Archives For Greg Glassman

Pilates teachers (don’t necessarily) know best

September 3, 2015 — 5 Comments

ivory towerYes, I’m afraid I’ve been browsing Facebook forums again – and becoming struck by the tone of some teachers’ comments with reference to other movement disciplines, and other exercise professionals. Warning, generalisations follow.

Is it me, or is there something within our training that implants the idea that a knowledge of Pilates somehow gives us an understanding of all movement, or makes us a little more expert than other fitness professionals?
I come from a Pilates teacher training background where we were encouraged to believe in, and promote ourselves as having “the highest standard”. There was no-one in the country better qualified, more knowledgable than us. (Perhaps it is just me, or my egotistical interpretation of what I heard and saw…)
It was, and according to Facebook, still is fairly standard to look down on the methods and the level of knowledge of personal trainers, for example. I’m in no doubt that there are some shoddy PTs out there, just as I’m in no doubt that there are some sub-par Pilates teachers out there (let’s not forget that you don’t need to have ever attended a Pilates classes to gain a Level 3 Diploma in teaching Pilates in the UK).
Why do we appear to feel superior?

I have a certain affection for CrossFit so I may be particularly sensitive to Pilates teachers taking a swipe at it (though I’m sure that CrossFit HQ isn’t at all worried). It seems to be a widely held belief that CrossFit ignores bad form in its athletes, or maybe even teaches bad form. I’ve done the Level 1 CrossFit Trainer course and can attest that bad form is not encouraged, and that trying to coach someone who is moving at a speed not usually seen in a Pilates studio is a tricky skill. Never mind – looking in from the outside us Pilates teachers can see enough to ‘know’ that CrossFit is bad, the coaches aren’t bothered about technique, and the practitioners are sure to be injured soon. We may even crow that those poor mugs will be knocking on our door fro help once they have injured themselves – I’ve seen comments like this many, many times. In short, we (Pilates teachers) understand and can coach movement much better than a CrossFit coach can.

It may be true that more people injure themselves doing Crossfit than injure themselves doing Pilates, but just because you see something in a gym, or on YouTube that makes you wince, doesn’t mean that high numbers of CF athletes are hurting themselves. (On the other hand, figures suggest that in the USA, between 37 and 56% of people who run regularly are injured every year. Yes, up to half the Americans who run regularly are injured annually. That’s a dangerous activity, and one in which poor form and technique routinely goes unnoticed.)

Pilates is about whole body health so let us consider the health outcomes from CrossFit. I can’t speak for every facility, of course, but I believe it’s safe to say that the majority of regular CrossFitters will be encouraged not only to move a lot – to challenge their physicality – but also to think about health fundamentals like their food quality and their sleep quality. Not to mention that they are encouraged to “regularly learn and play new sports” (from founder Greg Glassman’s ‘World-Class Fitness in 100 Words’) Ido Portal, who does not suffer fools gladly, has said: “I think the CrossFit community is a very open community….they’re hard workers, they’re open-minded, mostly…..Most Crossfitters are not humble enough to see what is missing but, once you show it to them, they accept it.” Can Pilates teachers truly, routinely boast the same kind of outcomes, or the same kind of approach to overall health?

Getting back to movement, I will always agree with anyone who says that the pursuit of Pilates (in the original/traditional form) will provide an excellent foundation for understanding human movement but does this make us omniscient? Firstly, for Pilates to really teach you about movement I believe that it has to be treated as a system, without unpopular movements being left out, and to be seen as a series of patterns. It was very interesting for me to see recently that there was broad agreement among the Pilates teachers commenting on it that a particular picture of a press up represented ‘bad form’. However, when it came to solutions to fix this bad form the answers were quite varied, indicating a lack of (amongst that small sample) collective understanding. Most alarmingly, while none referred to the hip joint’s role in spinal stability under load, there were suggestions that abdominal muscles should be pulling into the spine. I suspect a great many CrossFIt coaches would know that you do not effectively create spinal stability, especially under high load, by drawing your stomach in.

Until, as a profession, we raise our game, do we have any business to be feeling superior to our movement teaching colleagues from other disciplines?

 

 

Ivory Tower image borrowed from: http://3menmakeatiger.blogspot.co.uk

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What’s great about Pilates? Part 4

February 9, 2013 — 5 Comments

It’s a GPP system

My understanding (and I can’t remember whether this was gleaned from reading Pilates’ books, or hearing it said by one or other of the first generation teachers) is that Pilates’ intention was to create a form of physical training that, unlike the kinds of training he had done himself (boxing, for example), would ready one for any conceivable physical challenge. In a nutshell, General Physical Preparedness.

Along with the CrossFit Training Manual, I’ve been reading a fair amount of Gray Cook‘s writing lately, and both have some interesting things to say about specialisation.

“CrossFit considers the sumo wrestler, triathlete, marathoner and power lifter to be ‘fringe’ athletes, in that their fitness demands are so specialised as to be inconsistent with the adaptations that give maximum competency at all physical challenges.” To extrapolate that a little, none of those athletes can be considered truly fit. Heresy alert: Mo Farah is not fit!

In his lecture ‘Developing a Movement Philosophy‘ Gray Cook observes “Every time we specialise we give up our adaptability”, and later “any time we specialize, the human body at some point will start to break down.”

When writing here I invariably seem to get to the point of feeling the need to insert the “What has this got to do with Pilates?” sentence. Well, Pilates is meant to be promoting health – and I do like CrossFit founder Greg Glassman’s concept of ‘health’ being measured on a scale that runs from sickness, through wellness, to fitness – so hopefully Pilates is not simply promoting health, but specifically promoting fitness. (Why settle for being ‘well’, instead of ‘fit’, when ‘well’ puts us already half way to ‘sick’). Fitness requires adaptability, and as Gray Cook implied, specialisation is the enemy of adaptability – and here’s where Pilates steps up, because, again, it’s a GPP system.

At Pilates in Motion Studio we try to instil the idea in our clients that Pilates is a means to an end, not an end in itself. In a very broad sense, we could call that ‘end’ “living better“, and that’s precisely because Pilates is not a method to help us to get better a specific skill, or improve endurance in a particular activity (though of course those benefits may come), but because it should be preparing us for a wide array of challenges, from the mundane to the extraordinary.

By incorporating a mixture of movement patterns, in multiple planes, and by practising the principle of trunk stabilistaion while moving extremities (How many Pilates exercises revolve around this central concept?), we make ourselves more ‘robust to perturbation’ (as the biomechanists might say). Given a definition of fitness that incorporates a notion of adaptability, Pilates (perhaps with the addition of more load) practised with some periods of high intensity, provides a great foundation for general, not specialised, fitness.

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What you DO, not how you DIET

January 25, 2013 — 8 Comments

The “Fast Diet”, also referred to as the “5:2” diet seems to be all over the UK media at the moment, accompanied by both very positive reviews, and expressions of concern about the dangers of encouraging anyone to fast.

I had this diet described to me as “fast for 2 days (actually, limit calories to 500/600 per day), and eat what you like for 5 days”. The man behind this is Dr Michael Mosley – and he made a television programme all about it, so it must be infallible. Apparently he found evidence that, aside from weight-loss, the Fast Diet is also associated with a range of other health benefits.

I have grave misgivings about any suggestion of ‘eat what you like’, because it seems to suggest that nutrition is unimportant. In other words, there’s an awful lot of ‘food’ around these days of very limited nutritional value. The idea (not Dr Mosley’s, I’m sure, but possibly widely-held nonetheless) that it’s okay to eat crap for 5 days, and then severely restrict your calories for the other 2, sounds like a recipe for very poor nutrition. And food, after all, is meant to nourish us, not simply supply us with calories.

I can’t help but listen to news items about diets without my Paleo-biased brain shouting “It’s what you eat, not how much or how often, that matters”. I’m also trying not to be a 197693_3967280097068_451202589_nfundamentalist about food. I do get a little stressed over vegan parents raising their babies as vegans. Equally, it would take very strong evidence (that I’ve seen no trace of) to persuade me that being vegetarian is as healthy (never mind sustainable) as being omnivorous . At the same time, occasional rants about soy products aside, if someone feels that the way they eat is the best for them, what business is it of mine? None, of course.

Back to ‘diets’. The biggest problem that I can see is that they always appear to be temporary. I may well be wrong, but I doubt that Dr Mosley is proposing that anyone follows the 5:2 ratio for life. This is why I really like the way that I’m eating these days (and why I’m always a little baffled by people asking me if I’m “still doing that diet”) – it’s great because it feels totally sustainable. I choose, generally, not to eat certain things, that were amazingly easy to give up. That’s it. Again, I’m trying not to evangelise.

I was exposed to another idea today (courtesy of Paleo Solution podcast episode 167), attributed to Greg Glassman, founder of CrossFit. It seems like a brilliant approach to body composition, health, and (probably) any other outcome one might desire from a diet. Essentially, set yourself some athletic goals that will really stretch you. The podcast mentions double-bodyweight back squats and a couple of other outlandish strength/gymnastic goals, but we can all figure out athletic achievements that will stretch our individual capabilities. Perhaps it’s mastering the entire Super-Advanced Reformer repertoire, or doing “Romana’s Mat Challenge” 4 times in a row, if Pilates is your thing (though I think a more profound strength challenge would be best). Maybe it’s preparing to climb Kilimanjaro for charity. The point is that, if your goal is sufficiently challenging for you, doing what it takes to reach it will inevitably involve eating appropriately, and making positive changes to your body composition. No 5:2, no GI, no Caveman, no South Beach, no Atkins, no Blood Type (and on and on and on and on)

Perfect! Nourish yourself to achieve amazingness, and enjoy the combined side-effects of better health, and the body composition you’ve dreamed of.

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Would Joseph Pilates do CrossFit?

October 11, 2012 — 8 Comments

Many different people have tried to find their own niche in the world of Pilates, fusing with, or adding elements of other disciplines; or perhaps trying to make their classes specific preparation for another sport, or activity. (Yes, I have seen ‘bikinilates’ advertised). I think this may be missing the point, but more of that later.
There are also signs that some teachers feel that Pilates is not enough in itself – that it needs to lead to something more – and I’d number myself amongst them. One of my teachers and trainers early in my Pilates career, James d’Silva, has created the Garuda Method, which was advertised at one stage along the lines of “where Pilates ends Garuda begins”. (One might debate the idea of Pilates ‘ending’ somewhere, I can imagine some sticklers for tradition and the original work rejecting the idea wholesale.) For me, CrossFit begins, not where Pilates ends, but overlapping, and happily coexisting. Perhaps this is the time to answer the ‘What is Crossfit?’ question.

The answer is: “Constantly varied, high intensity, functional movement.” (…”Functional movements are universal motor recruitment patterns; they are performed in a wave of contraction from core to extremity; and they are compound movements -i.e. they are multi-joint.”), from ‘Understanding CrossFit’ by Greg Glassman.

Greg Glassman is the creator of CrossFit and, like Joseph Pilates, a maverick figure with a solid conviction that what he is doing is valuable and should be disseminated as widely as possible. The strongest link that appears to me between the two disciplines is in the intended outcome. My understanding has always been (though I can’t find it in either of Pilates’ books, I’ve heard it from first generation teachers) that Pilates’ intention, after years of practicing a variety of different disciplines, was to create an exercise program that was non-specific. In other words, his exercises were for overall fitness, in readiness for whatever challenges life may bring. More recently the concept of GPP – general physical preparedness – has emerged, and this is central to CrossFit methodology. One trains a wide variety of activities in order to be prepared for as wide a variety of potential challenges as possible. Glassman seems to be fond of the idea of preparation, in as much as one can, for the “unknown and unknowable”.

I cannot think of a single Pilates exercise that works a joint or muscle in isolation, and the idea of a “wave of contraction from core to extremity” sounds exactly like Pilates. Joseph’s own principles for his method were: breathing; whole body movement; and whole body commitment. I haven’t come across anything in writings about CrossFit specifically related to breathing, but it is very much to do with whole body movement, and total commitment. In a divergence of the two methods, Pilates prescribed his exercises lying or sitting to “relieve your heart from undue strain” (from ‘Return to Life‘). This is one of the areas that leaves some of us feeling that Pilates alone is not enough, and CrossFit workouts certainly put significant strain on the cardiovascular system. (Whilst I think the tired “no pain, no gain” slogan is a crass one, I believe it’s true to say that you can’t have adaptation without stress.) In this context CrossFit also profoundly effects breathing, and full use of lung capacity. Anyone who has tried high intensity exercise will most likely be aware that breathing to full capacity doesn’t require cueing…

The video is self-explanatory, if you jump straight to 3:20 you’ll see how well her lungs are functioning. (In case anyone is concerned, the video above is of an elite athlete performing at an advanced level. This does not represent the kind of work that beginners would be asked to do.)

Many Pilates exercises involve maintaining a stable trunk (spine) whilst moving arms and/or legs. Typically the weight of the limbs and their movement act as a challenge to that stable trunk position. Similarly, one of the fundamentals of many CrossFit movements is ‘midline stabilisation’ – the idea that, particularly under load, you keep your trunk stiff, and move from your hip and shoulder joints. The only difference between the two is that Pilates doesn’t add load to the same degree. Had he been faced with current levels of osteoporosis, for instance, who’s to say that Joseph wouldn’t have favoured picking some weight up?

Another element that CrossFit and Pilates share is an emphasis on precision. Sadly, if you make only a cursory search of the internet, you will find plenty of alarm expressed over the dangerous nature of some CrossFit workouts – and, indeed, plenty of YouTube video clips of people doing very demanding movements with eye-wateringly poor form. Just like so many articles about Pilates being bad for you, I don’t believe that this is a reflection of CrossFit, but one of either poor coaching, or simply poor performance. Just as Pilates insisted on his exercises being done with precision, both videos of training seminars, and conversations with Crossfit luminaries make it clear that ‘Form is everything’. In fact, one of the particularly interesting challenges for me is that CrossFit workouts ask questions along the lines of: ‘We know that you can lift that heavy barbell off the floor with good form, now can you do that multiple times, quickly, with good form? And how about keeping your form and doing that when you’re gasping for breath because you’ve just been doing another challenging movement at speed?’

Rich Froning – ‘Fittest Man on Earth’

Joseph Pilates – tattooed health visionary

What else is there to lead me to the conclusion that Joseph Pilates would have embraced CrossFit? Followers of both methods will attest to the remarkable transformations in body composition, energy levels and overall well-being that are there for the taking. He didn’t seem to be interested in  great analysis of his method: one of my favourite Pilates quotes (as recounted by Ron Fletcher) is, in response to a question about the purpose of an exercise, “It’s for the body!”. CrossFit celebrates becoming faster, stronger, more agile – and does not dwell on the exact mix of muscles required. Perhaps most significantly Joseph, tattooed as he was, would have fit right in with a great number of CrossFitters, for whom ‘ink’ seems de rigeur.

I’m convinced that Joseph would have been involved in a movement like CrossFit, had he the chance. The truth is, while I couldn’t bring myself to give the post this heading, I believe (with apologies) that ‘CrossFit is the new Pilates’.

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