Keep it Simple

“Maybe you could tell me what is going on. And please, speak as you might to a young child, or a golden retriever.  It wasn’t brains that got me here, I can assure you of that.”

-Jeremy Irons in Margin Call

There’s an old saying, “It’s not rocket science.”  Given the current state of Pilates teacher training, it might be just as appropriate to say, “It’s not like teaching Pilates.”

Like many professions, Pilates teachers were traditionally trained through apprenticeships. Trainees would work under the guidance of experienced and often older mentor who would tailor the process to fit the trainee’s needs.  This included a lot of hands-on work with real clients, often practicing the same exercises numerous times until the trainee achieved a certain level of basic competency.  Once this was achieved, additional exercises would be added and the process would start over. With the invention of teacher certification programs and increased popularity of Pilates, modern teacher education has taken on more of a "more is better" approach.  A typical comprehensive certification course is at least 500 hours, covering over 150 exercises, numerous apparatuses, and a deep dive into human anatomy down to the cellular level. While these courses provide greater accessibility to the profession than ever before, they often trade depth of knowledge for sheer volume, focusing more on “what” to teach instead of how to teach.   It’s like learning a route to work by memorizing every turn, street name, traffic law, and a thorough history and mechanical breakdown of the automobile, but not knowing how to actually drive the car.

To be clear, understanding of human anatomy and exercise physiology has grown by leaps and bounds since the time of Joseph Pilates, and it is valuable for teachers to have a basic understanding of these.  However, there is a limit to how much information one can take in effectively before overload, and this limit is much lower when giving instructions to students.  At times, modern teachers can seem obsessed with displaying their knowledge through complex cues and big words.  For example, in the demonstration videos I watched during my training, I observed the following cues given to a student:

“Lie supine with the feet dorsiflexed.”

“Careful not to put too much pressure on the trochanter.”

“Neutral feet.”

Good luck.

Of course, the students in the videos followed perfectly because they were already Pilates professionals who were prepared for the demonstration.  Try those cues in a real-world class of 12 and you’ll get a lot of confused looks (and some interesting positions).  Here’s a more effective (a.k.a. simpler) version:

“Lie down on your back with your toes pulled toward your shins.”

“Don’t press too hard on the side of your hip.”

“Feet parallel.”

Complexity isn’t the same as mastery.  The best instruction is the one that reaches the most students the quickest.  It’s far more important that students move correctly than pick up some powerful words for their next Scrabble game.

Learn how to make your cues more effective in my next blog, The Art of Cueing.