Pilates Intel Online Newsletter for the Pilates Teaching Community

Are You My People?

By Mike Perry

I’ve been lucky to recently start teaching one client in particular. Things were a little erratic in the beginning, because her back pain was such that she couldn’t make it to the studio, or was advised to wait by her osteopath. She would often arrive with her partner, who would take her shoes off for her, because she couldn’t do it herself. You can imagine that she was very nervous about moving (though she was determined) and we proceeded with considerable caution. She had read articles that I’d written, so knew my belief to be that Pilates is not an end in itself, but rather the means to do what you love to do more easily and, perhaps, better. She is a musician, and has had her share of work-stopping shoulder injuries, so you might say she was especially motivated. I had told her early on that, as soon as her back pain was receding, I was interested in helping her develop better integration of her arms and shoulder girdle with her trunk. I must have mentioned pull-ups at some point, and apparently I also referred to Skin the Cat as well, because when we restarted after Christmas and I asked her about objectives, she told me that she wanted to be able to do pull-ups and Skin the Cat by the end of the year. In fact, she wanted me to forecast when she could expect to be doing her first pull-up!

I was delighted to hear this, and at the same time horribly aware of what a stark contrast her attitude was to that of many of my Pilates teaching colleagues. She recognizes that the ability to execute a pull-up will be a sign of strength that will very likely carry over to her work and make her less prone to injury. She doesn’t need to be able to skin the cat, but that doesn’t stop her wanting to try. Oh, and she’s nearly my age, and I shall be 50 this year.

My awareness of the stark contrast I mention above was heightened last year – I wrote a short blog post called “Why are you even doing Pilates?” which began “Should your Pilates teacher be able to do a pull-up?” I believe that, if you’re reading this as a teacher, you should be able to do a pull-up, or be working at doing a pull-up. I don’t want to get bogged down in why just now, suffice it to say that we were brachiators before we were sapiens, and you need only watch babies and toddlers at play to see that pulling our body weight is a primal action – it’s in our DNA, you might say.

It may have been a bad idea to share that article on Facebook, especially in a large forum of Pilates teachers.  Certainly, if I had been hoping for broad scale agreement, it was a mistake. It may have been a problem with my writing but, broadly, the impression left with me by readers’ comments was that a pull-up is an outlandish feat that belongs in the circus, and has no practical application. I’m paraphrasing, but I received several comments like this that illustrate the point:

I don’t know whether I can do a pull up or not. I don’t think my clients could care less. And neither could I. What they want is a skilled teacher who can help them repattern their movements so they can get out of pain. They don’t need to be able to do pull ups. (My emphasis added)

Clearly, it’s provocative to suggest that Pilates teachers SHOULD be able to do something specific like a pull-up, and the point I was aiming to make was more to do with attitudes than specific attributes. Despite my semi-serious threat that they might lose their jobs, I know that some of the teachers at our studio are not yet able to do pull-ups, but I have every confidence in their teaching skills. So, what was all the fuss about? What’s my problem?

My problem is that I don’t believe that Joseph intended Pilates to be the fullest extent of anyone’s physical activity. It’s the thing that you do to make the stuff that you really love to do feel easier. I believe that (based on what I hear, read, etc.) there are too many teachers who think that they’ve done enough – they’ve taken their physicality as far as it needs to go – and that this has set the parameters for what the people they teach should aspire to. “They don’t need to do pull-ups.” Really?! Do we know for sure that they will never find themselves in any circumstances in which that may be helpful? This idea falls in the same category as deciding which parts of the Pilates repertoire people need, or don’t.

If you’re calling what you teach Pilates, then shouldn’t you be upholding a philosophy and not merely teaching exercises? You ought to be testing your physical limits, trying new things. There’s a lifetime’s work in exploring within the repertoire, but to fully express our humanity, don’t we need to explore outside that relatively narrow framework as well?

Here’s a simpler question about physical capacity: Can you squat down to the ground, without lifting your heels? And here are the thoughts of Dr. Andreo Spina on that subject:

The number of trainers and therapists around the world who can’t sit in a deep squat is staggering. It’s staggering. And the reason I’m so amazed by it is, if you think of a trainer, they’re supposed to represent the height of human performance – these people are teaching other people how to make themselves better humans – but they can’t do a basic human position that was given to you at birth.

So, are you my people? Are you greedy for more? Are your physical accomplishments stepping stones to the next one? Are you testing what it means to be human? Are you teaching other people to be better humans? Can I be proud to number myself amongst Pilates teachers? Or do you think pull-ups are outlandish? Have you gone as far as you need to go, and see no need for more? Do you limit your clients’ aspirations? (Should I think of a new job title for myself?)