Why every Fitness Instructor should study Pilates!

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pilates2When I started my Pilates journey I was a certified personal trainer who had just discovered that I really loved being part of peoples’ health and fitness journey. Very early in my fitness career I found myself feeling like I didn’t know enough. I found myself hungry to learn more about movement and how the body worked so I could help educate others on how to use movement as a tool in their health care system. When I stumbled upon Pilates I was introduced to an amazing world of educated instructors who inspired me, who taught me Pilates exercises and most importantly taught me the fundamental concepts of movement and how to start using those fundamentals to create efficient movement and balance in my body (and eventually my clients bodies).

I realize that not all fitness instructors want to teach Pilates but I truly believe that if fitness instructors would take some time to study Pilates in their own body and learn just some of the basic movement concepts we teach in Pilates they would find themselves having a whole new toolbox to teach whatever type of movement or class that they teach. That toolbox of being able to teach safe, effective movement would create less injuries, more retention( ie clients sticking with it!) and overall happier clients.

Just as an example here are a couple of fundamental Pilates concepts and some insight into how incorporating these into a body can affect just about any type of movement:

  • Core Engagement : Learning how to properly engage your deep abdominal muscles (transverse abdominus) and how to initiate body movement from this engagement is a skill that so many people have not been taught to do. Even if they’ve read about it or think they know how to do it…if they haven’t practiced it on a regular basis while doing a variety of movements they are probably not doing it!   So many people think if they do a typical “ab” exercise like a crunch or a sit up enough times that will strengthen their core…. this is usually not the case. As a movement instructor just being able to teach and cue your clients on how to find this engagement can completely transform how they move and how their body feels!!
  • Body Alignment: Our bodies are so amazing and are designed to work most efficiently when in alignment. Our bones when in alignment are designed to give us a support system that allows our muscles to work in a balanced, efficient way. Unfortunately, most of us fall into poor posture and poor alignment patterns and we often don’t even realize it. And even when we realize it we don’t know how to bring ourselves into alignment and what it should feel like. Having a fitness instructor who can gives you cues on how to bring yourself into alignment and how to move in alignment will help create balance in your body, prevent injuries and help you get the most out of every exercise and movement you do.

art-pilatesBeing able to teach movement and incorporate teaching skills like proper core engagement and body alignment is not necessarily an easy thing to do. As an instructor it takes not only knowing the concepts but also knowing how to use your words and your physical cues to best guide your clients. And just like it takes practice to learn how to do those skills in your body -it takes practice as an instructor to learn how to incorporate that teaching into every workout or session you are instructing.

If you are a fitness instructor who is looking to learn more I would love to hear from you. As a Pilates teaching studio we offer lots of options designed to help teachers at all levels and experience expand their movement knowledge. I believe in the power of mindful, educated movement and want to help as many people as possible spread that amazingness with others!!!!

Check out our Pilates Teacher Training page here or contact us today to schedule a complimentary session today!

How do I get certified to teach Pilates??

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google2Like many fitness fads, if you google Pilates teacher training you’ll find hundreds of options.  You can find online courses, 2 hour courses and programs that take a year or more!!  If you are considering wanting to teach Pilates you might wonder what the difference is and how do you find a program right for you?  P.S. – Many of these programs claim to “certify” you but don’t be fooled!  Here’s a few facts about Pilates teacher training you should know:

There aren’t a lot of “rules” in the fitness industry as far as certifications.  Pretty much anyone can take a 3 hour course, print off a certification and can claim to teach Pilates. I can tell you from having experience in the gym and fitness world that most people hiring Pilates instructors at the gym don’t have a clue what the Pilates Method is or if you have legitimate training as a teacher.  This is great news for those who don’t want to spend a lot of money, simply want to be able to say they are a Pilates teacher and have no desire to actually have a Pilates practice and teach the method to others.  Unfortunately it’s often these teachers who give Pilates a bad name and turn off clients because they get injured or simply can’t do it because it’s too hard (ie the teacher doesn’t know how to teach it to their body!)

I’m assuming you are not one of the above people and you are one of the people who wants to have an in depth learning experience about how to use the Pilates Method and movement itself to help others empower their body.  This is why you should consider training with a PMA certified instructor in a training program that is approved by the PMA and allows you to work toward PMA certification.  The PMA Pilates Certification Program offers the only third party certification in the Pilates field and is truly the gold standard of Pilates teacher training.  To learn more about PMA approved programs and the importance of getting certified check out the Pilates Method Alliance website.  To learn more about Body Precision Pilates teacher training programs offered at Rivercity Pilates contact us today to set up a complimentary consultation time to learn more!!

 

 

Eve’s Rules of Teaching Pilates….

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Eve’s Rules of Teaching Pilates

  • images-1Your personal problems along with your street clothes should stay in the dressing room where they belong.
  • If your client doesn’t understand or can not do what you are asking them to do – it’s not the client’s fault, it is yours.
  • You should teach your clients so well that they no longer need you.
  • In order to be a good teacher, you have to be a good student. Never stop learning!

I never had the chance to work with Eve Gentry, but ran across these teaching rules from her the other day ago and couldn’t agree more!  I might add to this list:

  • Only teach what you know and know in your own body

I would love to hear from other instructors on any other “rules” that might follow!!
Just click on comment and let us know your “rules”!

 

Joy of Movement

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IMG_0462Like many of my male clients, Murray got talked in to Pilates by someone who loved him and knew that some mindful movement and breath done safely could help him feel better in his life. At 92 though, he definitely wasn’t my regular studio client and I’m sure that the little time we worked together taught me way more than I taught him.

Murray’s daughter had been a regular client of mine for awhile and since she was a care taker for her dad she often had days where she ended up needing to miss her Pilates sessions at the studio because it didn’t work out for her to leave him home alone. Since Becky lived closed to me I offered to come to her house for her Pilates sessions so she could still keep up with her Pilates practice. (If you are or know a caretaker you know it can be a LITTLE stressful and being able to have a mindful movement practice can be an amazing tool at keeping yourself healthy…this is a whole other blog…).

So I got to know Murray because he would often be sitting in his chair having coffee when I came over for Becky’s session or sometimes he would come out of his room part way through our session just to watch.  (He especially enjoyed watching when both Becky & Mike were working out and loved to give Mike a hard time about why he was sweating!)  We often joked with him about wanting to join us but he just said in a very Murray kind of voice…NO!

One day Becky sent me a note to let me know that Murray agreed to do 5 minutes of Pilates with me…maybe just some Pilates breathing.   I often get excited about new clients, but I have to tell you I was super excited to work with Murray as I knew that we could do some pretty basic simple things that would probably make a big difference in his life.

The first day I was there for a session Becky had Murray in his chair so he could do some Pilates with me. I could tell that he didn’t really want to do anything but was being nice for my sake (and Becky’s). We started with some Pilates breathing. Murray had COPD, so anything we could do to help his body breath more efficiently was going to help him feel better. I had brought some squishy 4 inch balls over for him to squeeze to help with movement and strength in his hands. I may have given him a few ideas of how to improve his posture and engage his core muscles….but honestly I just wanted him to get to know me better and see that what we were doing was not so bad and might actually help him feel better.  This is how our sessions continued. Usually we didn’t do much more than 5 or 10 minutes tops and I really just tried to get him doing some gentle movements that would help him strengthen and maintain flexibility and functional movement.

My favorite session with Murray was a day after we had more than a few sessions under our belt and he was getting more comfortable with me and more willing to try different things I suggested. We had been using a small playground ball for some inner thigh strengthening and then I was having him hold the ball in front of his chest and straighten/bend his arms keeping his good posture. Some how I got him straightening and throwing the ball to me just in front of him and him catching and pulling it back into his chest…we were playing catch! Murray had the biggest most genuine smile I had ever seen from him (or maybe anyone) and I knew at the moment I would remember that smile forever. I remember thinking at that very moment that is why I teach movement….joy of movement. He was having fun and playing catch and his smile could light up a whole room.

joyofmovementJoy of Movement…that moment when you are moving and smiling and enjoying yourself…not worrying about counting calories or which muscles you are strengthening or how many calories you are burning. Kids are great at finding Joy in movement…dancing, climbing, playing with no worries. As adults I think those moments are much harder to come by.

As a Pilates instructor I love knowing how the body moves, I love using movement to create balance in the musculature, I love teaching the Pilates method to bodies of any age, size, and shape…. But more than that I love helping people find Joy of Movement in their lives….

 

 

Practice What You Teach: Pilates Anytime Inspiration…

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My favorite workout this week has a little story behind it! My story starts with Shelley, one of the trainees in our Comprehensive Teacher Training Program coming in for her private lesson.  When I asked Shelley how her body felt and if there was anything in particular she wanted to work on she said she was hoping to do Reformer as she had just watched a couple of Amy Taylor Alpers‘ classes on Pilates Anytime and really had some “aha” moments!  I was asking her about what she watched and we excitedly talked for a a few minutes ( OK..maybe 7 or 8 minutes because as Pilates instructors this is exciting stuff….).

We talked about some of the ideas Amy was incorporating, how she taught certain exercises and how it changed how Shelley saw certain exercises.  One of the key ideas that Shelley was talking about was an idea I’ll call  “standing in your feet” throughout all the exercises.  Shelley kept saying,” I know you’ve told me these things, but for whatever reason how she said it just clicked!”.  This is one of the many reasons you should try to take lessons at least occasionally with different instructors: we learn different things from different teachers and sometimes just hearing something a different way helps ideas or movements make more sense in your body!!

Our conversation made it easy for me as an instructor to decide what Shelley would be doing that day in her session with me.  I had Shelley do an intermediate Reformer workout (one she knew well as far as order of exercises) and we focused on “standing in her feet”!  I took the idea that she had been introduced to and tried to incorporate it into every exercise she did and really incorporate it into her body.  Needless to say our focus and my cues and interpretation of this idea really changed how Shelley was thinking about each exercise and made her fine tune each exercise in a way that she hadn’t done before(aka- everything was more work!).

IMG_7354It just so happened that the very same evening Shelley and I were both at the studio and I ended up having an unexpected break due to a cancellation and Shelley did too as she was supposed to observe that session.  So I told Shelley it was a sign that I should work out (and she should teach me!).  I told her we could do some Reformer and she could be as picky as she wanted with me! So I did a intermediate Reformer workout and Shelley taught me giving me lots of cues about “standing in my feet” and just fine tuning my alignment.  It was a great workout that had me, just like Shelley earlier that day, working harder and moving better just from changing how I was thinking about each exercise.

If you practice Pilates or are a Pilates instructor and are unfamiliar with Pilates Anytime– you should check it out!  For a very small monthly fee (like what you would pay to take one Pilates class!)  you’ll have online access to hundreds of amazing classes, workshops, and tutorials with some of the best instructors in the world.  One of the things I love about my Pilates practice is that it is always evolving and it’s a continuous process of learning and incorporating things into my body. Every teacher that I have taken classes, sessions, workshops or continuing education classes from contributes to the evolution of my understanding of movement and the Pilates Method in my body and my teaching.   The video classes and workshops on Pilates Anytime allow me to learn from incredible instructors that I wouldn’t normally get to take sessions or classes with on a regular basis.

As a teacher of Pilates instructors I encourage all my trainees to use Pilates Anytime as well.  Our trainees have to get in quite a few observation hours as part of their training process and we allow some of those hours to come from watching classes and workshops on Pilates Anytime.  Although very different from observing a live session I do think it is so important for trainees to get exposed to different teachers and different teaching styles to help them learn things best in their body as well as learn how to teach it to others.  When you are in small town Iowa there aren’t a ton of options for finding multiple instructors to observe, so I really find Pilates Anytime an invaluable tool for training future Pilates instructors.

Are you a Pilates instructor or practitioner who watches Pilates Anytime?  I would love to hear about some of your favorite classes and what you’ve watched lately!!

It’s starting to get kind of fun!!!

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By: Shelley Oglesby, Rivercity Pilates Pilates Mat Teacher Trainee

April 9, 2016

Nancy and Shelley - teacher trainees

Nancy and Shelley – teacher trainees

I just finished my first week of teaching my practice clients in the Pilates Mat Teacher Training Program at Rivercity Pilates. Before my first session I was nervous, I couldn’t sleep as I was trying to go through everything in my mind that I wanted to cover with each client. My heart was racing as the time approached for my very first private Pilates teaching experience! I was honestly questioning myself about getting into this teaching Pilates thing. The anticipation was scary! I was trying to get myself calmed down and tell myself…I know these women, they are my friends, you’ll do fine, what’s the big deal?, etc. etc.… One of the other teacher trainees told me it’s like ripping off a Band-Aid; you just have to do it!

Yes! It was true. A big sigh of relief after my first client and it went really well! The Band-Aid was off. I thought during and after that first session that as I was teaching, explaining, encouraging, and demonstrating, that, hey, it’s not about me…it’s about the client!

So, I’m starting to feel better and go on to teach my second, third, and fourth private Pilates sessions in one week. I love the feedback I’m getting from these terrific clients and their honesty and hard work! And guess what?

It’s starting to get kind of fun!!

Here’s an example of a message I got from a client after I checked in with her two days after her session: ”I feel great. I can really tell I worked the lower abs and feel it makes me aware of standing up straighter. Thank you!!”

Okay…This makes me smile!