Equipment – Group Fitness
Sample Class: The Perfect Party Ride
Where’s the party? In your cycling class! This segmented ride allows participants to discover their thresholds, stay fully engaged and leave feeling empowered. Ask three questions throughout class to ensure that participants know what’s expected at each stage and can therefore give their best effort:
What’s the goal?
How long is the drill?
How should it feel?
The Perfect Ride Details
Props for a Great Pilates Workout
Pilates instructors know that the key to a stimulating workout is to challenge students by mixing things up, and small props are effective tools for injecting variety.
Pilates: Effective for Better Balance
If you want to add a valuable benefit for your middle- to older-aged clients, emphasize Pilates elements that enhance balance. You may very well save a life.
Case Study: Pilates for Chronic Pain and Osteoarthritis
Like most Pilates instructors, I’ve worked with many clients who deal with chronic pain. One of the most challenging and common conditions I see is arthritis.
What’s Your Pilates Brand?
Brands are very powerful. Pilates, like Starbucks, is a strong brand that can bring certain thoughts and images to mind in your potential customers. They may think of core strength, strong posture or the reformer; they might even think Pilates is too hard.
Sample Class: Yoga on the Ball
Flexibility, balance, strength and endurance are common components of a yoga class. The poses alone provide an excellent workout, but if you’re ready for something different, consider adding stability balls to your practice. This is a fun way to recruit core musculature, incorporate more balance work, and increase range of motion.
Yoga on the Ball Details
GOAL/EMPHASIS: a basic yoga practice incorporating the stability ball TIME: 45–60 minutes (can be shorter or longer depending on how many reps you do or how long you hold poses)
Living Your Yoga: The Five Yamas of Patañjali
Even in childhood I had a philosophical bent. I distinctly remember sitting at the dinner table with my twin brother and discussing with him why the dog could eat hamburger and it became “dog,” whereas we could eat hamburger and it became “us.” An interesting question for a couple of 9-year-olds to pursue. Sadly, we never figured it out.
By my early 20s I had taken up the study of yoga, and my worrisome won- dering about the big questions of mean- ing and purpose in life was becoming more refined. Now I really wanted to “understand” what life was all about.
Practice Techniques For Pilates Instructors To Emphasize
Michele Olson, PhD, FACSM, professor of exercise science at Auburn University in Montgomery, Alabama, and Cherie Wells, lecturer in physiotherapy and clinical education coordinator at the University of Western Sydney in Penrith, Australia, both lead investigators of multiple Pilates studies, offer the following research-based practical tips on what mind-body fitness professionals should emphasize to maximize Pilates benefits for clients:
Science and the Pilates Method
Pilates continues to grow in popularity, and its practice is now familiar to people around the world, with studios throughout North America, South America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Enthusiastic marketers may claim that Pilates can solve everything from weight issues to problems in the bed- room, but we serve our clients well when we educate them about benefits of Pilates training that are validated by scientific consensus.
Promoting Pilates for Youth and Adults
Mandy Tik has been a registered physiotherapist in Hong Kong since 2001 and a Pilates instructor since 2002. Tik combines her passions for dance and sports performance to serve a clientele that is approximately 60% adult and 40% youth. In 2002, she established the first fully equipped Pilates facility for Singapore’s national athletes, with support from the Singapore Sports Council.
5 Tips for Teaching Multilevel Classes
Learning to teach multilevel Pilates mat classes can challenge even the most seasoned pros because we have to master so many specific movements and breathing patterns.
To simplify things, I devised the PESTT protocol—five tips for developing a plan that uses specific cuing and demonstrating techniques to keep classes challenging, engaging and safe at every level.
Sample Class: 3 x 3 Progressive Cycling Circuits
Most cycling class participants walk away dripping in sweat, satisfied knowing they got a highly effective cardio workout. But do they have any sense of making progress from session to session–or even improvement within a single session? Do they have a specific goal they can reach in 1 hour and immediately celebrate? Give participants palpable proof of progress with this easy-to-follow formula designed to challenge all levels!
The Formula
MBSR Program, Especially Yoga, Helps Older Adults
In the first study to tease out the effects of different components of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, researchers have identified yoga and sitting meditation as particularly beneficial practices for promoting health among older adults.
Working With Overweight Clients
How can the Pilates industry be more welcoming to clients who are overweight? We asked instructors how they create a comfortable and beneficial experience that keeps clients of all sizes coming back for more.
Growing the Pilates Market
Ken Endelman has not taught a single class in his 37-year Pilates career, but the Pilates world would not be the same without his leadership and contributions. In 1976, when Endelman was working as a furniture designer and craftsman in Los Angeles, a prospective client asked him to build a reformer—something with which he was completely unfamiliar.
Keeping Aerialists Flying Safely
Aerial, circus and acrobatic arts have recently seen an explosion of interest, thanks in part to the popularity of performance companies like Cirque du Soleil®. Combine this curiosity with the fun and variety that an aerial-based workout provides, and it’s easy to see what makes this an exciting fitness genre.
Pilates Blending
“Pilates has changed,” says Nora St. John, MS, education program director for Balanced Body®.
Today, she explains, many Pilates teachers are well educated in biomechanics. “An understanding of both anatomy and the mind-body connection makes you a better teacher and certainly a better problem solver.
“In the best situation, Pilates is taught with the idea of, ‘Who is the client in front of me? What are his or her goals? How can I use this environment to help the client achieve those goals?’ I think this is a good contemporary view of Pilates.”
Share the Savasana!
Many yoga teachers consider savasana—also known as corpse pose or relaxation pose—both the easiest and hardest of all postures. Why? On the one hand, the point of the pose is to relax deeply and fully in a supine position with arms and legs gently rolled out to the sides.
Medicine Ball Moves for the Core
Did you know that training your core (your body minus arms and legs) is important to maintaining a healthy, strong body? Looking for some new core exercises? Want to add new “twists” to core exercises using fundamental, but often underused, equipment?
Medicine balls have been around for years and are a staple in boxing and sports performance communities. If you’d like to incorporate medicine balls into your workout program, check out these variations from Dan Bettcher, MS, a Muay Thai practitioner and cofounder of KOR Strength and Conditioning in San Diego.
Kick It Into High Gear
A martial-arts–inspired warm-up increases circulation, improves dynamic flexibility and range of motion, integrates sport-specific activities and connects body and mind. The series presented here is an excellent way to begin almost any general fitness class. Start slowly and encourage students to be patient and “listen” to their bodies.
Awaken the Center
First, bring attention to the back and abdominals, the body’s “center.”
