December 4, 2019
Only Time Will Tell
The Story of A Pilates Teacher without a Comprehensive Certification
by Genevieve Malcolm
The day I started Pilates is the day I learned that taking care of myself was perhaps the most crucial aspect of motherhood; if I wasn’t well in myself, others would suffer. I was 32, recently post-partum from very hefty twins, with a toddler in tow. Everything…hurt — my back, shoulders, neck, ribs. In an airy Singapore studio, the lovely Seok Wah Cheong kindly met my body that day and we began. I remember thinking, “Why is she spending so much time telling me how to breathe?” I ached in the most unused, delicious way the next day, as I felt my body gradually let go of holding patterns and start to heal. I was an immediate convert, a junkie even, I couldn’t get enough Pilates.
Looking back, my early private lessons utilised all the apparatus, but after I completed my mandatory intro lessons, I found myself in group reformer lessons, rather than privates. Whether that was my preference financially or studio logistics or the fact that as a new mother, I craved people energy and so gravitated towards group work … I could not say. I fell in love with the Reformer.
Fast forward several years.
“Polestar is running a Reformer instructor training course here in Singapore. You should think about doing it,” said one of my instructors one day after class. My ears perked up; I had been thinking about making a change to a more flexible, portable career. I asked a lot of questions, and signed up to logbooks, observation hours, assistant teaching hours, and hours of practice to that all important Self-Mastery sign off.
Exam day, nerves, success! I could teach! I loved it, was good at it in my own body, and could teach others in the hopes that the work would be as restorative to them as it had been and continued to be to me. During my pre-training, course time and early teaching, I was hungry for knowledge, but something bothered me. I sensed a divide between those of us who were Reformer-only trained, and the other instructors, a couple of whom acted as Mentors on our courses. They could move easily through and among the other apparatus, and I was truthfully a bit jealous that they knew what to do to use all the equipment at their disposal for clients and for themselves when time allowed. I felt left out, like the kid at the playground who knows the other cool kids and sometimes gets asked to spend time with them, but who seemed, more often than not, just an observer.
My insecurity meant I was quick to sign up to Mat 1, 2, and 3. In truth, my own exposure to the matwork was limited to bits sprinkled into group Reformer classes. Only as my Mat training approached did I take classes dedicated to that form. Why did I find parts of the mat repertoire so difficult when Reformer seemed effortlessly efficient? Matwork humbled and intrigued me; I asked myself if it made sense to study the matwork separately from and following on from the lengthy Reformer courses; it seemed… backwards. But I was clearly a student in the presence of better, more eloquent moving minds than my own, so I said nothing.
I continued to teach Reformer in my happy bubble, to follow up and complete my Mat course, but lo and behold! There was a Comprehensive course on offer – with a heftier price tag, bigger logbooks, more fun equipment, and more hours to observe, assist, practice! I threw myself into this course with abandon and was halfway through three of the six modules when my fourth pregnancy and a subsequent move back to the UK from Singapore threw life plans way off track. Number 4 was a (delightful) surprise, my oldest son had just been diagnosed with a genetic skeletal dysplasia and would face many corrective surgeries on his knees, a TFL release, a scoliotic spine. I paused. I was weary from a new baby, new country (reverse culture shock is real, btw), new school routines for my three older children, weary of the never-ending Pilates courses on offer which I could not get to anyway with young children in my life. And all these courses just fed feelings of Pilates education inadequacy. Hadn’t we touched on this stuff? Or were the courses purposely geared to provide just enough knowledge to really know that too little knowledge was dangerous?
An oldie with Shelly Power at Moss Pilates
Our return to the UK revealed to me what I had suspected. When I interviewed at studios to teach, many were puzzled as to why I only had piecemeal certification. Without a comprehensive certification, opportunities were limited. It was during these discussions that I learned that there were differences in training schools, movement styles, equipment design and manufacturers. I began to feel I had short-changed myself, and that I really could not, in all honesty, call myself a Pilates teacher. I was annoyed at myself and felt somewhat taken advantage of! Was I the gullible one, thinking that Reformer and Mat were enough? I was not (nor am I currently) made of money, and I think I would have been grateful if someone had told me not to waste money on separate courses.
While learning is wonderful, had I known that the movement principles which appeared at the beginning of each course were identical, and therefore repeated, and that the Mat and Reformer repertoires were indeed part of a comprehensive course, I would never have bothered with the individual components. It felt fraudulent to take money and time from students and at the end of the day, provide a partial exposure to a complete system, leaving students to discover the limitations of such an approach. It’s like a driving instructor who is teaching students that “lots of practice forward and reverse and slow down around the roundabouts” is sufficient to become a fluid, instinctive, safe and complete driver. Had course provision turned too much into big business?
I feel empowered as I am (re) starting, at long last, my Comprehensive training here in the UK. I love the Polestar approach of being able to make the work accessible to any body, but feel sharp and wise enough to ask questions like, “Why is there no Pedi-pull in the curriculum?” And what about other archival versions of some of the work? My Comprehensive course may look like a smorgasbord but it’s up to me, the student, to discover what’s been left out.
Genevieve Malcolm is a latecomer to Pilates! After an unremarkable midwestern US childhood spent walking dogs, going to ballet and tap lessons, and teaching herself how to figure skate badly, she eventually wound up with a BA Hons in both International Relations and French. She fell, as so many do, into retail bookselling in the US and later book publishing in Tokyo before having her four children, the second and third of whom, were indirectly responsible for her foray into the world of healing movement through Pilates. Genevieve has been fortunate enough to call Singapore, Tokyo and the UK home over the last few decades, and just started her Comprehensive Training with Polestar in London. —Gen Malcolm