[00:00:00] Welcome to Pilates Teachers' Manual, your guide to becoming a great Pilates teacher. I'm Olivia, and I'll be your host. Join the conversation and the Pilates community on Instagram at @pilatesteachersmanual and visit buymeacoffee.com/OliviaPodcasts to support the show. Today's chapter starts now.
[00:00:56] Hello. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. [00:01:00] I'm really looking forward to today's episode because this is a topic that I explored over on Pilates Students' Manual, but I think it has some pretty cool applications for Pilates teachers as well. So I'm talking about it over here too. That is, what is the goal of Pilates? Why do we do Pilates? What are we doing Pilates for?
[00:01:24] As always, there isn't a right or wrong answer here. But I do think that how you answer this question shines a little bit of a light on how you are going to teach Pilates. It may also reveal some underlying beliefs that you have about the human body or movement or exercise.
[00:01:46] I'm going to explore some potential answers in today's episode, and then I'll give you my answer too. There's a really great podcast conversation coming up with Tabatha Russell here on Pilates Teachers' Manual in just a couple of weeks. [00:02:00] And just as a sneak peek, something that really drew me to Tabatha and something I really loved about our conversation is how clear she is about what she stands for, what she's doing in the industry, and her purpose. When you get clear on the why behind what you're doing, it's much easier to say yes to things that are in alignment with what you want to do, because knowing what you want to do and why you want to do it is more than half the battle.
[00:02:33] So what is the goal of Pilates? It could be doing Pilates for its own sake. You do Pilates to practice and get better at doing Pilates just because it's difficult and you're challenged to master the exercises and you do it because you can. Just like climbing a mountain or running a marathon. It's a challenge you set for yourself.
[00:02:57] That particular answer to the question [00:03:00] strikes me as kind of the liberal arts education approach to things. And I say that as someone who both attended and has a degree from a liberal arts college, uh, in something that is only tangentially applicable to the work that I do now. But the purpose of, you know, going to school and getting that liberal arts education is more about learning how to learn, how to approach problems or different situations, and solve issues that come up, versus specific job training to become a plumber or a mechanic, something like that, where you are trained specifically in a job, like how to do tasks. And again, nothing wrong with either way of learning, but different ways of learning.
[00:03:44] Certainly this reason, this, you know, doing it for the sake of doing it reason is why I love and practice Ashtanga yoga because it's challenging myself to be better, stronger, more flexible than I was and that's highly motivating to me. And I see [00:04:00] why people who love classical Pilates or, you know, do the exercises in the classical order and challenge themselves to do that, why that's so appealing. It's like your own personal mountain. Joe's Pilates exercises.
[00:04:17] You might say that the goal of doing Pilates is to get better at doing something else. Maybe you found Pilates as rehab and your end game, the reason you do Pilates, is to get back to your sport, whether it's dance or soccer or something work related. You can't currently do the thing that you want to do, so you're doing Pilates to gain the strength, flexibility, and coordination that will allow you to do the thing that you want to do.
[00:04:46] And it also doesn't have to be sport. I work with a lot of older adults and active aging style things. And it could be activities of daily life here. It could be getting up and down off of the floor or [00:05:00] climbing stairs without using the handrail or picking up your grandchild, getting in and out of a car, those activities of daily life that we can take for granted until we're unable to do them.
[00:05:12] I've also thought about here, what Joseph Pilates goal for doing Pilates was, which he shares in the iconic Return to Life Through Contrology, which I was just rereading as part of March Matness last month. And he says right in his introduction that it's the total rejuvenation of mind, body and spirit.
[00:05:34] Every time I read that, it makes me laugh a little bit to myself because a lot of people come to Pilates because it's like less woo woo or less like hippy dippy or less spiritually inclined, perhaps, than yoga, which Pilates, of course, often gets compared to. But here's Joe over here, you know, spiritual rejuvenation is where it's at.
[00:05:56] And I know that that's a loaded term and I'm joking quite a bit because it can [00:06:00] have lots of meanings, but that is another reason you could be doing it. That mind body spirit connection is a totally valid way to love doing Pilates and to want to do Pilates for that purpose.
[00:06:14] And I didn't share this on Pilates students manual, but it does- I do think it's worth to say that you could also just do Pilates because you like doing Pilates. And maybe it's for one of those other reasons. Maybe that's what got you into it to start, but you keep doing it because you like it. You like how you feel. You like how you feel when you do it and also when you're not doing it, you feel like other parts of your life are improved because of it. And it's not that you're trying to get better at other parts of your life, but again, as a side effect of doing Pilates, you do improve in other parts of your life. And that feels good. You feel strong and capable and coordinated and controlled and all of those good things.
[00:06:57] You could also do Pilates because [00:07:00] you know, from the American College of Sports Medicine that you should exercise. You should do two to three strength training sessions per week and 150 minutes of moderate intensity cardiovascular exercise per week. And when you do that, your likelihood of dying for any reason in the next five years is dramatically reduced. So a strength training session involves working all major muscle groups to near fatigue. And that sounds like Pilates to me, like that is a form of strength training.
[00:07:35] We've only scratched the surface of what possible goals are for doing Pilates. So coming up after the break, I'll share a couple more goals and how your personal goal might shape the way that you teach Pilates. That's coming up next.
[00:07:55] Hi there. I hope you're enjoying today's chapter so far. There's great stuff coming up [00:08:00] after the break too. Be sure to subscribe wherever you're listening and visit buymeacoffee.com/OliviaPodcasts to support the show. There you can make a one time donation or become a member for as little as $5 a month.
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[00:08:52] So all of the goals that I outlined, and those are of course not the only goals that exist, but when I sat down and brainstormed, those were the ones [00:09:00] that came up as big goals that I'd seen either from myself or that I've seen my clients bring to me. So depending on what you see as the goal of Pilates, you might teach Pilates differently or approach the exercises differently and the way you teach and approach Pilates may resonate more or less with certain clients that you work with.
[00:09:24] So if you believe that the goal of doing Pilates is climbing your personal Mount Everest, you might teach the Pilates exercises with an emphasis on performing them in a very specific way that matches the metric that you're trying to reach.
[00:09:39] If you are trying to do Joe's teaser, then you're going to practice specifically this type of exercise. You're going to start seated and roll back into it and kind of do a roll up into teaser legs. You're going to do it as many times as Joe told you to do it and really use that as your guide.
[00:09:57] If you teach [00:10:00] like that, uh, people who see Pilates like that will really resonate with you. They will love the specific way that you teach. They will love the way you're always reaching towards this goal because it's their goal too. So it makes sense that those type of people would click with you.
[00:10:17] If you love the rehab applications of Pilates, you might teach with a bigger toolbox than just the Pilates exercises. You might adapt or modify some of Joe's traditional Pilates exercises in order to help meet the goal of doing the other thing. Maybe it's improving your golf swing. Maybe it's getting stronger after a knee replacement so that you can climb stairs again. People who have goals outside of Pilates will resonate with you more because you're using Pilates in a way that helps them meet their goal, which again, is not a good goal [00:11:00] or a bad goal, but it's their personal goal. And we know that being motivated to do exercise makes us more likely to exercise. And so when we can tap into a client's internal motivation, we have more success as teachers.
[00:11:16] If you're prioritizing the mind, body, spirit, rejuvenation aspect of Pilates, you might teach in a way that promotes your clients' flow state, that sort of way of moving that is It's almost intuitive. Like I find this a lot in Ashtanga because again, you're doing the exercises the same order, the same way. So it's almost like you're not thinking about what you're doing in a- it's not that you're not thinking about what you're doing. How do I want to say this? It's like the movements come to you and you're deeply present in them as they're happening. This is what I think of as the flow state. You're deeply present in what's happening, but [00:12:00] you're not micromanaging what's happening because so much of it happens automatically because you've practiced so much. So that flow state can be a really rewarding place to work in and be in. And I think that that's why, you know, doing exercises in a particular order the same way every single time can be so valuable because you don't have to think about what comes next. You know what comes next. And so you're just really experiencing it, this kind of embodiment piece of Pilates, like you're going to teach in a way that matches that for you and matches that for your clients.
[00:12:38] My personal answer, I think, is that I see Pilates as a form of strength training. It's a form of exercise, and it offers a uniquely low barrier of entry to people who are looking to begin exercising, no matter what their goal is. I also believe that the human body is strong and capable and [00:13:00] resilient, and I'm definitely a movement optimist.
[00:13:04] And while that's my personal belief, even more than what that belief is, it's important to know what your belief is. Because you know, your default setting, you know, when you come in to teach a client cold and you don't know anything about them, that this is the way you teach and approach Pilates. And while that's my particular answer, it doesn't mean that I can't work with clients who have the goal of mastering Pilates in order to master Pilates or that they want to rehab an injury or, you know, that they want to find their flow state and they just like Pilates.
[00:13:40] You can see that even in my answer that I'm, you know, kind of dipping my toes into multiple answers and I think it also changes maybe not day to day, but over time that this answer can change too. Because Like right now I'm working very loosely on piking into a handstand and there aren't any pikes [00:14:00] to handstands in Pilates But there are a lot of pieces of Pilates that help me in my journey to pike to a handstand.
[00:14:08] So I'm being flexible with the Pilates exercises. I'm cherry picking a little bit because I want to get good at specific skills in order to perform this pike to handstand that I've been working on.
[00:14:21] I've said it many, many times on the podcast and I will keep saying it. I think the Pilates industry has plenty of space for lots of types of teachers with lots of types of goals and lots of different ways of approaching the exercises.
[00:14:36] Some teachers will resonate with certain types of clients and there's nothing wrong with that. There's always people who are easy to work with and people who are more difficult to work with. And I think that clients benefit from having multiple teachers and multiple perspectives because what's interesting and super valuable and the absolute pinnacle of Pilates for one [00:15:00] teacher might be different from someone else. And our clients benefit from seeing through all of the lenses with which we can view Pilates.
[00:15:09] It's good to know where you stand. It's good to know what's important to you as a teacher. What kind of experience you're hoping to create for your clients in your classes or in one on one sessions, or however you're delivering the Pilates exercises in your community, in your studio, in your home.
[00:15:30] When we can recognize what's important to us, we can share that with people more readily.
[00:15:39] This is one of those episodes that the more I think about the goal of Pilates, the more I'm like, well, maybe I should include, and I really want to talk about. So it's definitely a deep topic and a nebulous topic. And I think it's one of those ones that the more you try to pin it down, the more you see the overlap between the [00:16:00] goals. And that there's bits of truth, I think, in many ways of teaching and approaching it.
[00:16:09] Huge thank you as always to my supporters on Buy Me a Coffee. That March newsletter went out last week.
[00:16:17] Make sure you sign up for a coffee chat. So we can hang out and talk more Pilates. I hope you have a great couple of weeks and I'll talk to you again soon.
[00:16:34] Thanks for listening to this week's chapter of Pilates Teachers' Manual, your guide to becoming a great Pilates teacher. Check out the podcast Instagram at @pilatesteachersmanual, and be sure to subscribe wherever you listen. For more Pilates goodness, check out my other podcast, Pilates Students' Manual, available everywhere you listen to podcasts. The adventure continues. [00:17:00] Until next time.