Thoughts on Teaching Excellence by Clare Dunphy

I love sharing ideas, observations and teaching experiences with fellow instructors and presenters across many disciplines from pilates, yoga, group exercise and personal training. One area in which we are of all the same mind is how amazing it is to witness students improving not only their body but also their lifestyle and attitudes toward health and fitness. The conversations lately have led down a common path, the wonderful topic of progression and what progression looks like, especially in Pilates.

There are many phases of progression in Pilates and it is interesting to notice how it transpires for various individuals during different phases of their participation. It seems many instructors have trouble discerning signs of readiness to add new exercises and often try to teach them long before their students are ready. Do they think the student is bored? Or are they bored teaching the same exercises with a focus on refinement? Why and when do we give a new exercise? Romana Kryzanowska once cautioned us as new teachers: When you get bored with the basics, it is not the exercise that is boring but your attitude that it is boring. It is a poignant reminder to realize that it is a privilege to facilitate another person’s self-discovery and to keep the wonder and fascination alive. A new exercise can be considered a gift after the hard work of mastering of the previous exercises.

One guideline for progression suggests adding in one session no more than one new exercise or variation for each apparatus. Taken literally, before you know it, 6 months later, one could construe this to mean adding whether a person is ready or not and may wind up teaching all the exercises they know in a short period of time. Let’s remember that the body continuously learns every time we move and the reality is that progressing students too quickly can create poor habits that lead to injury. Equally regretful is having students miss out on potential improvements that are available to them had they studied and refined the movement quality. It is much harder to relearn a movement pattern than it is to learn it correctly the first time.

How then, do we effectively and safely progress students? How do we not lose the integrity of the work for the sake of giving a “workout”? Consider this, a line always has two sides. On one side of the line, progression can include new exercises; on the other side it can consist of magnifying the most difficult details, retracing our steps back to the essentials and going deeper. There is always a balance.

Let’s look at the role of transitions. If we regard transitions as part of the exercise we must fuss about students maintaining their core connection during the transitions. Similarly, we need to notice a lost or weak core connection throughout the movement, especially in the set up and execution. The most easily forgotten obvious thing is the often the most important when it comes to being a conscious teacher. Noticing the obvious is a good start. Help your students cultivate concentration and challenge them to work at their edges and reach for more.

Teaching is both a science and an art, and I would say for teachers it is also a personal discipline. We must step out of our comfort zone and teach more then the choreography. To be excellent at our vocation, we must help students learn how to connect deeper, how work with increased verve, precision and flow. And we need to keep ourselves inspired and enthused about our work by keeping our personal practice alive and thriving too. We can only teach what we ourselves know from our direct experience. Then we are in the position to illuminate these ideas for our students. I invite all of you to reflect on how we approach teaching Pilates and to recommit ourselves to a deeper discovery of what progression means.