[00:00:00] Olivia: [00:00:00] Welcome to Pilates Teachers' Manual, a podcast for Pilates teachers by a Pilates teacher. I'm Olivia, and I'll be your host jumping in the conversation on Instagram @pilatesteachersmanual. Today's chapter starts now.
Hello, hello everyone. Welcome to Pilates Teachers' Manual I'm Olivia, and I have a special treat for you today, my friends. I am joined by the fabulous Sarah McGinn, who is an incredible Pilates instructor in Chicago. She was actually my first Pilates instructor. She's teaching now online, as are we all, for Chaturanga Holistic Fitness. I will give you the link to their website. She's teaching on Facebook live at the University of Chicago. I will [00:01:00] link to their page. And she is just a phenomenal equipment teacher, mat teacher, life teacher, and one of my closest friends. So this is Sarah.
Sarah: [00:01:09] Hi everybody.
Olivia: [00:01:11] Oh, my gosh. It's Sarah on the podcast. I have been wanting to get you on the podcast for 10,000 years, which I did not express to you, but I have. Sarah is actually the teacher who, in addition to being my first Pilates teacher, she also studied with me to take the national Pilates exam and we studied together. So if you go back and listen to that episode where I talk about all my study tips and it's like studying with a friend is fun and it is if that friend is Sarah. So that is a treat. You'll catch references to her through episode. I want Sarah to share a little bit about her journey to Pilates, because she has kind of a unique way of becoming a teacher, I think. So yeah, tell us, Sarah. Tell us everything.
Sarah: [00:01:55] Okay. I'll tell you all. So it all started back in my [00:02:00] twenties, weirdly, when I started having lower back pain and I went to the doctors and they were like, it's mechanical back pain. Everyone has back pain. And I was like, Oh, okay. Everyone has back pain. I guess I have to live with it.
Olivia: [00:02:11] That is so terrible.
Sarah: [00:02:13] I know. You get the NHS, but when it comes to minor things like that, they're maybe not quite as on point. It was 20 odd years ago. So you know, I put up with my occasional bouts of very bad back pain. I ended up lying on the floor in my living room with my feet up on the couch until it went away. Unfortunately I didn't discover Pilates then. It took a much more serious episode of back pain in my, I guess I would have been around- I don't want to age myself too much, but let's say late thirties, I think it would have been.
I got into meantime, met my now husband and he'd got me into running and I did my usual crazy thing of ramping up my exercise from zero to 10. And I did my first half marathon and my first marathon in the same year. I had plantar fasciitis. I had [00:03:00] terrible running form. I wasn't a good runner, but it made me feel good. I enjoyed the endorphins and getting out there and it was kind of meditative. So that was nice.
And then after the year I did my first half marathon marathon, the following spring, I did a 10 K. And on my way to the race, I said to my husband, I've got this like weird numbness in my right leg.
Olivia: [00:03:18] Oh my gosh.
Sarah: [00:03:20] It feels kind of tingling. And my husband was like, it's probably just psychosomatic. You're probably just nervous about the race. And I was like, okay.
Olivia: [00:03:27] Bad John.
Sarah: [00:03:29] So I did the race. And the next day I woke up and I couldn't get out of bed. My back was just out. I stood up, I was hunched over like I was 120 years old and moving was agony. John knew through his work, a chiropractor out in the burbs and so I started seeing him and it- but when I first went, I was going three times, four times a week.
Olivia: [00:03:48] Oh my gosh. But you were in like a crippling pain.
Sarah: [00:03:51] Like not being able to like walk without hurting.
Olivia: [00:03:54] Oh gosh.
Sarah: [00:03:55] Terrible. And so long story short is that interestingly, that chiropractor did [00:04:00] not turn me on to Pilates, which I, I hold him to that.
Olivia: [00:04:03] You're like, there were a bunch of places we could have had an intervention.
Sarah: [00:04:06] Exactly. He diagnosed me as having sciatica caused by piriformis syndrome. The warning is the numbness and tingling in my leg, which I know now, and he also found from when I had an MRI that I have a degenerative disc at L5 S1 and I think it was that that was causing the back spasms I was having. Pain that would like literally have me puddling on the floor in tears. So saw him and he got me through the worst of it.
But he was one of more of, I would say those chiropractors who it's a bit of a factory line where you go in, they have the massage. Do the 20 minute massage. Then he just, you know, sees you very briefly, just does the same thing for everyone, kind of one thing fits all.
And I discovered then that was actually a local chiropractor in my neighborhood, Vanessa Willetts, at Praxis. And when I started seeing Vanessa, then that things really turned for the better. And she turned me on to Pilates, and she actually told me about a mat class at Chaturanga, which was called [00:05:00] mat therapy. And it was a more gentle introduction to mat.
And that was the first exercise- obviously I was, this was over the course of several months- my back was starting to get better. I was still having the offhand episode, but I was able to walk short distances. So I- no jumping over puddles. That was just out of the question.
I started taking Pilates therapy mat at Chaturanga, and I was doing that and in it definitely helped. And I was super nervous, initially moving after my injury, I was guarding, wouldn't do any forward folding because that triggered the pain. So I was very kind of guarded in my movements, but it started to help and I started to get better and over time, my back got better.
The doctor I saw warned me. I actually went to see a doctor about nine months in. I was still getting the odd back spasm and although they were less frequent and he was like, you know, you're getting better. It's going to end. Ligaments can take a year to heal. Just give it more time. Do you have anything I could do for you is give you a steroid injection in your spine,
Olivia: [00:05:56] Oh yikes.
Sarah: [00:05:57] But I don't think you need that. So just keep doing what you're doing.
And [00:06:00] so that gave me the confidence to be, okay. I'm going to be good. And so I stuck with it and came out the other side. And after literally about a year was pretty much, I wouldn't say pain-free, but like, back to my normal self.
Olivia: [00:06:10] And I just want to point out that when I met you, this was post all of your back injury and like rehabilitation and I would have never known. I see you. And you're still running all over the place, you're biking all over the place, biking up to Northerly Island, hanging out at concerts, and you're still like one of the most active people I know. That's incredible.
Sarah: [00:06:32] And I do credit both a good chiropractor who treats you, the individual and does a lot of individual tissue work as well as the adjustments and Pilates with my recovery, and putting in a lot of work myself to maintain that and keep my spine healthy and doing all the good thing for my body that I should.
Olivia: [00:06:49] Sarah is an avid foam roller, and she holds me so accountable in terms of heading to the studio, and like doing your workout. You can see that this has made a very positive [00:07:00] impact, even though it was a unpleasant, to put it mildly, experience. You really have the, like the best habits I have ever seen.
Sarah: [00:07:08] The transition from clients to teacher came about strangely, because for some reason, the studio owner at Chaturanga, Marylee, reached out and said, I'm going to be doing a teacher training. And I honestly have no clear idea why she thought of me because I wasn't taking equipment classes, I wasn't doing privates with her. I was just doing pretty much the Pilates mat therapy a couple of times a week, but she did. I was one of those several clients, she emailed and said, you know, I'm going to be doing this training. Would you be interested?
And I was like, you know, I actually, I am. I'd like to know more about Pilates, I'd like to understand my body better. I want to understand how I can manage my spine health and make sure that my back stays healthy and avoid surgery for as long as possible, maybe forever. And so I signed on thinking that I would do the mat teacher training, which was a very short teacher training and just see how that went and.
I had no real expectations of doing the whole program, ended up doing the whole [00:08:00] program.
Olivia: [00:08:00] Yeah, you did.
Sarah: [00:08:01] So it was interesting because I was one of the few people in the teacher training who had never taken equipment classes. So I not only had to learn to teach equipment, I had to learn how to do equipment, learn each equipment. So it felt like a double whammy in terms of learning, but made it through. And in some ways maybe it was helpful because I was approaching everything from a very naive beginner's point of view.
Olivia: [00:08:25] Yeah. You're like, how am I going to tell people how to get their legs in straps? I also did not know how to get my legs in straps. So probably you also are, I think really well known for your very clear cuing, maybe that contributed.
Sarah: [00:08:38] So I started doing the teacher training back in summer 2015, and I became studio certified summer 2016. It took me about a year to complete the program. And then I should, I could keep going on that?
Olivia: [00:08:51] Yeah. I mean, because you didn't stop there, you could've stopped there. So now you're studio certified. You're almost, pain-free amazing. Then I [00:09:00] came around, I did the teacher training the year after you. We took the exam together after studying for any eternity. And that was in January of 2018. Wow. Yeah. So what inspired you to take the national exam after already being a very successful teacher? In terms of you taught group classes, you taught private classes, you teach equipment and mat everything.
Sarah: [00:09:25] The honest answer, Olivia, is you.
Olivia: [00:09:28] Oh, really? I didn't know that. That was not planned.
Sarah: [00:09:33] Yeah, you were my inspiration. I'd been thinking that it was something I probably should do, but I tended to procrastinate about it. The longer I left it, the more, it seemed like a big arduous thing that I'm going to have to study for it. And then you came in with your amazing enthusiasm and, like I'm going to take the PMA in January. And I think it was about October. I was like, wow. That's inspirational. Like I'm going to do it. She's already submitted her application to do [00:10:00] the date and she's going to be studying for it. I'm like I'm jumping on that bandwagon. I'm going to use this to make me get this done.
Olivia: [00:10:06] And it made studying so much more fun to do it together because I probably wouldn't have been, I was still would have done it because I had already paid for it.
There's a little piece of advice. If you are not sure about taking the exam, pay for the exam and then you will have to study for it. That's crazy. Well, I'm so glad that that happened.
Sarah: [00:10:25] You were just your normal, super motivated self.
Olivia: [00:10:27] For me, like doing it with friends was really helpful and just like meeting at the studio to go over things together. I'm a very kinesthetic learner, which makes Pilates fabulous for me. But the exam is all multiple choice questions. So the idea is that your studio certification was the hands on part of the exam, and this would be like the written part of the exam.
Sarah: [00:10:46] It was special that's for sure.
Olivia: [00:10:48] It was special. The great news is you only have to take it once. When you pass it, you don't have to take it again. You just renew your certification. You do not have to take it again. Wahoo..
Sarah: [00:10:59] Please [00:11:00] make sure you can renew your certification. Do not at lax. You don't want to have to go through that again.
Olivia: [00:11:03] Yeah. Do not let it lapse do not let it lapse. Also, before you took the PMA exam, you also did a bunch of additional trainings in like specific fields or like weekend workshops or things. So what are some of your specialties? What do you love in Pilates land, besides all of it.
Sarah: [00:11:22] Good question. So I would say my number one specialty, well, apart from Pilates for back issues, would be Pilates for osteoporosis. It was an interesting how this came about, actually. One of our clients came to the studio and asked them if they'd consider adding a equipment class, especially designed for people with osteoporosis.
And Marylee approached me and said, we had this request. Is that something you'd be interested in writing your special paper on? Because each of the trainees had to do a special area of expertise, put together a little program, designed around a specialty, whatever that might be. So it could be pregnancy, osteoporosis, back issues.
And so I said, I would love to [00:12:00] do the work on osteoporosis and, coincidentally then in my inbox, the universe is amazing, right? Pops an email about Basi, running a training for Pilates for osteoporosis in California. I had the need and the universe provided. So I signed up for that and I flew to California, which was amazing and a lot of fun and got to visit the wonderful Basi studio, which if you ever get a chance to go, it's just amazing and beautiful.
And I did a weekend training on Pilates for osteoporosis, and I also watched a lot of videos and workshops on Pilates Anytime of the great teachers. Sherry Betz is one who do a lot of work with clients with osteoporosis. And our studio at Chaturanga, we have a lot of older clients, and so we have a lot of people with osteoporosis. It's also a very relevant specialty for the studio that I teach at. So that was amazing.
I brought back that knowledge to the studio and ran a couple of trainings for the other teachers at the studio so that everyone would be familiar. I mean, we learn about the contraindications obviously during the studio [00:13:00] certification, and then the PMA exam, but going into more depth around those, really getting a good understanding.
And I think a lot of teachers are very scared when they find out that someone has a condition. So whether that's osteoporosis or pregnancy or whatever it may be, they walk in the room and you're like, Oh my goodness, this means I can't do this, this, this, this, and this. And I think the great thing about having that in depth training on an area like that is that it flips it for you.
Instead of thinking, I can't do this, this, this, and this, you think I can do this, this, this, and this. And so it just changes your whole mindset into a more positive place. And as a new teacher, you know, it takes some of that fear away when you have someone who comes in that you'll and you're, you're scared you don't want to damage people. We want to keep our clients safe and well. And so someone comes in with some specific needs that can be really scary as a new teacher.
And I think we get more confident with that over time. Definitely a top tip: if you have any fears like that, just learn as much as you can and learn what you can do with those clients.
Olivia: [00:13:56] And there are so many amazing resources out there, whether [00:14:00] they're continuing education, credit resources, or just the classes on Pilates Anytime, just kind of builds your mental repertoire of, you know, someone says pregnancy and you just like open a book and you're like, all right, pregnancy chapter, yes, we are going to not do extreme adduction. So instead we'll do-
And especially when you're studying for the exam, like the contraindications are very much like, don't do this, don't do this, which doesn't help you when you're teaching a class always because it's like, don't think about an elephant. If all you can think about is don't flex the spine, then you miss out on a lot of things that you can do.
So right now you are isolating. We are all isolating physically. I know that you are teaching a bunch of mat classes online and have done some private online stuff as well. So tell me a little bit about that transition that we are all currently navigating and fitness land.
Sarah: [00:14:58] Again, when I ended up being a [00:15:00] procrastinator, I had always had ambitions of getting my Pilates Facebook page up and running and getting a Pilates Instagram up and running, learning how to live stream. And of course I did none of those things until you have that major incentive of like, well, this is it or nothing, then it's amazing how that adds motivation.
So the current situation has actually been amazing in terms of having me hit the button on all of those things. So I have an Instagram for my Pilates business. I'm teaching online for my regular studios and I'm also offering a couple of little classes, just friends and family, just to give everyone a chance to come together, connect and move. I'm doing one for my local community out where I am in Indiana right now as well. Those are amazing.
And I've actually found they're really helpful in just having some structure to my days. I'm mostly in the mornings around nine, nine 30. And so just having that to get up for movement being the first part of my day while we're in lockdown feels amazing. Yeah. It sets you up to have a more positive day.
Olivia: [00:15:59] And [00:16:00] I know for the mat classes, especially, I am also working out a lot more than I usually do.
Sarah: [00:16:07] Sure. I went from- it's funny just before this all happened, I was teaching I think one mat class a week, and then I just added two other mat classes for the University of Chicago. So I went from teaching one mat class a week to three mat classes a week in January. And I am now teaching seven mat classes. Yeah.
So it's an interesting challenge. I'm trying to alternate. So when I do certain exercises in one class, I try and maybe not do those the next day, just to keep things mixed up and not go overboard and just completely fry my glutes or, you know,
Olivia: [00:16:40] Oh my gosh. I teach a lot more equipment than I teach mat. And so for equipment, you're not doing footwork every time you teach it. And especially like when I teach at Club Pilates, I'm teaching four classes in a row. I'm not doing four classes in a row. I'm pacing the aisle for four hours and [00:17:00] changing springs. I'm not doing it. So it's, it's been an adjustment for me. Like you said for your glutes to be like, alright. Like this foam rolling is no longer optional. This is foam roll or you won't be able to walk. A nd seven it's still at least one a day or at least six days. How many days are you doing it?
Sarah: [00:17:18] I might have to cut back.
Olivia: [00:17:19] Consolidate, consolidate.
Sarah: [00:17:21] Yeah, it has been an interesting physical challenge. And I, like you, I was teaching mostly equipment and I was teaching mostly privates. I actually only had one mat class. I did a few equipment classes, group equipment, and then all of the rest of my hours, probably 15 hours a week, I was teaching privates.
So it has been a big change, the whole private thing online. I'm still trying to figure it out. I guess a lot of us probably are. A lot of the value add, I feel from privates comes from the different equipment that you have, and then being able to watch your clients very closely and give very, very specific feedback.
And you just, you don't have the equipment. You can try and come up with [00:18:00] exercises that use body weight in similar ways, but it's just not quite the same. And then you don't have the same ability to observe your clients unless your clients have an amazing setup, so you can see them clearly on a large screen, and they're very okay with adjusting their position so that you can see them from head to toe or adjust the screen as need be.
It's very hard to see what people are doing, or you can maybe correct the big things that you notice. Oh, it's one of your shoulders hiked up by your ear, but maybe you're missing some of the subtle things that you would see if you're in the room with them. So I haven't yet figured out how to make that work. It's definitely difficult.
Olivia: [00:18:40] I, in addition to teaching Pilates, I also teach yoga. And so for, for Pilates, a hundred percent, and for yoga, I'd say even more like the hands on adjustments are like huge. And even when I took Benjamin Degenhart's the art of Hands On adjustments, you can't always [00:19:00] see if a muscle's working, but if you are able to put your hand on the person, because sometimes it doesn't even look the way it should look.
If you're like, Oh, their abdominals are supposed to be pulling in, like their belly should be totally flat right now and I don't see that. So I have to cue them to engage their abdominals more, but really they're doing it. Just the bodies look different and you can always feel if the muscle is contracting. Same thing, like shoulders a lot, like I'll cue, people's shoulders down. They may be engaging their lats already. And that's what shoulders down looks like. And so it irks me that I can't like get in there and, but yeah, I've taught a couple remote privates.
Definitely check out the episode on remote teaching, which is up on the podcast. Now I go a little bit more in depth into sort of some suggestions to make for you as a teacher and also for your clients so that everyone has the most positive experience we can have without being physically in the room with each other.
Yeah. So another thing I wanted to ask you, Sarah, and you gave a little bit of advice [00:20:00] earlier for teachers in terms of don't be nervous. The things that are scary to you, try to learn more about them so that they become demystified and a little bit less scary. But do you have any advice for experienced teachers for teachers, who are you? What would you tell yourself right now?
Sarah: [00:20:18] Besides stop procrastinating, get your YouTube channel going, I think I would just say, stay curious, keep wanting to learn and challenge yourself. So I am guilty myself of occasionally getting stuck in a rut. Normally the universe comes along and gives me a nice big poke when I'm in that place. And then I end up having to move on and adapt and move forward. If the universe isn't giving you a prod, maybe see if you can motivate yourself to get out of your rut.
So continue to learn, continue to take other people's classes, explore teaching in different places. I taught at one studio exclusively for a long time, a [00:21:00] few years, and teaching in other places, it's really helped give me a different perspective on my own teaching and my own Pilates practice. So I would just encourage people to stay curious, get out there, explore whether that's online. Well right now, obviously.
Olivia: [00:21:15] Right now it is online, but the good news is there are so many resources. There are so many teachers who are offering classes for free right now. I know that Pilates Anytime has like a two week trial, if you wanted to like sneak in there with your free time, although Pilates Anytime, like I would also invest in having a Pilates Anytime account, because they really have fabulous stuff for you.
Sarah, thank you so much for joining me. I mean, it's not like you had anywhere else to be, but still I'm glad that you having me to live here. It's been great. Thank you.
Sarah: [00:21:46] Thank you.
Olivia: [00:21:54] Thank you for listening to this chapter of Pilates Teachers' Manual. Be sure to [00:22:00] visit the Instagram link in the description for the post on today's episode. There, you can leave your comments, ask questions, and join the conversation. Also be sure to support the podcast and take advantage of the great affiliate links in the description.
The adventure continues. Until next time.