back as you progress along.

::

And so the skill scales up as the strength and range of motion scale up.

::

Right. But only if you actually practice the skills in a mindful way, right?

::

Not just add some fucking crazy shit that you saw on Instagram. Yeah, yeah.

::

So the skill's got to be the skill.

::

I mean, and all of this stuff that I talk about, what I clicked to,

::

it was watching nine-year-olds do gymnastics training.

::

You know, when they do little funny things with huge big cushions and they flop

::

onto their dish position, it's like, oh, that's how they do it in midair.

::

Like I said, they're learning, it's the skill is there, it's like the closest

::

possible representation of the final thing allowing for your current physical

::

capacity, as opposed to just complicate the thing and make it confusing. Right.

::

All right, so that was kind of a….

::

What's the word eclectic one today?

::

We kind of just meanded here and there. But that was a good talk.

::

And I think we should bookmark to have a conversation about skill,

::

you know, because we don't really talk about that a lot, but it is integral to the way that we teach.

::

Yeah. And progressing a skill towards a big, complicated, heavy movement that

::

your client can't do now,

::

you know that that's i think that's a huge when you

::

unlock that people are not interested in rubber bands anymore so

::

it's like when you understand that paradigm you're like i don't want to

::

use the bosu anymore i want to get on with doing things that

::

build towards big strong complicated movements on

::

the reformer rather than fiddly fiddly adding lots

::

of little things to make it more complicated just sort of i've seen

::

it just sort of evaporates people come back and say not interested anymore

::

just want to keep moving my clients towards those bigger things

::

well because they're just way more fucking fun and cool

::

you know yeah and and i

::

mean there's a yeah it puts people in a different kind of flow state right it's

::

not it's not like a frustration state where you're trying to not fall over it's

::

like you're working really hard and seeing progress towards something yeah and

::

that's that feeling of when you develop a skill and you do something that you

::

couldn't previously do, and you're like, fuck,

::

my body's doing this, and I don't even know how it's happening.

::

Yeah. Good talk.

::

See you next time.

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Pilates Elephants
No-BS, science-based tools to help you become a better, happier and more financially successful Pilates instructor

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