Movements Afoot’s Blog

Lesley Powell, CMA, Director of
Movements Afoot

My teaching Bartenieff Fundamentals™(BF) led me to Pilates. I was teaching classes and private sessions based on BF and conditioning to injured clients at Dr. Backrach’s Center for Osteopathic Medicine in 1987. Teaching Bartenieff Fundamentals™ to an injured population taught me the power of this work. My colleagues in my certificate Laban/ Bartenieff program were such great movers that I did not understand the importance of BF. Working with clients led me deeper into the concepts of BF and their potential in assisting neurological repatterning.

Because of my success with working with clients, I was invited and paid to learn how to teach Pilates at JRW Physical Therapy in 1990. The physical therapists at that time were having difficulties with traditional Pilates teachers working with an injured population.

A majority of the cases of the clientele of the physical therapy practice were suffering from repetitive stress disorder. Most were journalists who spent long hours in front of the computer. Because their arms/hands were in trauma, a lot of the Pilates exercises were contraindicated. Bearing weight on their hands especially on the footbar was painful.

Within my Pilates sessions, I would work with the clients on the fundamentals of the hand-scapula relationship. First goal was to get ease of motion of the scapula and then slowly adding resistance. The beauty of the Pilates machines is the feedback proprioceptively that they can give the client. I would keep the load light with springs until the client could work pain free.

Video of pre-thigh and thigh lift

I am going to take the thigh lift and how it can change the Pilates workout. The thigh lift is an important action of all movement: gait and dance/sports activities. It is the dancer’s passé, the initiation of the kick in sports, yoga, fitness and most importantly our walking. The ability to move our legs and move us through space is essential for everyday activities. The freedom of the thighbone in the hip socket with the strength of the leg and torso muscles take us into standing, walking and more complex movement actions. A lot of problems of back, hip and knee pain can be a cause of poor patterning how the thighbone moves in the hip socket, pelvic stability and lifted to propel us in space.

A poor thigh lift disconnects to the deep use of the abdominals and the psoas will be lost. Other muscles will have to take over for the lack of this connection. In the Pilates repertory, the thigh lift fundamental will teach the differential of the thighbone from the pelvis.

Teaching the principles of the pre and thigh lift is a wonderful link to the single leg stretch of the Pilates mat. The thigh lift is an important principle to understand for all abdominal training and the Pilates mat. One must stabilize the pelvis to connect to the correct mobility of the femur. The psoas alone will flex the hip. Without the counterbalance of the abdominals, the pelvis is pulled to an anterior tilt and/or unleveling. A short psoas will also bring the pelvis in an anterior tilt. A tucked pelvis will make the psoas lax. Stabilization is about finding quietness in the spine with length as you mobilize the legs.

Let’s now look at footwork and the relationship to the thigh lift on the reformer. In Footwork, one lies supine on the carriage with the feet pressing on the foot bar. The carriage glides in and out with flexion and extension of the legs. Footwork taught well is a wonderful link to gait. In traditional Pilates, the tucked pelvis can kick out the hip extensors when the legs are extended.

With teaching of the thigh lift fundamental with footwork, the client gets a better connection to the legs. The femoral fold is soft while the correct sequencing of the quadriceps and hamstrings come into play to move the carriage with the legs. If there is a contraction around this fold, one could be overusing other muscles such as rectus femoris, some certain fibers of the adductors and even the back muscles. When the back becomes involved, this gives the appearance of the hips hiking, anterior/posterior tilt (depends on the client) and/or rotating.

Leg springs or modified short spine takes the pre- and thigh lift to a fuller range of motion. The springs or straps give a wonderful spatial intent in counter balance to the hollowing and the spine lengthening in the opposite direction. With pelvic stability and this counter tension, the legs mobilize with a different connection in the hip sockets.

New research is coming out now of the importance of the pelvic floor, transverse abdominus and multifidus. Irmgard Bartenieff was revolutionary. In the section about the fundamentals in her book, Coping with The Environment, she was already addressing these concepts. This book was published in 1972. It is possible to have ease of motion and dynamic strength in the Pilates repertory.

BF and Pilates is about connections. BF can enrich Pilates not only in biomechanical principles but taking the repertory in new spatial demands.