Pilates Matwork teacher training (week 8): Delving deeper

Rather than introducing new pieces, I focused on improving my practice clients' skills for the pieces they have learnt before - Side Bend Kneeling, Side Kick Kneeling, Open Leg Rocker, Rollover and Swan.

As they have done Side series for the past few classes, the verbal cues are more in-depth rather than directional, for example, I emphasized on pelvic stability and that they initiate the side bend from their waists to engage the obliques.

I decided to venture a bit further in Rollover by having them to touch their feet on the ground briefly. This was indeed challenging as the class are afraid of falling over their heads. I used my hands to guide them which made some realise their feet could actually touch the floor. After that, they felt more assured doing it themselves.

As mentioned in the previous post, I wanted to the class to do a full Swan in this lesson. After several repetitions of Baby Swan to jolt their memories about bracing their abs to prevent sinking into the lumbar spine, we moved on to a full Swan cautiously. Most lose focus of their abs the moment they reach the full Swan so constant reminders were required initially. Over a few repetitions, they began to understand the need to keep their abs engaged. I hope to try a few repetitions of Swan Dive next week but let's see how the class does!

In the second session, I introduced Double Leg Kick. As it may seem complicated, I separated the piece into 2 parts – upper body and lower body movements – in order to coordinate their body movements when the parts are integrated. Since a few students mentioned that they would like to give their arms some workout, I included Planks and Push Ups in between. Other than to give them time to absorb the information earlier, it provided me a chance to talk about shoulder retraction and protraction which will come in handy for other pieces I would love to teach them in the future.

Written by Jasmine Lee