PTM 8.1 Keeping Your Teaching Fresh

[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 and the Pilates community on Instagram at @pilatesteachersmanual and visit buymeacoffee.com/OliviaPodcasts to support the show. Today's chapter starts now.

[00:00:54] Hello, hello, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for your [00:01:00] patience as I took that little hiatus in January and February. Very exciting news though, during that hiatus, I have taken on the role and responsibility of lead instructor for Club Pilates. I am responsible for the River North, South Loop, West Loop, and Wicker Park locations in Chicago, and I'm getting to do some pretty cool stuff, mentoring teachers and working with amazing teachers across all phases of their Pilates teaching career, and helping those studios continue to be some of the best studios in the country.

[00:01:37] I love being able to amplify the positive effects of Pilates in people's lives beyond just teaching more classes. So I plan to continue hosting the podcast and also sharing some of the insights because I just get to work with more people doing more things now. So really excited about that. Really happy to be part of that team [00:02:00] and, uh, getting to do all these new things in the Pilates world.

[00:02:04] Today's episode is about keeping things fresh in your Pilates teaching. I think everyone has their own tips and tricks for staying engaged in their teaching career and I think that this is one of the big keys to teaching longevity and something that really separates people who teach Pilates for a couple years and then leave the industry, uh, from people who are able to continue teaching Pilates for decades and decades.

[00:02:35] I also think that keeping things interesting is important for you as a teacher as well as your students mixing it up or keeping things fresh can look different for everybody. And there isn't one optimal way to do it, I don't think, but I'll share some of my favorite strategies and then you can incorporate the ones that fit well for you.

[00:02:58] So the problem this [00:03:00] episode is looking to address is that your teaching can start to feel stale. You can feel like you're stuck in a rut and you can get bored with what you're doing. The solution is to keep things interesting and fresh. Some of those ways to keep things fresh might include taking other teachers classes, doing other forms of movement, doing Pilates just for yourself, having a brainstorm sesh with other teachers, choosing different pieces of equipment or props to work with in your classes, choosing a Pilates principle to explore, changing the spring settings, changing the body position or mixing up the order in which you teach exercises. 

[00:03:45] There have been other episodes where I have talked about getting out of a teaching rut and finding Pilates inspiration, but it's one of those things that comes up over and over again across your teaching career [00:04:00] as you have ebbs and flows and I think it's worth revisiting. I also recognize that not everyone goes and listens to the entire back catalog of the podcast. So here are some of my takes on these strategies. 

[00:04:15] One thing I can say as part of this lead instructor position is that I've learned so much from observing other teachers teach their classes when I'm doing evals, which is one of the things that you do when you're a lead. And it's a hundred percent making me a better teacher. Watching or doing another instructor's class is a gold mine for teaching inspiration from new moves, a different focus, a unique style. Everything about being a student in another person's class is awesome for getting out of your own teaching brain and into someone else's. Even if that teacher is teaching something that feels stale to them, it might feel totally fresh and new to you as the student. 

[00:04:56] Pilates is a way to move, but it's not the [00:05:00] only way to move. So sometimes taking an exercise class or moving in a different movement modality can highlight what makes Pilates different and interesting. Contrast is always interesting, right? So I love to explore this with breathing because I have a yoga background as well. And one example of this is in yoga, if you were going to do a supine twist, you would exhale to take your knees to one side and inhale to bring them back to center. The reasoning behind that is that you can twist more deeply when you're exhaling and creating space in your body to move.

[00:05:37] In yoga then you would exhale to twist and inhale to come to center. 

[00:05:43] In Pilates, we like to exhale on the exertion. So the hardest part of a supine twist is lifting your legs off of the ground and returning them to center. So in Pilates, the breathing would be opposite. You would inhale to take your knees [00:06:00] across into a twist and you would exhale to bring them back to center because you're lifting the weight of your legs against gravity.

[00:06:07] The breathing is exactly the opposite, but both ways of breathing in that exercise have purpose and value. And it's interesting to explore how each breathing pattern would fit in the class. It can be something that you can explore. There doesn't have to be a right way to do it. It's just ways to do it. And let's try it different ways. 

[00:06:29] So I'm already excited about this. I was writing this and I was like, Oh man, that's so cool. But you can create that contrast. You can explore contrast between whatever other movement modalities you like to do and just explore a different way of moving and doing it. 

[00:06:47] I'm also a big advocate of doing Pilates for yourself as a source of inspiration. So not doing Pilates as a way to program classes for the next week, even though that might come out of [00:07:00] it. Not even to try things that you saw other people doing, but just to move in ways that feel good and wonderful and delicious for yourself. When you do that, you can do all your favorite moves and skip all the ones you don't like. You can spend 10 minutes doing a stretch if it feels good, and you can do exercises in whatever order you want to do them in. I love this because it's giving yourself permission to enjoy Pilates, which is what we try to foster for our clients and our students, that Pilates feels good and you feel good while you're doing it. You feel good after you do it. And to kind of give that gift to yourself is really refreshing. There's a reason that we became Pilates teachers and getting out of our head in terms of teaching brain and just letting ourselves experience Pilates can be really inspirational. 

[00:07:58] Tapping your [00:08:00] Pilates teacher network can also help keep things fresh because Pilates teachers love to talk about Pilates. So, team up with your teacher friends, grab a coffee and workshop clients that you're working with. What are they struggling with? What did you see on Instagram and you want to play with programming it? Did someone ask you a question about Pilates that really made you think and you want to hear their perspective?

[00:08:25] It's a way of expanding your own mind and you get to connect with your friends, which is always fun. 

[00:08:32] One way that I like to keep my teaching fresh, especially when I'm teaching set classes or group classes every week, is that I like to focus on a different prop or piece of equipment for that week. That way I know I'm not teaching the same thing from week to week because last week I used the TRX and this week we're using the BOSU, so automatically I know I'm doing different exercises or doing the same exercises in a different way.

[00:08:58] One of the things I love about [00:09:00] teaching at Club Pilates is that you have access to so many different pieces of equipment, so they have the TRX and the BOSU and the ball, but all studios I think have some props that you can play with, whether it's the magic circle or hand weights or a yoga block. And you can teach the exact same class that you taught, but incorporate a prop or use a different piece of equipment and it will feel fresh and new.

[00:09:29] It's a great way to challenge your students because different pieces of equipment have different purposes, or they make you experience the exercise differently. They're giving your body different feedback as you're doing the exercise. So if you teach a class and you always bridge on the reformer, how would it feel if you tried bridging on the Bosu or bridging on the chair or bridging with your feet against the wall?

[00:09:58] Like [00:10:00] you can take the same exercise but make it a different exercise that students will be like, Oh my gosh, that was totally new and fun. And you're like, it was just a bridge in a different place. You know what I mean? 

[00:10:10] Coming up after the break, I'll talk about working with Pilates principles to make your own teaching more interesting to you and your students, playing with spring tension if you work on the reformer, playing with body positions, if you work on the reformer or on the mat, and changing up the order in which you teach things. That is coming up next.

[00:10:39] Hi there. I hope you're enjoying today's chapter so far. There's great stuff coming up after the break too. Be sure to subscribe wherever you're listening and visit Buymeacoffee.com/OliviaPodcasts to support the show. There you can make a one-time donation or become a member for as little as $5 a month.

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[00:11:18] Now back to the show.

[00:11:35] If you come from a Pilates teaching program that really emphasized the six Pilates principles, or if you are just interested in the Pilates principles, choosing one to focus on can create kind of a themed class that will be automatically interesting because you're choosing to focus on this one thing.

[00:11:57] The principles of breathing, [00:12:00] control, centering, coordination, precision, and rhythm or flow can be applied to every single class and choosing to focus on one is going to really highlight it in your class. Like you could teach the exact same class, but let's really talk about breath the whole time. We are focusing on our breathing and how that impacts how we move. Or maybe you're focusing on centering. How are we moving from the center? How are we organized from the center? Maybe you're focusing on coordination and, you know, building up to doing more things at the same time or more complex things. Maybe you change the rhythm of exercises. That could be the tempo. That could be, you know, the pace at which you move through things. Just see what shakes out. 

[00:12:49] When you pay attention to something it will give you more things to share with your class and will give your students more things to experience as they're going through a class again, [00:13:00] even if it's the same class.

[00:13:03] One of my favorite things on the reformer is doing the same exercise on different spring tensions because it changes the experience of the exercise so drastically. I love a kneeling plank on the reformer with hands on the foot bar, soles of the feet against the shoulder blocks, knees on the carriage.

[00:13:21] If you were to do that kneeling plank on two full springs or even two and a half springs, that is heavy and a lot of work for the muscles that you use to push the carriage out. But that heavier spring tension also helps us stay organized in our plank because it's kind of pushing us together. Your feet against the shoulder blocks and your hands on the foot bar, like the spring tension helps us stay together.

[00:13:48] So if you make the spring tension lighter, we become more responsible for that work. The springs aren't squishing us together, but we still have to hold ourselves together so we don't, you know, break [00:14:00] our plank line or we don't, you know, shift our hips or move in a way that we're not trying to move in our plank.

[00:14:05] That lighter spring tension also makes the emphasis more of a pulling movement instead of a pushing movement. The carriage goes out really easily on a light spring, but we have to pull it back in because that light spring is not as helpful as a heavy spring when we're trying to close the carriage. 

[00:14:22] But you could play with those springs in all of your exercises. You know, how does footwork feel on one spring? That is super light, that is going to be a lot more, uh, unstable, a lot more wobbly. It's going to require more control where you're going to have to move a little bit more slowly and that changes footwork. How would three springs feel doing a scooter lunge next to the reformer? You know, that's super duper heavy. You might have to brace your hands against the foot bar. But this is just another way that you can shift the focus of what you're doing and taking a super familiar exercise that you've taught a million times, whether [00:15:00] it's a bridge or a lunge or footwork and make it new, even though it's the same.

[00:15:06] There's a running joke in Pilates that Pilates is only 10 exercises on 17 different pieces of equipment and in like 10 different body positions. And that's a funny joke because it's very true. We do the same exercises on different pieces of equipment with different props in different body positions. So I love this because even if you're on the mat and you're like, I don't have a reformer, I don't have a springboard or a chair. You can still change things up by changing the body position that you normally do your exercises in. So, if you always do side kick lying on your side, how would it feel to do it standing?

[00:15:49] Maybe you do all of your side lying work in hands and knees instead. 

[00:15:54] If you always do arms sitting on the long box on the reformer, how would it feel to [00:16:00] do it kneeling or to do it in quadruped like the sky's the limit and it is the same movement. Like it's always chest expansion when you're doing seated arms and you're pulling your arms back, it's chest expansion, but you can do it in a way that feels new, even when it isn't new.

[00:16:18] And I think that's kind of what I'm trying, the point I'm trying to bring home here is that what you're teaching, like there's so much gold in Pilates basics in foundations. And if there's movements that you love and you teach them all the time because you love them, like they're valid. I'm not saying you have to throw everything out, but this idea that you can stay true to what you're teaching, but also make it new without absolutely losing your mind and programming a brand new class every time. Something like that is possible. 

[00:16:49] Lastly, change up the order that you teach the exercises in, and I know that that won't work for everything and it won't work at every studio, but how would it feel if you did [00:17:00] footwork in the middle of something? Like what if you did a different warmup? What if you did knee stretches on the reformer and called that your quad warmup?

[00:17:07] Like what if you did your class, if you always start lying down supine, how would it feel if you started standing or started on hands and knees? If you like to cool down and you like to end standing, how would it feel to end seated? There's not really a rule unless you follow a teaching style where you always teach exercises in the exact same order in the exact same way.

[00:17:34] Like you can change it up and that's kind of fun and fresh for yourself. Like even in the exercises, I know in sideline, I usually do clams first and then into sidekick or circles or whatever sideline variations I'm doing. Everyone thinks clams are really easy, but if you put those at the end of your sideline series, like you're already fatigued, you're fatigued, whether you did clams first or clams last, whatever you do last in sideline, your butt is [00:18:00] burning. So make it fun for yourself. Like how would it feel to kind of rearrange the stuff that you're already teaching so that you experience it differently? 

[00:18:10] What I was alluding to before is there is a trade off here between consistency and creativity. So I don't think the solution to being bored with what you teach is to program a brand new, a hundred percent never been done before class, every single class that you teach, like that is not sustainable.

[00:18:28] But I also think that teaching things exactly the same way over and over again is not going to be interesting for you or your students in the long term. So what balance can we find? I think in order to appreciate the variety and the creativity that you bring, you should have some structure and some framework that you keep pretty similar from class to class.

[00:18:53] So the rule that I kind of follow is the 80/20, that I want 80 percent of what I do to be [00:19:00] things that we've either done before in class or it's the same exercise, but I tweaked it a little bit. So I'm always going to put bridging in. We're always going to do footwork on the reformer. We're always going to do some abdominal warmup at the beginning of a class, but I can play with how I do it.

[00:19:18] Am I using the ball and bridge? Am I bridging on the chair instead of the reformer? Like, am I on the mat doing my abdominal series, something like that, or at the springboard? So I do think that you can stay consistent because that's how people measure progress. That's how we grow. We get better at things when we do them over and over again.

[00:19:39] Consistency is fabulous, but then adding this 20 percent of new things, whether it's using a different piece of equipment or a prop or trying something new that you haven't done before, knowing also that new things become old things when you repeat them consistently. 

[00:19:59] You don't want your [00:20:00] class, in my opinion, to be 100 percent brand new every single time, because without a frame of reference, without a structure, it can be really overwhelming, and it's also difficult to cue because everything is new. When you start with something familiar and people already kind of know what's going on. You can tweak from there. And I think it's easier to teach that way. 

[00:20:24] I found that 80/20 is my sweet spot so that enough feels familiar, that students feel safe and comfortable and not totally confused, but that 20 percent of fresh material gives them something to kind of look forward to and try and use.

[00:20:41] Sometimes not having a frame of reference is great because you don't know how it's going to go if you've never done it before. So it can be something that really opens people's minds as well. 

[00:20:50] I hope that that offers you some inspiration on your Pilates path. Feel free always to reach out on Instagram if you have any questions or [00:21:00] join the Buy Me a Coffee community and schedule a coffee chat with me. I'm always up to talk about Pilates. I'm happy to be that Pilates teacher friend that you bounce ideas off of as well. 

[00:21:11] Huge thank you as always to all my supporters on buy me a coffee, especially people who reached out and supported during the hiatus. Huge thanks to Sharon, a couple anonymous donors, Mo, Jennifer, and Olivia, thank you so much for your support. I hope to have a coffee chat with you soon to connect and touch base and talk all things Pilates. If you're interested in that, visit that, Buy Me a Coffee page and support the project and we will get the ball rolling on that. I hope you have a great couple of weeks and I'll talk to you again soon.

[00:21:58] Thanks for listening to this [00:22:00] week's chapter of Pilates Teacher's Manual, your guide to becoming a great Pilates teacher. Check out the podcast Instagram at @pilatesteachersmanual, and be sure to subscribe wherever you listen. For more Pilates goodness, check out my other podcast, Pilates Students' Manual, available everywhere you listen to podcasts. The adventure continues. Until next time.