353. Don't confuse giving information with teaching

:: 00:06

So what is the right amount of setup to give a client in Pilates before you

:: 00:10

get them moving in an exercise?

:: 00:13

Heath Lander. Well, that's definitely a piece of string question.

:: 00:19

Okay. So we've, you know, we've kind of been at both ends of the piece of string,

:: 00:22

I think, even though maybe I'm not sure, maybe in this metaphor,

:: 00:26

the piece of string is infinite and it's a loop.

:: 00:28

But I think we've been at both ends of the piece of, of the infinitely,

:: 00:31

a variably length piece of string.

:: 00:34

And when we first started out we were the like give 99 cues

:: 00:37

before they're allowed to even you know take a breath uh end

:: 00:39

of things and so like we're going to teach footwork about the first five minutes

:: 00:43

of explanation about your transversus abdominis uh and then we've also been

:: 00:47

at the other end which is like ah who cares about the freaking you know stuff

:: 00:51

just get moving you'll be fine we'll fix it as we go and so where where have

:: 00:55

you currently landed on that spectrum.

:: 00:59

Yeah okay bear with me while i think i throw a little bit

:: 01:02

so what we when we when we

:: 01:05

were at pilates school we learned a model that said whatever start

:: 01:08

position you're doing and whatever movement you're going to do you're going

:: 01:11

to refine the start position and the movement before you

:: 01:14

even move yeah and that we don't

:: 01:17

do anymore because there's no point refining

:: 01:20

a movement that you're not doing yet because you don't know what you're refining if you're a

:: 01:22

client because so give me a gross version of

:: 01:25

the thing and then add the eyebrows to the sculpture and only

:: 01:29

then add the eyebrows to the sculpture but the the catch with that is if you

:: 01:35

want to get people moving quickly then you you have to start with something

:: 01:38

both via equipment settings and start position that means people can get there

:: 01:42

quickly and understand it quickly and you can express it simply which then means

:: 01:46

you need to think about the movements you're going to do,

:: 01:49

as this is especially at a group level and bring them down to an a layer or

:: 01:54

a start position or we'll call it a layer, start with a layer that you can get

:: 01:57

everyone in the start position quickly and efficiently in two or three or four

:: 02:02

simple outcome focused cues.

:: 02:04

And then the start position is something that is easy to say out and in, up and down.

:: 02:09

And then you can refine and you can build layers and you can build complexity to it.

:: 02:13

Right. And I think the mistake that we, you and I originally made,

:: 02:17

and the mistake that I think a lot of Pilates instructors still make in setting

:: 02:23

up an exercise is confusing telling people information with teaching.

:: 02:30

When you go to a government website, you know, the DMV or, you know,

:: 02:34

you need to renew your passport or get some kind of government ID or something.

:: 02:37

And you have to wade through, you know, pages and pages and pages of fine print,

:: 02:41

you know, about processes and forms you have to fill out.

:: 02:44

You know, like our spirits all sink, you know, when that happens.

:: 02:49

And, you know, 90% of that information just bounces off.

:: 02:54

And I think that's a good analogy for at the beginning of a Pilates exercise.

:: 03:00

And if we want to give somebody all the information about where they should

:: 03:04

be feeling it, which muscles they should be activating and relaxing and where

:: 03:07

their alignment of their little toes should be and all of that, it's like, okay,

:: 03:10

all of those things that you said might be true and correct,

:: 03:12

but that doesn't mean that the person can take it in or it's actually useful

:: 03:16

to explain it all in exhaustive detail before they've even had any experience of moving yet.

:: 03:24

So what is, you know, you said, you know, we need to get.

:: 03:30

We need to develop the ability to articulate the start position,

:: 03:33

you know, clearly and simply.

:: 03:35

Give us an example of what that sounds like.

:: 03:40

So there's two things to try and capture here. One is that a well-organized

:: 03:47

start position, and this is true everywhere, but particularly,

:: 03:50

let's say, in some cases on the mat, because there's nothing that contains positions

:: 03:53

in the way that a reformer bear, et cetera, does.

:: 03:56

That getting the organization of the start position right quickly and efficiently

:: 04:01

will predict greater success for your clients when they go into a shape.

:: 04:04

And the other one, the overlap is.

:: 04:09

You want to start position, and this is particularly important on the reformer,

:: 04:12

that everyone can get to quickly and get a basic movement from quickly that

:: 04:17

will build to the thing that you're ultimately heading for.

:: 04:20

And that has to be organized so that everyone can do it. And this dovetails

:: 04:23

with this idea of layering that we teach.

:: 04:25

And the idea is that the first thing, this is the solemn promise we ask our

:: 04:29

students to make at the end of every course.

:: 04:30

The solemn promise is that the first layer you will call in any

:: 04:33

progression so in any sequence of layered exercising exercises that you're going

:: 04:37

to call the early layer the first one you do you would give you you bet the

:: 04:41

farm you bet your left leg that everyone can do more than 20 reps so you're

:: 04:44

choosing an equipment setting both by load and football height etc and body

:: 04:48

position and basic movement that you i would bet my mom in the back corner can do at least 20,

:: 04:53

and then you can build from there and that when you organize what you're going to teach like that.

:: 05:01

Then there's only a few start positions and that's the good part about it.

:: 05:04

Like it might think like, you might think, oh, that's hard to do.

:: 05:06

Cause if I want to do down stretch or if I want to do elephant or if I want

:: 05:09

to do scooters, or if I want to do knee stretches on or knee stretches off,

:: 05:11

they're all different start positions. And I would argue, no, they're not.

:: 05:14

In the context of group teaching, they're all long stretch with knees down on

:: 05:17

a high foot bar with one spring.

:: 05:19

So hold on, let me just pull you back from your, your torrential flow there.

:: 05:23

Um what you're

:: 05:26

saying is that all of those exercises that

:: 05:30

you listed are essentially progressions of

:: 05:33

long stretch with knees down on a moderate spring right and so regardless of

:: 05:38

whether we're going to do you know down stretch or up stretch or elephant or

:: 05:43

knee stretches knees off or you know any of those things the first move that

:: 05:47

we teach in a group class or even in a one-on-one really would be,

:: 05:51

okay, let's put on like a moderate spring, one, one and a half spring somewhere in that vicinity,

:: 05:56

foot bar all the way up, kneel on the carriage, hands on the bar,

:: 05:59

feet behind you on the shoulder blocks, push the carriage out.

:: 06:02

Like and then carry out bring the carriage back keep your body straight right

:: 06:05

and from there we were to transition to say knee

:: 06:08

stretches we would just say okay push the carriage out okay hold now keep

:: 06:11

your arms still bring that bring your knees in and now we're doing knee stretches

:: 06:14

so we never have to actually cue the start position for knee stretches as such

:: 06:18

in that model because you always do long stretch kneeling before it and the

:: 06:23

same with the knee stretch knees off you'll do the knee stretches and you'll

:: 06:25

just say okay bring the carriage in hold now float your knees up four inches

:: 06:28

off the carriage. Push the carriage out again.

:: 06:31

Yeah, but if, dear listener, if you try that and you do it on one spring,

:: 06:34

you'll discover that lifting your knees from the in position is really hard.

:: 06:37

So, and then, so at a high level, exactly what Raf said, but then if you start

:: 06:42

to think, okay, how am I going to turn my knee stretches into knee stretches, knees off?

:: 06:45

And okay, you teach knee stretches, knees off most effectively from a long stretch,

:: 06:48

knees off, if you teach most effectively from a heavier spring,

:: 06:51

but you've already taught me long stretch knees down moderate springs.

:: 06:54

So we say, okay, park the carriage, shake your wrists. We're going to call that

:: 06:57

thing you just did long stretch with the knees down we're going to do the same thing

:: 06:59

with the knees up so two springs on high foot

:: 07:03

bar but by now the foot bar is probably a bit lower because tall people bang into

:: 07:05

the pulleys so we're going to lift up to a plank hold that now just take the

:: 07:09

bed out and in great so now we've got our start position and basic movement

:: 07:13

for knee stretches even though it's not quite and then exactly as raf said take

:: 07:17

the bed out hold under some tension knees in knees out but we would have done

:: 07:20

that with knees down and named it then as well. Okay.

:: 07:23

So, so, so, you know, I can hear people almost thinking, listening to this,

:: 07:29

yeah, but like, what if I just want to teach knee stretches, right?

:: 07:32

Like what if I don't want to start with long stretch or, you know,

:: 07:35

what if I just want to teach up stretch or down stretch or whatever it might be?

:: 07:39

Yep. And my question to that would be, are you a group teacher or not?

:: 07:44

Pleasure. Well, because, okay, so my guiding principle as a group reformer teacher

:: 07:50

is everyone rides together. So if someone has to stop and look around and look

:: 07:53

at me and they don't know what to do, I've just failed that person.

:: 07:55

I want them to know what to do at all times, even if they need to stop because it's tough.

:: 08:00

So everything is simple when we understand it. I've got to make sure you understand

:: 08:02

everything we're going to do as we do it. I don't want you confused.

:: 08:05

That breaks your flow state. so I'm going to pitch my class

:: 08:09

at my mum in the back corner even if she has to do multiple sets of long stretch

:: 08:13

knees down on a high foot bar on a moderate spring while I build up to bigger

:: 08:16

things with everyone else and if the group can come with you quickly because

:: 08:19

they understand the more complicated movements great,

:: 08:21

they move through those progressions more quickly, it's just a warm up,

:: 08:25

but starting at knee stretches knees off.

:: 08:28

Has a lot of possibilities for failure. There's a lot of different reasons why

:: 08:32

people can't do it, which makes your life and their life less than one. Yeah.

:: 08:35

I mean, even knee stretches, knees on, which is a more common example of something

:: 08:38

that probably people do start with a lot of the time.

:: 08:41

And we've all taught knee stretches and had the people keeping their lower body

:: 08:45

still and pushing in and out with their upper bodies.

:: 08:47

I don't know if anyone's ever taught knee stretches to someone for the first

:: 08:50

time and not had someone in the class do that.

:: 08:53

So I guess we come to the fundamental point that- So just, but just, that's a great one.

:: 08:59

I'm sorry to interrupt, but so we've all done that.

:: 09:02

We all know that teaching knee stretches as knee stretches is hard because your

:: 09:06

clients don't understand because the dissociation element is really hard.

:: 09:08

Okay. So what I'm suggesting is how would you teach knee stretches if you weren't

:: 09:14

allowed to have anyone not understand? Yeah.

:: 09:16

Well, I think it's sort of like, you know, in, in, in mathematics,

:: 09:20

you first you learn, you know, addition and subtraction and multiplication,

:: 09:23

and then later you learn calculus.

:: 09:24

And if you tried to learn calculus before you knew how

:: 09:27

to add and subtract it would make it virtually impossible to learn

:: 09:30

how to do that and so you know i don't think knee stretches is necessarily

:: 09:33

as hard as calculus but for my mum maybe it would be um and me yeah love your

:: 09:38

mum the calculus that gets me yeah yeah uh but the the the principle remains

:: 09:44

that there are kind of foundational you know movement patterns within pilates

:: 09:49

and within just human movement in general.

:: 09:53

That understanding long stretch knees down, I want to say understanding,

:: 09:57

I just mean like being able to execute it reasonably well.

:: 10:01

Is going to make it way easier for you to execute knee stretches reasonably well.

:: 10:07

Yep. And to execute long stretch knees up, where you've got to keep multiple

:: 10:10

joints organized in a straight line, is going to be much easier to do if you've

:: 10:14

understood long stretch knees down, where there's less joints to organize, less load to manage.

:: 10:18

And I can name it at the easier level and say, okay, now we're going to make

:: 10:21

a slightly hydler version.

:: 10:22

We're going to lift your knees and make a straight line through your whole body.

:: 10:25

And people go, oh yeah, cool. I think I get that. And then they go,

:: 10:27

oh, that's harder. So now we get, we're sort of going down through the layers

:: 10:30

of various layers of turtles here to maybe the turtle at the base of the pile,

:: 10:35

which is that the fundamental divide here is that when we teach,

:: 10:40

we teach essentially in clusters, which is a layered sequence of moves in the

:: 10:45

same body position slash equipment settings that works alternate muscle groups,

:: 10:50

but essentially goes from easy to very hard. And we sort of step it up,

:: 10:54

you know, stepwise there.

:: 10:55

And so when we put together a class we essentially you know

:: 10:58

string together a whole series of these

:: 11:01

clusters so we might do one supine then we might do one kneeling facing the

:: 11:03

pulleys and we might do one standing etc and put a few of those

:: 11:06

together and that's your class whereas i think the way that you and i program

:: 11:09

for years and i think a lot of people still program is in terms of individual

:: 11:13

exercises and i'll go okay i'll teach knee stretches and then where would i

:: 11:15

go from there okay am i going to i could go to a long stretch i could go to

:: 11:19

this i could go to that and i kind of thinking in it's like they're trying to

:: 11:22

draw right words you know one letter at a time,

:: 11:24

whereas we're thinking more in terms of phrases or paragraphs and to build those classes together.

:: 11:30

I think that's the fundamental divide and I think it gets down to.

:: 11:36

I don't know why we used to do it that way. I guess we just didn't really know

:: 11:40

that there was a different way to do it.

:: 11:42

We didn't think there was a different way to do it.

:: 11:46

But I'm not sure why people still do it. Maybe they don't know there's a different

:: 11:49

way to do it. Maybe they think it's more creative to come up with it.

:: 11:52

But I see a lot of times on social media, a lot of my feed is Pilates.

:: 11:58

And apart from Pilates, it's comedy and modeling.

:: 12:04

The last time I made a model airplane, I was like 12 years old,

:: 12:07

right? So I've got zero interest in actually doing any modeling.

:: 12:11

I don't mean like fashion modeling, building model airplanes and things like that, right?

:: 12:16

But for some reason, I just really enjoy watching 75-year-old guys building

:: 12:22

incredibly detailed model railroads and whatever.

:: 12:26

Anyway, I digress. but most of my feed is pilates if it's apart from like model

:: 12:31

railroads and um comedy and,

:: 12:34

a lot of what i see in that pilates feed are people going hey here's a great

:: 12:38

flow idea for you know your next reformer class or here's a great here's how

:: 12:41

i program you know this exercise or whatever it's like it's like that is not

:: 12:45

a thing that you and i would ever do because we already have our program we

:: 12:49

wrote it five years ago there's nothing wrong with it you know.

:: 12:56

Yeah um i one of the things i say when i'm working with people especially in

:: 13:01

workshops we get a good chunk of time together is that the shift for me and that we advocate is that,

:: 13:07

forevermore you will never think of an individual movement as a discrete exercise

:: 13:11

it's not discrete from the next one like it's some there is some way to make

:: 13:14

it harder and some way to make it easier,

:: 13:16

and that's always true right like you could use equipment settings or you could

:: 13:19

use movement but You can always make it easier, smaller, lighter, simpler.

:: 13:23

You can always make it harder, bigger, heavier, more complicated.

:: 13:27

And so Raph, you're saying, we've only got, you know, we don't have a program.

:: 13:30

It's like, in a sense, that's true. But once you understand that.

:: 13:34

So any movement you see can easily be absorbed into the way you think about

:: 13:38

the movements because it's not discrete.

:: 13:39

It's a collection of different things that you recognize. And I've been living in the UK now for a year.

:: 13:47

And whenever I go to London, this strikes me every time I look at the map of

:: 13:49

the underground where all the tracks seem like total chaos. And then when you

:: 13:54

start to understand the colors, you realize that they meet at points and they split off.

:: 14:00

I think that's a really handy way

:: 14:01

to think about movement, is that each movement is a stop along the line.

:: 14:05

And at certain points, you get nodes that can go in different directions.

:: 14:08

Some nodes have much higher variability. They can go lots of directions and

:: 14:12

some, not as many, but all of them can progress at least along a continuum at the very least.

:: 14:17

Right. And so another way of thinking about that, and I think it's worth thinking

:: 14:20

about this from different angles, because I think once you get this, you can't unget it.

:: 14:25

And it just makes, it's one of those ideas that is so bleedingly obvious once

:: 14:31

you see it, but so difficult to understand before that.

:: 14:34

And so another way of thinking about it is that if you can draw a line from

:: 14:39

one exercise to another exercise, and that might be like a scale in music.

:: 14:45

You have your C major scale or your F minor scale or whatever it might be.

:: 14:48

And there are certain notes that work together in that scale.

:: 14:50

Like if you're playing in C major, there are certain notes that are going to

:: 14:52

work and certain other notes that don't belong.

:: 14:54

And it's the same if he wanted to go from long stretch knees down to down stretch.

:: 15:01

There are X number of, a certain number of exercises that you could put along

:: 15:06

that continuum that would be like a progression from long stretch knees down to downstretch, right?

:: 15:11

And they would all be slightly harder in some way than the one before.

:: 15:16

It might be a slightly bigger range of motion at a certain joint.

:: 15:18

It might be more requirement for control.

:: 15:20

It might be more load, you know, might be less space of support.

:: 15:22

It might be longer levers, et cetera.

:: 15:24

And there is a continuum from that easier exercise to the harder exercise.

:: 15:31

Now, you could, continuing the music analogy, you could, instead of going from

:: 15:36

long stretch knees down, going to down stretch, you could take it to a different place.

:: 15:42

You know, you could take it to arabesque or you could take it to,

:: 15:45

you know, there's lots of different

:: 15:46

places that you could take it to knee stretches, knees off, right?

:: 15:49

And so that would be analogous to changing from a C major scale to maybe the F minor scale, right?

:: 15:54

But then in that F minor scale, there are

:: 15:57

now still a sequence of notes that work and fit together

:: 16:00

and there are notes that don't fit and it's just once you know

:: 16:03

okay we're the end point of this progression whether

:: 16:06

anyone in the room today gets there or not doesn't matter but the end point is down

:: 16:09

stretch let's say we're starting at me at long

:: 16:12

stretch kneeling and you know we're going to start playing the notes of the

:: 16:14

scale and the notes of the scale from long stretch kneeling are long stretch

:: 16:17

kneeling and long stretch kneeling it might be then long stretch kneeling with

:: 16:20

the foot bar down one rung it might then be long stretch kneeling with the foot bar up a spring.

:: 16:31

Go to knee stretches, right? And then, okay, knee stretches,

:: 16:35

then long stretch with the knees up.

:: 16:38

And then long stretch, knees up, to knee stretches, knees up.

:: 16:43

You know, like that might be one progression and there's probably moves,

:: 16:45

intermediate moves in between there.

:: 16:47

We'll probably adjust the foot bar up and down and the springs up and down,

:: 16:49

you know, and the range of motion to facilitate the steps between moves being

:: 16:54

the right distance so somebody can bridge the gap.

:: 16:56

But thinking about, you know, when you start teaching long stretch then,

:: 16:59

you're not thinking like, oh crap, what do I teach next?

:: 17:01

It's like it's blindingly obvious it's like keep going with the scale you play

:: 17:06

the next note in the scale that's what you play next.

:: 17:10

Yeah, I think that's a really handy one. Not that I actually understand music,

:: 17:13

but to the extent that I do,

:: 17:14

you can, I think the music one or the keys on the piano one is a good one in

:: 17:18

the sense that as you start to explore this, and I certainly did this,

:: 17:21

one of the risks is that you start to stratify or variegate or,

:: 17:26

you know, chop things just a little bit too much.

:: 17:28

And then it's like okay so there is actually an appropriate level of jump and you know so,

:: 17:34

in terms of the flow of the class the jump is the thing

:: 17:37

where the people's flow state is maintained you're not over

:: 17:40

focusing on little details people understand what you mean and as they do the

:: 17:44

next layer the strong people get extra challenge and the not so strong people

:: 17:47

have something to drop back to people aren't getting bogged down in lots of

:: 17:50

tiny little variations but there is an exploratory and learning aspect to that

:: 17:55

because this this is you know this is an emergent thing You know,

:: 17:58

the group is always different.

:: 18:00

Reformers are different if you teach in different studios. It's not a black and white thing.

:: 18:03

So this is a principle that, you know, comes down to the specifics of your teaching

:: 18:10

and your clients and your reformer. Yeah.

:: 18:12

The other thing is this is what when Raph and I joke about, there's only two

:: 18:14

movements, cat stretch and squat. Yeah. Right?

:: 18:16

That's why we're making the joke because flexion and extension is Pilates. Yeah.

:: 18:21

So that's the exact joke that we're making. Yeah. Although I often find jokes

:: 18:25

are less funny after you've explained them.

:: 18:28

Do you ever find that that's my wife hates it when I explain jokes to her um.

:: 18:35

Okay. And so, you know, really, no, no, you go.

:: 18:41

Well, I just, so what we've talked and we've talked on this before,

:: 18:43

I think this idea of what our conversation started out on start positions and

:: 18:48

it's ended up essentially at layering.

:: 18:49

And that's not, that's, that there's, that there's, that's no,

:: 18:51

there's no mistake there because you have to understand, you have to understand

:: 18:54

layering in order to understand the start position, because,

:: 18:57

you know, in order to, to the start position is the setup so that you can actually

:: 19:02

succeed in the move, right?

:: 19:04

And what is it? You have to know what it means to succeed in the move in order

:: 19:07

to get the start position right.

:: 19:08

So if you know what the exercise is for, then you know what is important to

:: 19:12

focus on in relation to that start position.

:: 19:15

You know, what does it matter if you get, you know, which bits are important

:: 19:18

that you get it right in the start position in order to actually have the opportunity

:: 19:21

to do the exercise right, and

:: 19:22

which bits doesn't matter, which bits don't matter or matter less. Yeah.

:: 19:25

So there's two things. One, I want to illustrate to what you just said really

:: 19:29

clearly is to talk about snake in terms of a general class, open level general class.

:: 19:34

And then the other is to try and catch where I was headed before,

:: 19:36

which is that we've been talking about layering in the start position.

:: 19:39

And then there is a section of the topic, which is that some start positions

:: 19:45

can be really important because they predict success for the movement you're

:: 19:48

going to call, as opposed to it just being the beginning of the layer.

:: 19:51

So an example is if you're going to lift into a pike, right um.

:: 19:58

And then you've got to think about what kind of pike am I teaching is it a pike

:: 20:01

where I want the knees straight or do I not really care do I want the hands

:: 20:04

over the shoulders because of whatever I'm doing or is it do I want the hands

:: 20:07

behind the shoulders more like a down faced dog.

:: 20:10

And if you're going to teach a pike and you want people to have straight legs,

:: 20:13

then you want to make sure that you call it from hands under shoulders,

:: 20:16

knees under hips, tuck your toes under lift up to straight legs.

:: 20:19

Because 90% of, if not more, humans are going to be able to find straight legs

:: 20:22

where it doesn't really matter where their shoulders go.

:: 20:24

And once you've found the straight legs, then you can pull the shoulders back,

:: 20:27

challenging the straight legs.

:: 20:29

You know, so in that case, it's like the start position is quadruped,

:: 20:33

but actually where you have your hands and knees is important.

:: 20:36

And people might be thinking, well, that's always quadruped.

:: 20:37

And it's like, no, not always, because sometimes you're working a really compressed

:: 20:40

pike, which we use a lot in our courses, where the hands come back closer to

:: 20:44

the knees and you lift up and lean forward.

:: 20:45

That's going to challenge the hamstrings. You might not get straight legs,

:: 20:48

but you're doing something different with the shape and the start position sets that up.

:: 20:52

Right. And so just to capture the difference between those, the different intention between those.

:: 20:56

So you're describing two different pikes. One's more like a down dog where you're

:: 20:59

kind of more, you're making a triangle shape really with your legs and your upper body.

:: 21:02

And the other one is more like a compressed you

:: 21:06

know it's more like if you sort of stood and then did a roll down and touch your

:: 21:09

your hands on the floor in front of your feet it's more of a much more compressed shape

:: 21:12

and the intention behind those two and you know when i say the intention i mean

:: 21:16

like where they build up to and what they're for is quite different so talk

:: 21:20

us through really briefly what's what's the difference in intention or goal

:: 21:23

with those two different versions of a pike for you well the example that would

:: 21:26

be easiest is if the if the if where you're wanting to go would be a, um,

:: 21:32

a leg pull front kind of variation.

:: 21:33

So you've got one leg in the air, um, and the other leg down,

:: 21:37

but when you lift that leg, you're going to bring.

:: 21:40

Uh a lot so so if you do it in the compressed position because

:: 21:43

you've already got that deep hip flexion lifting that up leg

:: 21:46

high is really really hard really hard and and anything

:: 21:49

that you do pushes weight into the hands people don't want that so they keep their

:: 21:52

weight back in the feet and you start to sort of lose the the essence

:: 21:55

of what you're trying to get to which if it's a handstand kick up you want

:: 21:58

enough space that you can lift the leg but enough compression that you

:: 22:01

can get the weight into the hands but we're not generally in pilates

:: 22:03

we're not talking about a handstand lift so it's a so the compressed pike

:: 22:06

would be a progression more towards a handstand whereas the more

:: 22:09

elongated pike might be more of a progression towards an arabesque

:: 22:12

or you know long stretch front or some

:: 22:15

whatever it's called um leg pull front leg pull front

:: 22:18

yeah uh yeah leg pull front and so the the

:: 22:21

hip having the having the hips behind the hands brings weight into the feet

:: 22:24

so as a group instructor more weight in the feet buys you more time so if you

:: 22:28

want to teach me something like lifting one leg you do it with weight in the

:: 22:31

feet and they go lift one leg could keep the leg as straight as you can or grasshopper

:: 22:34

the leg bend the knee whatever you're going to you teach the skill where there's

:: 22:36

time and then you come down, shake it out.

:: 22:39

Now we're going back there and we're going to come forward with the shoulders, load the shoulders.

:: 22:42

Now we're going to lift the leg again. It's a bit harder now because there's

:: 22:44

more weight in the shoulders.

:: 22:45

And then if you're going to do it even harder, you compress even more.

:: 22:47

So we've used start position to set up a position where we've got more time

:: 22:51

and we can test understanding and teach skills.

:: 22:53

Right. And so if we were teaching the start position of that pike,

:: 22:56

of those two different pikes.

:: 22:58

You know, depending on whether we're progressing to an arabesque or whether

:: 23:02

we're progressing to, you know, we wouldn't necessarily be teaching a handstand,

:: 23:04

but whether this, you know, progression eventually leads to handstand,

:: 23:07

you know, for the arabesque, we would cue the hands further in front or,

:: 23:12

you know, further away from the feet.

:: 23:13

Whereas for the handstand progression, we would cue the hands much closer to

:: 23:16

like almost in line with the feet as close as possible, basically.

:: 23:19

Especially if it's a handstand press where you're not kicking,

:: 23:22

where you're just going to try and lift, which we're off into beyond most Pilates

:: 23:25

sessions now. But yeah, so exactly.

:: 23:29

And in fact, that sort of dovetails with that snake idea. But when you're talking

:: 23:31

about before, you know, the...

:: 23:34

When, when I went through Pilates school, I learned snake as a thing,

:: 23:38

you know, there's snake is this great big hairy monster that sits at the far

:: 23:40

end of the advanced repertoire. Yeah.

:: 23:42

And, and I thought one day I'll teach that. And the only time in my life that

:: 23:46

I've been responsible for more chaos than the first time I taught snake in a

:: 23:49

group class was when I was responsible for teaching two year olds and I wasn't trained for it.

:: 23:52

It's like, it's just a fucking disaster, right? Because I was trying to call

:: 23:55

the start position and put your foot on the football and then hook the other

:: 23:57

foot in front and oh no, but then hold on one, no, no step out.

:: 23:59

Then someone's done it and someone, it was just a chaos.

:: 24:02

Fast forward six or eight or 10 years. And now when we do chest expansion with

:: 24:05

the toes over the back edge of the bed, we're teaching snake because you're

:: 24:10

bringing people's attention to what are you doing with the top of your foot?

:: 24:13

You know, when does your client generally think about the top of their foot?

:: 24:16

Never unless they bang it on something.

:: 24:18

So you're bringing attention to that chest expansion. Then you're going to do

:: 24:22

cat stretch, surprise, surprise.

:: 24:24

And you're going to do pike to plank, like could you, which you could call almost

:: 24:27

a midline snake, right? So you take, you're not bothering with the scary entry.

:: 24:31

You're going to do pike to plank off the platform. and then once you've done that you're

:: 24:33

going to have a low foot bar and you're going to put your feet on there and maybe on your forearms

:: 24:36

because you've got a better base of support pike to plank on the forearms and

:: 24:40

then teaching one foot ball of the foot on other foot

:: 24:42

top of the foot on so you say and all of a sudden you're already 30 minutes

:: 24:46

into a class if you're mixing up your muscle groups and then you're going to

:: 24:49

step off and do snake off the floor push the bed out bring the bed back remember

:: 24:52

how we dropped our hips in the pike okay we did we all master that we've all

:: 24:55

done that we can do less spring tension and so you know depending on your metaphor

:: 24:59

you can see these are the train lines or this is Raf's piano chord.

:: 25:02

If you don't get to snake, you can still work the muscles and the movement that

:: 25:06

snake is really effectively without having to do the funky foot bar foot on, hooking foot on.

:: 25:11

And, you know, I think a lot of, I think this is a fundamental flaw with the

:: 25:15

way most Pilates courses operate, which is they split exercises into beginner,

:: 25:19

intermediate, advanced or level one, two, three, you know.

:: 25:22

And when we did our advanced reformer course with Stott Pilates,

:: 25:26

it was like, bam, here's snake.

:: 25:29

You've never, this is a completely different exercise than anything you've done

:: 25:31

before. It's not related to any other exercises.

:: 25:34

This is where the feet go. This is where the hand go. This is the movement.

:: 25:36

And it's like, oh, okay, great. So, you know, straight, you know,

:: 25:39

forget the arithmetic, here's calculus, you know.

:: 25:42

Whereas I think a much more powerful way to think about the system of Pilates,

:: 25:49

the system of contrology is to understand, you know, which exercises build to,

:: 25:54

snake, you know, and it's not just one sequence because there are multiple elements

:: 25:57

to snake. There's the shoulder strength and mobility.

:: 26:00

There's the balance and control of the carriage. There's the rotational strength.

:: 26:05

There's the spinal flexion and extension, strength and mobility.

:: 26:09

There are so many elements to it. And you can build each of those elements separately

:: 26:13

in various different moves and then gradually integrate those elements together

:: 26:16

into moves that look more and more similar to snake.

:: 26:21

And eventually it's so similar to snake that it is snake.

:: 26:28

And, you know, when you think like that, you can take,

:: 26:32

like, you know, you can go along the train line, you can go along the piano

:: 26:35

keys and cat stretch or footwork or lunges or long stretch knees down become

:: 26:41

lots of different things.

:: 26:43

And you can go from, you know, low to high or left to right or however you want

:: 26:47

to think about it. Or you can go and look at the big complicated thing and work backwards.

:: 26:50

And once you've, like, like I've said, when, when, once you've understood it,

:: 26:54

you can't unsee it. And once you see it, then you don't need,

:: 26:57

you never need to think about beginner, intermediate and advanced ever again.

:: 26:59

All you're ever doing is what are the people in front of me doing?

:: 27:02

How far along this continuum do I go?

:: 27:03

You can say where you are. You come with me for the next thing.

:: 27:06

You say, oh, now when I've left every, you know, two thirds of the room is staying back.

:: 27:09

We won't go any further. We'll just do extra reps till everyone's cooked. Right.

:: 27:13

And, and the, the, then when, when, once you've seen it and,

:: 27:18

and thought like that and spent some time with it, then all of a sudden that,

:: 27:22

that sequence that you might do in a class. is also a month's worth of programming.

:: 27:26

It's also six months or a year's worth of programming because you can repeat

:: 27:29

it, you can tweak it, you can add other stuff in the middle and all of a sudden

:: 27:32

you're working on Snake for six months and your clients are never bored and

:: 27:35

they may never get to Snake.

:: 27:36

I think it's just like it unlocks a lot.

:: 27:41

Although if you work on Snake for six months, you have a much greater probability

:: 27:44

of getting to Snake than if you just do it randomly once every six months in an advanced class.

:: 27:49

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Or if you're sitting down on a Sunday night thinking,

:: 27:53

this week I might try Snake.

:: 27:56

Like you need to kind of spend some time with

:: 27:58

what we've been talking about so that you think okay this time of week i might try

:: 28:01

snake and it's going to look like these nine different things and maybe

:: 28:04

i get there maybe i don't maybe it takes me a month and all of a sudden you

:: 28:07

don't need to program next sunday because you've got your plans yeah it's

:: 28:10

it's there's a really interesting parallel between this kind of talk about pilates

:: 28:14

progressions and just the basic elements of rehabilitation which we you know

:: 28:19

we talked about a lot over over the years but essentially every movement can

:: 28:26

be broken into strength, range of motion,

:: 28:28

and skill or control of the joints.

:: 28:30

And when you are injured, you lose some amount of strength, some amount of range

:: 28:35

of motion, some amount of control.

:: 28:37

And rehab is the process of progressive exercises to restore strength,

:: 28:41

range of motion, and control to the affected parts.

:: 28:44

And so typically when you start out rehab, you start by trying to,

:: 28:49

as much as possible, isolate each of those elements.

:: 28:51

So you work on range of motion with no load you work on strength with

:: 28:54

no range of motion etc and then gradually as rehab progresses

:: 28:57

you integrate those elements so you work on strength through range with

:: 29:00

control and that is the exact same process that you can use to get somebody

:: 29:03

from you know cat stretch to snake you know by gradually progressing the strength

:: 29:09

the range of motion and the control elements of that movement by you know jumping

:: 29:15

from one piano key to the next and in this example,

:: 29:18

the piano keys are the different exercise versions or different exercises on

:: 29:23

the scale from cat stretch to snake.

:: 29:28

And we want to progress strength or range or control, but preferably not all

:: 29:34

of them all at once, you know, in a big jump, because that just makes,

:: 29:38

that sets people up for failure.

:: 29:39

And so when you understand that you're teaching somebody to do snake and whether

:: 29:44

or not they ever get there doesn't matter, but that's, you know,

:: 29:46

that's the, that's the North star that we're heading towards.

:: 29:48

You know, that's, that's the star of Bethlehem over the, you know, over baby Jesus.

:: 29:53

That we're, that's, that's where we're heading towards. It's like,

:: 29:56

okay, well, where do we start? Well, we start at the lowest possible position

:: 29:59

where I look around this room and I'm a hundred percent sure everybody in the

:: 30:02

room is going to be able to start there with me.

:: 30:04

You know, it's like, okay. And that is going to look, you know,

:: 30:06

most times like cat stretch or, you know, long stretch kneeling,

:: 30:11

or, you know, depending on which exercise you're working towards,

:: 30:13

you know, footwork or whatever, right?

:: 30:15

It's going to look like some pretty simple start.

:: 30:18

And from there, there is no like quote start position that you have to cue people

:: 30:22

into as such for the next move, because it's about the transition from one move

:: 30:26

to next, not so much as like start position.

:: 30:29

And I think just to finish up, that's a problem that I think actually classical

:: 30:34

Pilates doesn't really have.

:: 30:36

Whereas the contemporary Pilates that you and I learned has that problem because

:: 30:40

each exercise is presented as a standalone, you know, starting from scratch.

:: 30:45

And so when you're learning to teach each move, you

:: 30:48

assume that the person just like teleported in from outer space and

:: 30:51

they haven't done they haven't just done some other move so we

:: 30:54

go okay we're going to do xyz exercise so lie down on the mat you know

:: 30:57

hips here legs there whatever and it's like okay but where did

:: 30:59

we just come from you know but we we were taught to teach each exercise as a

:: 31:04

complete self-contained you know one move workout with no relationship to any

:: 31:10

other move you know that comes immediately before or after it yeah um and it's.

:: 31:19

We don't have a book on the reformer. We've got photos and a lot of conjecture

:: 31:23

about what the true sequence was, but we do have a book from that work.

:: 31:28

And if you spend time with that book and actually do the practice repeatedly,

:: 31:33

what I, what I, what I notice, and I know others notice is it's essentially

:: 31:36

like chapters or layers,

:: 31:38

you know, and as you get to the bigger movements, they're all easily understood

:: 31:41

as combinations of the earlier movements.

:: 31:44

And my, my thesis is that way he

:: 31:46

says it clearly in the book that this is for the average person to get themselves

:: 31:49

uh fit healthful and blah blah blah blah my thesis

:: 31:52

is that he just didn't get around to doing the next book like and whether he

:: 31:56

meant to or not you know this goes to some of the other stuff we've talked about

:: 31:59

is where people get bogged down in trying to refine the roll-up when actually

:: 32:04

you should just move on from the roll-up and do the rollover and once you've

:: 32:07

done the rollover you should do the jackknife and once you've done the jackknife

:: 32:09

you should do can uh control balance and we're doing control balance,

:: 32:12

where do you go? Well, we haven't got that book yet.

:: 32:15

But you don't get bogged down in trying to understand too much of that.

:: 32:19

You don't have to feel your transversus firing when you do roll-up.

:: 32:22

You've just got to make the shape for enough reps to know that you can move on to the roll-over.

:: 32:26

And I just think that what people miss is that that book was to get people moving.

:: 32:31

And it gets you properly moving, but there are harder things you can do.

:: 32:35

But the harder things you can do that some people say, well, that's not Pilates.

:: 32:38

It's like saying Mick Jagger wouldn't have used digital recording material if

:: 32:41

he could have in the 70s. It's like, if Joseph could have had enough tech to

:: 32:44

make the books, he would have made more books.

:: 32:47

Yeah, I wish he'd made a reformer book. That'd be cool. Yes.

:: 32:50

Good talk. Thanks, Raph.