Movements Afoot’s Blog

by Lesley Powell

Just yesterday at Movements Afoot, a client complained about not working her abs hard enough in a Pilates class.  Pilates is alway about the core and it coordination with the limbs.  Most clients are not working correctly.

Decades ago, I was the movement trainer at a high-end club.  Clients would come to me after their sessions for stretching or to help with an injury.  A man came to me about his back.

I had just observed him doing a hundred crunches.
His form was terrible with his cranking his head to perform the crunch,
bulging his belly out and activating his hip flexors.

I asked him to pull up his abdominals in standing to improve his posture.
He DiDn’t have a clue how!

As teachers, we all know how important training the transverse abdominals.  To get to them, they are never going to feel like the physicality of a bicep curl.

So what do we teachers do?

Keep teaching what we teach.  Make sure in the lesson you include something that requires more endurance like the hundred.
Keep emphazing

” Are your abs hollowing or bulging? “

” How’s your hip flexors?”

“Are you breathing?”

“Come a little higher in the hundred (or whatever you do)?

Kathy Grant at the PMA conference had us to a rollup that took about 5 minutes.  She would allow no momentum to get up.

So teachers in this hard times of recession and needing to keep clients.

Hold the poses a little longer.

Give a little burn at the same time make them aware of their form.

Send them home to practice.  Go to our podcasts to deepen their use of the transverse.

As Doris Pasteleur Hall says, “Abdominals comes in different flavors”

Give them a little of the flavor that they are used to and introduce the others.