[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 on Instagram @pilatesteachersmanual. Today's chapter starts now.
Hello, hello everybody. Welcome back. I have some fun teaching strategy stuff for you today. It's definitely something that I really loved when it was first introduced to me in teacher training and probably it's one of the things that I use most often in my classes, [00:01:00] whenever I'm teaching literally any class, whether it's equipment or mat, and regardless of the class level.
The studio that I first started teaching at had mixed level classes. And now I teach at studios that have designated levels for each class. What I've learned is that all classes are mixed level classes. Even if you say this is a level one class, there's going to be differing abilities and differing familiarity with exercises. That someone could say that they're a beginner or they're in a level one class, and they've been doing Pilates for months or years. And someone could say, you know, I'm intermediate or advanced and it's, you know, their third or fourth class.
So really all classes are mixed level classes. So the strategy I'm sharing with you today is a way to offer progressions for every exercise and ideally offering those progressions in a way that is seamless so that you could have multiple people doing [00:02:00] multiple different versions of the exercise. And I've got a bunch of fun ways to help that happen.
Another fun fact about class levels. And as I'm going through the exercises here and giving you options, the exercise levels of difficulty, totally arbitrary. Everything about it is arbitrary. Assessment and leveling things is useful, but arbitrary. So just know that if I say like, Oh, this is an intermediate option, that is an opinion and depending on the person's body, depending on how you're teaching it, like, where is this happening? Is this the first time they're doing the hundred or the seventh time they're doing the hundred, right? That's going to change how difficult an exercise is. So just grain of salt. Keep that in mind.
So what I want to offer you and that you can, in turn, offer your students, is ways to dial up and dial down the intensity, the difficulty of an exercise. Very likely you're already doing this. Maybe this is even like a component of [00:03:00] teacher training, but I really loved this and I love talking about it. So here's an episode about it.
There are several things about each exercise that you can change that will make that exercise either easier or more difficult. Those things are, again, not exhaustive, but those things are the base of support, the length of the lever, your stability, resistance and assistance, and your range of movement. There may be a couple more, but those are the ones that I play with the most often and that really come to mind for me.
So let's talk about the base of support. How much of the body is grounded and anchoring you in a given exercise. This can refer to balance challenges where if you're doing something on two feet, can you do it on one foot? This can refer to things like points of contact with the ground, which I guess would also be a balance challenge. Things like in bird dog, where you're in quadruped, or an a four point kneel on hands and [00:04:00] knees. Are you just lengthening a leg behind you so that you have three points of contact with the ground, one leg lifted? Are you lifting the leg and then the opposite arm so that you're working in that diagonal? You have two points of contact, but they're opposite, that cross patterning action. Are you lifting a leg and then the arm that's on the same side? Okay, now we're getting tricky. That would also kind of come into stability. I'd say as well.
And you can very easily, if you're doing something like a bird dog exercise, while you're teaching you could very easily say, you know, extend one leg behind you. Does that feel good? Try extending the opposite arm or, you know, you can of course level from there, maybe the leg is extended behind you, but the ball of the foot's on the ground, maybe the opposite arm is extended in front of you, but you keep your fingertips down. Like, can you lift one? Can you lift both? Like there's ways to even progress within that, but that base of support is gonna really change how it feels.
Same thing: what if you were to take that bird dog into a plank? [00:05:00] So now the point of contact, you still have two or three points of contact, but one of the points of contact is further away from your center, right? That could also play into the length of the lever, making it a more challenging exercise.
And then it's really easy to dial down from there. Okay, you lifted opposite leg and arm. You're feeling really unsteady, really easy to just bring that arm back down so you can really seamlessly transition.
Not so much in the seamless transition, but definitely in the base of support section, if you take an exercise like Swan. You can do Swan a thousand different ways. If you do Swan lying on the mat, hands on the pedal of the chair that is maximum support. The majority of your body is on something and you just have hands on the pedal. You could do Swan on the long box. Okay, now we have to support our legs a little bit. You could do Swan on the chair. Okay. Now we have to support our legs a lot. You could do Swan on the ladder barrel.
So like maybe that's something that you would do in a private session instead where you can transition between [00:06:00] pieces of equipment, but a smaller point of contact and the piece of equipment that you use can also make that exercise more challenging. Or if you tried Swan on the chair, wasn't feeling great, that thoracic extension, the lengthening that you were looking for and that even curve in the spine isn't happening, you can take it to the box where there's a little bit more feedback very easily.
Length of the lever is something, again, another one that's pretty seamless in terms of transitioning. That the longer the lever is the more difficult the exercise is going to be. So if you take that an exercise, like the hundred, say the hundred on the mat, you start with your feet down. You're in base pose, knees bent soles of the feet on the floor, arms alongside your torso, head and shoulders down. Great. You could just pump the arms and breathe and technically would still be the a hundred, maybe like a pre-Pilates version of the hundred. Very easily you could bring your legs into tabletop. Okay, now you have to support your legs.
You could take your legs straight to the ceiling. All right. Legs are straight, so it's harder, but [00:07:00] it's towards the ceiling, so it's still closer to the center. You can take those legs to a 45. You can take those legs six inches off the ground, and that's going to increase the challenge.
Sometimes when I teach the a hundred, I like to progress through all of those levels in the exercise that everyone starts with their feet down. And I just tell people, you know, stay where you feel challenged but doable. You can keep your feet down and just pump the arms. You can bring your legs in a tabletop. You can take your legs to the ceiling. You can take them long or long and low. And by letting them experience all of the progressions, they'll find an edge 'cause you really like took them on that journey through the a hundred.
You can play with stability to make an exercise more or less challenging for a student. If you're doing any exercises on the mat. And this is not to say that mat exercises are not challenging, but the ground doesn't move. So, if you're doing an exercise on the mat, whether it's a plank, whether it's the a hundred, like, whether it's anything, you aren't going to [00:08:00] move, if you're on the mat.
You can challenge stability in other ways, maybe by adding props or other things, pieces of equipment, but it's not going to move. So exercises on the reformer are likely going to be a bit more difficult because the carriage moves and you are suddenly responsible for things.
So if you take something like bridge, if you bridge on the mat, the ground doesn't move. Amazing. I love it. But you can really focus on the articulation. Fantastic. When you understand the articulation, you could take that exercise to the reformer, and now your hamstrings have to work a little bit harder to keep the carriage closed. You can make that more challenging by taking off some spring resistance. You can work harder, you can increase the instability.
Or if you're doing it on the mat, doing something like adding the Bosu, maybe you're bridging with your feet on the Bosu, maybe you're bridging with your head and shoulders on the Bosu. Maybe you're bridging with one foot on a stability ball. That's going to increase the challenge as well. And you can make an exercise more or less stable. Sometimes it's an easy transition. Like if grabbing the Bosu, like if the Bosu was already out, it's a pretty easy transition, but it [00:09:00] depends. But that will increase or decrease difficulty.
Your resistance and assistance, again, all of these kind of play into each other. You don't have to be like, which one am I doing? Because something like where you're bridging on the reformer and you're taking springs off, that would be removing the assistance. The resistance goes down, but the assistance is also going down. And you have to work harder to keep the carriage closed. By the same token, you could add more springs and then the carriage is less likely to move. You don't have to work as hard to keep the carriage closed.
Sometimes adding springs makes it harder. Sometimes adding springs makes it easier. We know that as teachers. Our students don't always know that. Sometimes Swan is one because they're looking at the springs and they're like, "a single spring?" And sometimes new people will add a spring and I'm like, "here's a fun fact. Not the goal of the exercise." So you try to nip that behavior in the bud so that they're not willy-nilly changing springs on you.
You take an exercise like long stretch on the reformer. Standard [00:10:00] spring setting, for me, I would say is a red and a blue. These are all Balanced Body springs. I should have clarified. Maybe you're on a red and a blue. It's going to get more difficult on less resistance. It's going to feel a lot harder for your abdominals on just a red spring or just a blue spring or just a yellow spring. Sometimes it gets easier when you add springs, like in bridge where you're suddenly more stable.
I also like to think about what the springs are doing to help or resist your movement. So if you're doing something like Swan on the long box, the spring is helping you into thoracic extension. It's pulling the carriage closed as you're lifting your head and shoulders, which is assisting you. Whereas if you were to do pulling straps and add thoracic extension to your pulling straps exercise and your working against the springs to lift. The springs are not nicely helping you to extend. You're really having to work against them.
So something as easy as just turning around on the [00:11:00] reformer could make that exercise. Or you could offer that as a progression. We do Swan first, if you want to take it a little further, we're going to turn around and do some pulling straps. If you want to stay with Swan, you know, that's fine.
Coming up after the break, I'm going to talk about range of movement, how that can increase and decrease some difficulty for you. And also other things that you can change to increase and decrease difficulty in addition to the five that I listed, and then just some notes on teaching at specifically leveled classes and also the language that you use as you're working your students through those progressions, that's coming up next.
Hi there. I hope you're enjoying today's chapter so far. There's lots of awesome stuff coming up after break as well. Please share this episode with your friends and followers and share the Pilates love. Now [00:12:00] back to the show.
So we've covered the base of support, lengthening your lever, stability, resistance and assistance. Last one in the five that I mentioned is our range of movement. And a smaller range of movement is going to be easier to control, and easier to control specifically like the parts of the body that aren't moving. So when we're really talking about stabilizing from the center, if you start moving, whatever you're moving, your arms or your legs in a smaller range of movement, it's easier to control than if you were to go immediately to your end range of movement.
A way that I like to work this in is by [00:13:00] starting small and then building. So if I'm doing something like feet in straps, maybe for leg circles, I start by having them draw circles that are the size of a dinner plate, and then maybe the size of a hula hoop and then maybe a larger range of movement, maybe their full range of movement. And that really allows you to explore your stabilizers. Sometimes when students, especially for feet in straps, we start doing circles and they're just like, wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. You can draw a really big circle if you let your pelvis moves, if you arch your spine, or if you externally rotate your legs or any of those things, any of those kind of compensation patterns. You can start with that smaller range of movement and then build.
And that's another way to incorporate challenge. If you're doing something like tick tock where you're lying on your back and you've got maybe legs and table top, and you're rocking both knees over to the right for a twist and then bringing them back to center, rocking over to the left. [00:14:00] You can increase the range of movement. The further you go, the harder it's gonna be to stabilize. And then if you incorporate lengthening a lever, maybe straightening one or both legs, maybe your range of movement, because you made that a long lever challenge, maybe you need to decrease the range of movement that you maintain the stability at the center. That's another thing that can happen.
And it doesn't mean that like, Oh, long levers is harder, range of movement is harder. Doesn't matter. They're just options, right? They're dials. It's not just one dial that you can play with. You can tinker with all of them in all the exercises.
Another few things you can think about in your exercises is incorporating props. You can make an exercise more difficult by incorporating a prop, but also make it easier. I'm thinking of having that stability ball between your knees when you're bridging. That helps you find parallel and helps you find a little bit more, you know, inner thigh engagement. Fantastic. That's cool. You can also use it to make that bridge harder by [00:15:00] maybe you put the ball under your foot instead of between your knees.
And, you know, you can press into the ball a little bit, but it's a bit unsteady. Maybe you're rolling that ball in and out doing a little bit of a hamstring curl while the hips are lifted. Amazing. That's going to challenge your stability. It's also, you know, points of contact, your base of support's changed, all of those things. Props, again, another thing that you can dial up and down.
Rhythm in the exercise, especially when you're getting towards more advanced exercises, when you're able to like play with those dials, maybe in intermediate or advanced classes. What if you change the speed at which you do the exercise? What if you're doing double leg stretch and you inhale really quickly and shoot the arms and legs out long, and then you exhale really slowly bringing the knees. And then sometimes there's even breath counts. We're inhaling for two and exhaling for four. You can do stuff like that to make it more challenging.
Same thing with coordination, you can add new things. So you might take the hundred. Okay. The hardest version of the a hundred is with legs straight and [00:16:00] six inches above the ground. Yeah, maybe. Maybe doing crossovers, right ankle over left, left ankle over right. That's super challenging. Maybe you walk your hundred up. Maybe you do a roll up while you do the hundred. So your legs are probably at the 45. So you're rolling up into a teaser and then you're rolling back down. That sounds terrible. But that would be more challenging. You know, we're adding more things, more pieces to the puzzle.
One of my favorite ways to incorporate coordination in my intermediate and advanced classes is doing supine arms on the reformer and then incorporating the series of five or the abs series to the exercise. So maybe you're doing your lat press, straight arm press to your hips. Maybe you're taking a chest lift. Maybe you aren't. Maybe you're doing single leg stretch while you're doing that. When you press the arms, right leg extends, left knee pulls towards you. And when you lift the arms, your left leg extends right knee pulls towards you. You can do stuff like that. You can do scissors, you can do crossovers. You can add leg choreography, even though you're doing an arm exercise. But again, only once the [00:17:00] purpose of the exercise has been mastered you would want to add those things.
If you're teaching a class that is, say, an intermediate class, And you want to teach an exercise like the hundred, maybe you don't start with feet down, head, shoulders down, just the arms focusing on the breath, right? If it's an intermediate class, maybe your starting point for your progressions is legs and tabletop with a chest lift, or maybe it's just legs and tabletop, you offer a chest lift. You can change where you're starting from on the dial. You don't always have to start from zero and go to 60. You can start at 45 and like go up from there if you're working with more advanced students.
And if you're in a level one class, maybe you do want to give a pre-Pilates option depending on the bodies in front of you. But I would say even in the most advanced classes, even in the creme de la creme Pilates professional classes, you still want to offer progressions because even if you've checked in with people and you've asked what's going on with their body, every exercise is going to feel a little bit different.
So if you start at the hundred with legs long and low [00:18:00] without giving an option to make it easier. And maybe these students are so advanced that they're modifying for themselves. I always like to give at least one level below what I think is the appropriate level for the class, so that if people are taking it easy, if there is something, a little tweaky, a little bit weird, that they do have an option to stay in a safer place, or stay in a more stable place or a more controlled place, just so that everyone feels successful.
Because even our advanced students who love Pilates and do it all the time, we do want to look out for them and still keep them safe and not just keep pushing the envelope. Like obviously give options to push the envelope, but don't expect that we're all doing the control balance dismount off of the reformer with no other options given, right?
And just one point that I want to throw in is that the language you use when you offer progressions matters. You want to always use language that allows your students to feel good and proud of themselves and accomplished where they [00:19:00] are. Even though I'm talking with you guys as teachers and saying, Oh, this is an intermediate option. This is beginner option. This is a level one option. This is level two option. That's not the language that I really recommend you using in your classes.
Instead, I like to start where I am and not say like, Oh, this is easy, or this is the level one option. I just give it," This is the option." And then I try to use language that frames it, that you're doing great where you are, and if you want to go further, you can. You have no obligation to go further. I always say in my classes, everything is optional because you don't have to do anything that you don't feel comfortable with and that you don't feel ready to do.
So I'll start with an option and then say, if you're feeling challenged here, continue working on that stability. Amazing. If you have a little more gas in the tank, or if you're feeling really strong, or if this feels really comfortable for you. Especially when we're doing stuff like a [00:20:00] chest lift, if you look at your belly and you can see that you're drawing your navel in, instead of pushing your belly out like a loaf of bread, then maybe extend the leg straight, maybe extend the legs to 45.
You want to maybe give them a benchmark. Like if you're not in pain, you know. Because sometimes, especially in classes where people are just getting started with Pilates, if you give an option, there's this idea that you have to take that option. And I try really hard in my classes to let people know that it's not a competition that you really just need to do what's right for your body. And I just want you to feel good and strong where you are.
So just being mindful of the language that you use, that things aren't easier or harder because it really depends. Easier how? Harder how? Even that exercise, like long stretch where you're on a red and a blue, "Oh, going down to a red spring is harder." For your abs maybe, but staying on a red and a blue is a lot more work for your arms and back, you know. So really avoiding that binary of easy [00:21:00] and hard and just everything's an option.
I'd love to hear how you incorporate those strategies in your classes. Do you call them something else? Is this something that you do all the time? I'd love to hear from you reach out on Instagram @pilatesteachersmanual. I hope you have an excellent week and I'll talk to you soon.
Thank you so much for joining me for today's chapter of Pilates Teachers' Manual, your guide to becoming a great Pilates teacher. If you loved today's episode, subscribe and leave a review. You can reach out to me on Instagram @pilatesteachersmanual or send me an email to pilatesteachersmanual@oliviabioni.com.
The adventure continues. Until next time.