The Pilates System (?)

As seems so often to be the case, the convergence of two sources at a similar time has got me writing. Soon after I saw this from Andrea Maida’s blog, I also saw this piece, written by Joanne Elphiston. Wildly different, you might say – one is an attempt to define the original order of Reformer exercises, as determined by Pilates himself (no doubt a demanding piece of research in itself), and the other is a critique of (what may be) the prevailing thinking around stability training and injury management.

To stray from these for a moment, after spending 4 days last year learning from Ido Portal, I felt that my concept of movement, and teaching movement had been blown apart. For the first few hours it was mildly traumatic as I wondered how on earth I could go back to teaching what I then recognised, as a result of what I’d just seen, heard, tried etc.,  as the relatively narrow approach of Pilates. What saved me was recognising that, like most if not all movement disciplines, Pilates only makes sense as a system, and what I needed to do was to keep exploring the new material and ideas, integrate them into my teaching as appropriate, and teach in a systematic way. I hope that prior to this my teaching hadn’t been haphazard, but there was definitely room for more of a systematic approach. (It may be worth mentioning that I have become much better at the kind of record keeping that insurance companies recommend as a consequence).

Naturally then I’m drawn toward articles like Andrea’s, because it helps to reinforce a system. Not to mention that, as well as laying out a sequence, she does a great job of rationalising the order that she offers (and with humour – so much nicer than dogma…). There are other orders laid down for the Reformer – Whereas in Andrea’s list the Long Stretch Series comes after the Long Box, in the Romana Legacy Series DVDs the Short Box appears immediately after the Long Box – I don’t think these distinctions are important because there is an underlying system to both.

What of Ms Elphinston’s thoughts? In case you haven’t read it yet, she begins: “We see a lot of injured physiotherapists and Pilates teachers in our clinic. Many of them have turned to Pilates in order to address their own back pain, and it initially gave them a sense of control over their situation. However, they nevertheless still have back pain.” And she goes on to ask why this should be. Partly because I have seen this scenario many times (or at least it feels that way), I am willing to bet that the Pilates teachers whom she refers to have not pursued the system – have not treated it as something that you keep working to progress within. My guess is that they discovered, through Pilates, the exercises that they feel help them (which can feel like a miracle), and they get repeated over and over (“I know what I need.”), but the idea of Pilates as a system to progress in gets lost. Or maybe it was never there in the first place. I began Pilates at a studio where there was a clearly defined warm-up sequence that most clients learned sooner or later. There were ways to modify or layer things but the basic movement patterns were the same. Over the years things changed – my guess is that teachers got drawn into playing therapist, or got bored and added their own ‘creativity’, or simply lost faith/interest in the system. If you go there now you may be hard pressed to find a teacher who expects that the clients will adhere to a system.

There may always be debates around whether or not you can teach exercises that you cannot do yourself. Leaving that aside, I suspect that we tend not to teach the exercises that we don’t do ourselves. Or that we don’t effectively teach the exercises that we don’t do. I’ve been here before – if we entertain the idea that there’s Pilates repertoire that we needn’t aspire to, then why bother with any of it?

It seems that a lot of continuing education in the UK Pilates world relates to other disciplines, or to approaches to specific pathologies and, therefore, modifications. (Why should, for example, Pilates for Golfers, be substantially different from Pilates for non-golfers? Is there repertoire that’s contra-indicated for golfers, and other repertoire only suitable for golfers?) This, coupled with an absence of goal-setting and diminishing expectations, means that it’s easy to ‘do Pilates’ and actually only scratch the surface. The system itself can act as goal-setter, and inspiration (me, I’m working on nailing Balance Control/Step Off this year), and means that you don’t avoid the things that you don’t like. It’s now a running joke/accepted law in our studio that everyone hates the things that they need the most (and I do NOT love Breaststroke…)

Ms Elphinston’s writes “we remember that stability arises from systems, not muscles. This requires variety and variation in our programmes, working our way up to variability in order to foster robustness and a range of solutions to meet the challenges in our work, play and general environment.” Hah, Systems! I know that she is not referring to systems in the same way that I was above, yet it seems that these ideas dovetail nicely. The Pilates system is about developing stability not by focusing on muscle recruitment but by developing a range of movement patterns with ‘variety, variation and variability’. The mixture of midline stabilisation and hip/shoulder dissociation with spinal articulation fosters robustness – not, God help us, ‘Safe Spine Pilates’.

If you’ve spent any time in a health club then I’m sure you will have seen those people who dip in and out of things – a bit of treadmill, some shoulder presses, a bit of a stretch, the cross-trainer, maybe the leg press etc. Perhaps you’ve felt sorry for them and their lack of structure in their workout, and maybe thought that if only they had some more method to their session that they may see more progress. The Pilates studio (or mat class) is just the same – the magic’s in the system.