New Reformer Pilates Teachers tend to make one of these two mistakes when teaching classes
Teaching an advanced exercise without building the basic skills and components required first (setting their clients up for failure).
OR
Not teaching any advanced exercises because they feel overwhelmed by the details and complexity of teaching something like SWAN on the reformer
Want to know what the common thread is for teachers who make one of these two mistakes? It's that they find it difficult to recognise the components, regressions, and building blocks that are required to perform the Advanced exercises. This either means their clients are not ready or conditioned enough to perform an Advanced exercise that they are trying to teach OR that the teacher won't even attempt to teach the advanced repertoire because they don't know where to start! Does this sound familiar to you? Have you been in this situation before? If you have, know that you are not alone! I've totally been there! When I finished my teacher training I found the advanced exercises so daunting and overwhelming to teach. I thought my clients would have no hope of understanding me and I would get tongue-tied trying to cue these crazy complex exercise to my clients. It wasn't until I sat down and thought about it some more that I realised that I was going about it all wrong! I was trying to jump from zero to hero all in one step. BUT what I needed to be doing first was
Breaking the exercise down into its components (making it less complex and overwhelming for me and my clients
Understanding all of the elements required to perform the advanced exercise, including what strength, mobility, and skills they needed.
Once I knew they could do all of this, then it was time to teach the advanced exercise, and by the time this moment came around, I hardly have to do any crazy tongue-tied explanations at all. WHY?
Because my clients were ready, they had all of the components and skills that they needed to perform the advanced exercise, they just had to be shown how to put it all together!
Teaching advanced exercises doesn't have to be as scary and overwhelming as you think, for you or your clients! And to help you see how you can break an advanced exercise down I've given you 6 steps below to follow and put into action! 6 tips to help you teach advanced Pilates exercises 1. Break the exercise down into its component movements and skills. (What movements do they need to do and what shapes do they have to make to perform the advanced exercises?) 2. Practice each of those components/skills on yourself 3. When you practice these movements, speak the instructions out loud to yourself as if you were teaching them to a class 4. Pick the most basic of these movements and practice teaching it to one of your clients/classes (if they are ready for it) 5. Review how you went teaching this exercise. (Did the student understand your cues? was it too easy or too hard for them?) 6. Adjust your teaching of this exercise in your next session with this class/client. RINSE AND REPEAT
Try putting these 6 steps into action and let me know how you go! Steph
xx
P.s Want to learn how to do this with the exercise SNAKE? Join my upcoming workshop this October 30th. Click here to find out more and to book.