Taking your Pilates teaching to the next level

With Lesley Powell August 21   1- 5 PM  $75
Come together.  Pilates teachers. Share. Workout.  Problem solve.  Laugh.

This meeting will be moderated by Lesley Powell.  Come with ideas, questions about the body, problem solving about professional issues (i.e. Difficult clients, non-payment by clients, burn-out, etc.)

• Bring any questions about the body, Pilates exercises and teaching.  We will take time to explore issues coming up, your designed workout for your client and questions about learning to see movement.
• Then you will teach a client a session with Lesley Powell observing.
  Here we will look at your design of your workout, how you cue and issues about form with your client.
• After your workout,  Lesley will go over each person’s class, any specific problems with client’s movement history and how they can improve on their teaching.
  

Click here To Register

49 W. 27th St. Mezzanine B, New York City 212-904-1399

Pilates is more than abdominal workout.  It is about connection of the entire body.  When the lower and/or upper body works in harmony with your torso, you create better alignment, strength, balance of tone and mobility with your entire body.

Newcomers to Pilates sometimes get stuck on the idea that a hard muscle is a functional muscle.  A lot of people are hardening their muscles that is destroying correct movement of the body.

As you advance in your practice, Pilates repertory has more sequencing of movement and level changes.  This teaches you to have dynamic stabilization of your body.  What I have to stabilize changes as I move in Space.

We all have to start with basics.  Even I perform the below exercise as a warmup.  It helps me waken up my lower abdominals before I go to more advanced exercises.

Differentiation of thigh bone

Your goal is to maintain the hollow when you lift a leg up.  This is the underlying concept in all Pilates exercises.

Excellent sources to read are Liz Koch and Eric Franklin.

As seen Friday on ABC’s Live with Regis and Kelly, Sue Hitzmann, creator of the MELT Method, literally swept the viewing audience off of their feet as she revealed the secret to alleviating common pain symptoms in just minutes a day.   Thousands of viewers flocked to her website, MeltMethod.com, to purchase her pain-relieving treatment video, balls and rollers and to sign up for her classes and teacher training. Read More

Karen will be giving two Workshops at Movements Afoot Friday July 23

Introduction to MELT CORE with Karen Wells

Friday July 23 at 6:30 – 7:45
Price –   $35 for class only
$75 for class and roller when you pre-register by July 22
$45 for just the roller on the day of the event

MELT Core is your solution!  Improve whole-body balance, eliminate tension in your neck and low back, and instantly feel better!

MELT Core helps balance and strengthen the neuromuscular core system to keep your belly flat, back strong, and body functioning well. Traditional abdominal exercises do not improve core stability and posture. MELT Core is the answer to improve alignment of the spine by decompressing the neck and low back, teach you new ways to stabilize the pelvis, and give the organs integrity for proper digestion.

MELT’s unique foam roller works WITH your connective tissue with the feel of a real person’s touch.  You will never want to be back on your old foam rollers after you experience the special pro-foam roller. The new self-treatment concept of Hands-off Bodywork™ is sweeping the nation! For a fraction of the cost of a hands-on bodywork treatment, you can learn why MELT truly is the “art of self-care”.

Rollers will be available for purchase at the event. Discounts are available if you pre-order your roller when registering.

Introduction to MELT Hand and Foot Master Class

Friday July 23 at 8:15 – 9:15
Price –   $30 for class only
$80 for class and roller when you pre-register by July 22
$55 for just the hand and foot ball kit on the day of the event

Eliminate tension in your hands, feet, neck and back, and instantly feel better!  All it takes is a quick lunch break to get your body back into a more ideal state! The MELT Hand and Foot Treatment helps to improve your balance and relax your body while maintaining an active, healthy, pain-free life style!

If you have experienced hand or foot pain then this class is for you! You will immediately feel the difference when you stand on the special MELT balls or rub your hands with the MELT balls.

49 W. 27th St. Mezzanine B, New York City 212-904-1399

To register

It is always wonderful to observe great teaching. Lisa Love has such an amazing knowledge about the body.  How she cues through words and touch is so inspiring.  I look forward to having her back to teach teachers again.

Back Extension Exercises from about.com

New ideas of stabilization can enhance the body without making the body rigid. Past old principles of knitting the ribs together and tucking does not allow proper movement principles of walking, dancing, golf and tennis for example.  The problems of the back being hyperextended may have other reasons than weak upper abdominals.

• How does the legs organize the pelvis?
• Are the legs not doing their correct job and the back is compensating?
• The Back muscles are tight.
• The iliopsoas is tight.

When I feel well organized over my legs, my abdominals naturally engaged.  With full breath and a diaphragm that moves,  the pelvic floor and transverse abdominus can engage.  Knitting the ribs together diminishes the movement of the diaphragm.

Visualizing the multifidus helps me get back my flexion in my ribcage of a neutral spine.  We have a skeleton at the studio that suppose to move.  Seeing the skeleton, its posture is horrible.  When I bring the spinal processes together, you can see the skeleton come back to a neutral spine and the ribs open in the back.

Taking a stand

What makes Pilates Upright different is using the block.  Betweeen a workshop with Liz Koch, Marika Molnar and my studies in yoga, they inspired me to play with the block to explore balance and correct sequencing in standing.  Many are trying to use the gesture side to hold themselves up. The block shows how important the standing leg is.

Movements Afoot’s Pilates will teach you new lifetime habits that will improve your posture, how you move and enhance your life.  These new habits can be applied to all of your movement loves.  Changing how you think about your body will take your fitness to a new level.

When you bulge and tighten your abdominals muscles,  this is the habit that you train.  Learn how to use the deeper abdominals that will really enhance your posture.  Learn the importance dance of all your muscles to improve posture, fitness and wellness

with Lesley Powell Dates: Sun   5/23/2010 Time:  9:00 AM – 4:00 PM $200
PMA Approved -Pilates Upright is a dynamic workout that incorporates the training of Pilates mat with weight bearing exercises in standing. Pilates Upright gives you a new underSTANDing of the coordination of your muscles & bones in standing, which is very different from exercising on the floor

Lower body enhancing the core.

How one stands can affect your posture and your core. Leg alignment and coordination of the bones and muscles are essential for good posture and fitness. The organization of the legs is different in standing (closed chain) compared to leg exercises such as side kicks (open chain).

Purposely stand with your legs hyperextended.

• Observe how your legs feel. Where is the weight on your feet?
• How does the pelvis organize without you consciously making any changes?
• Feel the tone of your abdominals and back.

When the legs are not well aligned such as with hyperextended legs, the spine has to organize around this. When there is a poor tailbone-heel connection, the legs and feet work unevenly to support our body. For many, one tucks to bring the pelvis over the feet and pulled the front ribs down to solve the problem of a poor head-tail-heel connection. Poor posture and gait diminishes proper shifting our weight forward for simple actions. This poor action forces our upper bodies to shift us forward to walk and other movement actions instead of our legs.

Rudolph Laban’s concept of stability/mobility.

To mobilize a joint, there has to be stability in adjacent parts of the body to assist in this movement. With a clients with hyper-mobility in the legs and hips, I see the client having to brace down on their spine to compensate. This lack of dynamic strength in the legs affects the alignment of the spine. Different strategies will happen with certain clients standing on one leg:

• One client braces down on her back and their thoracic spine becomes more flexed.
• One client’s pelvis goes into anterior tilt.
• Another the pelvis rotates with upper body rotating in the opposite way to compensate.

Amazingly as you improve the dynamic alignment of your legs, your core support improves. When I am better organized in my legs, the tone of my abdominals and my alignment is better. When I hyperextend my legs (yes I have hyperextended legs), the tone decreases and my pelvis goes into anterior tilt. Improving my legs makes core support feel effortless. All the years that I was dancing, I struggled and push my body into alignment. In truth without understanding my legs, I was creating more imbalance.

Pilates is a wonderful way to create the awareness and dynamic strength for standing. When someone comes in for their initial evaluation, I watch the following:

• How they stand on two legs?
• How is the alignment of their spine with their legs?
• How they stand on their feet? Where does the weight fall on each foot?
• How the legs and pelvis organize in lateral shift?
• How they organize their bodies to stand on one leg?
• How they organize their bodies to shift forward on one leg?

My goals to develop better awareness in legs:

• Alignment- is there muscular imbalance? Poor flexibility?
• Improper sequencing of joints and bones for standing actions?
• Too much mobility?
• Improper strength of legs to accommodate standing moves?

I always look at the pelvis to give me information about the legs. How the pelvis is organized can influence the work of the legs. As the imbalance of the legs becomes a habit, this leads to more disorganization of the pelvis and spine. Some clients unconsciously stand more on one leg.

Purposely stand on one leg more than another.

• How does that affect the rotation of the legs?
• How does it affect the feet? Pronated? Supinated?

Notice when your client lies supine, how the pelvis touches the floor. This is where the simple actions of pelvic tilts and clocks can be quite effective for change. For instance, the tightness of the hips can affect the pelvis and the use of the legs.
In pelvic tilts, are they sequencing equally on both sides of the sacrum. If the pelvis is rotated in standing, usually the pattern is reflective throughout the workout.

Pelvic shifts forward and lateral give me information how the client uses their legs. When a client tucks for a neutral bridge, they are kicking important coordination of leg muscles that assist standing.

Building from the Ground Up

Most of my warm-ups include neutral bridging. I like to wake up the back of the legs before I take the client through foot work.

In Foot work, I look if the same patterns in assessment come up in the foot work. For instance if a client stands habitually on one legs, one can sometimes see the pelvis shifting slightly. I might use my foot or hand against the opposite hip from the shift. They press their hip into me to prevent the shift.

Hyperextended legs.
It is very easy to hyperextend the legs on the reformer.

To teach a new pattern, I have the client do small pushes out.
Each time I increase the movement, but they must keep their quadriceps engaged. If they are tightening around the femoral folds, this takes away from the work of the quadriceps.

The calf muscles are very important in the alignment of the lower leg.

• Push the carriage out half way. Your legs will be bent. Releves on two legs without moving the carriage and then one with the legs bent. Do not move the carriage as you releve.

Have the client stand up after this exercise.
Everyone will feel different after this deceptively simple exercise.

Semi-circle

As BalancedBody faculty, I learned a different version of semi-circle with legs in second instead of first position. Because of knee injuries, I could never do the original version. It is very important not to tuck. When bridging correctly, the legs should bring the sacrum and tailbone as one. This teaches hip extension which is needed in standing.

Remember tucking will kick out important gluteal muscles and hamstrings
for better standing.

Side leg lifts

Can your client lift the leg up without engaging the front of the hip or the quadratus lumboram? The pelvis needs to be perfectly still.

Take a New Stand
Great standing is a tango of all the muscles of the legs around the joint to stabilize and move. New understanding of the calf and foot muscles, the quadriceps, abductors, adductors, gluteals and hamstrings will improve the coordination in standing.

Proper use of the

• Calf and foot will ground the foot and organize the lower legs.
• Quadriceps support and balanced the knee.
• Gluteals and hamstrings help to extend the hip.

Side splits on the reformer

• Does the alignment of the legs change when they push out?
• Bring all the principles of foot work into standing.
• Can they keep their lower leg stable over their ankles as they push out?
• Or does the lower leg swing backwards with the movement. The pelvis will compensate with the mobility of the legs?

Taking a stand

Yoga block or moon box

• Have a client stand on one leg on a block.
• Are their hips level?
• How is the alignment of the leg?
• Are they using the opposite hip of the standing leg to bring the pelvis level?
• Is the gesture leg hanging directly down? If not, this can give you hint about tight psoas, ITB, and back muscles.

49 W. 27th St. Mezzanine B, New York City 212-904-1399

Tuesdays 12:30
Wednesdays 6:30

49 W. 27th St. Mezzanine B, New York City 212-904-1399

Reservations are a must.

Equipment classes are usually $35.