Shownotes
The most useful kind of body awareness is mostly unconscious and automatic control, like a cat. This is built through practice, not narration.
Links:
- Glute activation drills increase perception but not actual glute activation here
- Episode 160 "Can we even feel muscles activating?" here
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Transcripts
What's the purpose or the benefit of concentrating on the experience,
::the sensation of contracting muscles in Pilates?
::That is the question we're going to explore today on Pilates Elephants.
::Welcome, Heath Lander. Hi, Raph.
::All right. So, you know, this is something that you call willful contraction.
::I kind of more think about it as just focusing on either consciously contracting
::or maybe it's about the concentrating on the experience of the muscle working.
::But really, I think there's something that's very integral to the way a lot
::of people teach Pilates,
::which is promoting and building awareness of which specific muscles are working in a movement.
::So being aware of the sensation of your glutes contracting or your abs contracting
::or your pelvic floor contracting or, you know, whichever particular muscle we're talking about.
::So, um, and that's not us because we don't really think that's a great use of time or energy,
::but I want to examine the case on both sides because a lot of people,
::a lot of people get a lot out of it and think it's really awesome.
::So why do they get a lot out of it and why do they think it's really awesome?
::Well, when I think back to 20-odd-plus years before,
::yeah, in a time before the Nokia, I, what was,
::one of the things I think that makes it valuable as an exchange for an instructor
::to a client is that, broadly speaking,
::people, humans, who aren't doing something
::with their body that makes them not do this tend to live above
::their shoulders so then when they go and see
::someone who can guide you through a
::movement that gives you a specific sensation of a
::muscle firing and they predicted it that's an
::incredibly powerful authority moment you know and and and also an awakening
::moment right so for clients who've just sort of moved their body and they don't
::haven't thought about maybe they're in pain and they come along and all of a
::sudden an instructor is able to cue them to a point and say now you're going
::to feel this and boom you do And you're like, holy crap, I haven't felt that
::muscle work like that before.
::You know, that's a very powerful sort of binding story.
::So that's kind of a, yeah, I mean, I would agree with that. I would frame it
::more as like it's a cool party trick.
::That if I put you on a reformer and set you up a certain way,
::I can make you feel your glutes or your abs or your whatever.
::And that is a cool party trick.
::And I guess it does, it is a demonstration that in, at some level,
::you know what the fuck you're doing as an instructor.
::If I say like, okay, I will now make your glutes work. Bam. Oh yeah.
::That's exactly what I'm feeling. So that it does establish authority, like you say.
::It's also an extension of that thing where as instructors, we're curious about
::what muscles are creating the movement.
::And so then it's like, and then if someone says, what, what,
::what, what should I be feeling now?
::What muscle should I be feeling now? It gives you an answer to that question.
::And I used to really enjoy knowing the answer to that. These days,
::if someone says, what muscles are working now? I go, a whole bunch of them. Just carry on.
::Well, I think there's underneath that question, what muscle should I be feeling now?
::I think that is kind of the crux of the question that I want to get at today,
::which is the notion, the assumption underneath that question is that one of
::the important goals of Pilates is that you have a certain somatic experience.
::So somatic means just internal, you know, perception within your own body.
::So, you know, well, I would ask, look, well, why does it matter that you feel
::something in particular?
::You know, why is it important that you have a bodily experience of feeling a
::certain thing, you know, like, and that really gets to like,
::okay, well, why are we here?
::You know, why are we in this room doing Pilates together, are we here to have
::an experience or are we here to improve our health and well-being?
::Because those things are not the same thing.
::They're not mutually exclusive, but they're also mutually inclusive. Right.
::So you can improve your health and well-being with or without having a bodily
::experience, and you can have a bodily experience with or without improving your health and well-being.
::However, I would say that to a large extent,
::the Venn diagrams don't overlap because a A lot of the time,
::the way it's taught to focus or become aware of certain muscles working actually
::decreases the amount of benefit you get in terms of health and well-being because
::it substantially reduces the load or range of motion or both.
::And I think of an example, and I used to do this, you used to do this,
::where if you know your anatomy and your biomechanics and your Pilates repertoire,
::you can arrange people's bodies in a certain position so that predictably they'll
::feel it in a certain body part.
::Like if you're doing like side-lying legs and straps and you know how to roll
::the top hip forwards and a few other, you know, keep the foot above hip height
::and whatever, you can predictably make someone feel it in their butt cheek, right?
::But in order to do that, you've got to substantially reduce the load and the
::range of motion of the movement and the load and the range of motion are what
::actually produce the health benefits.
::So yes you can you know it's possible
::to have a bodily experience and work
::hard through full range but more
::often than not i think in pursuit of that bodily experience we actually reduce
::the load and the range so i think there is a there to a certain extent there's
::a conflict there a lot of the time so you know why do we feel it's so important
::to have that bodily experience oh i felt a muscle working I've ever felt before.
::What's it for?
::Well, from so here's one example I can think of where I kind of,
::conflating the two things one was was like
::that's the long stretch shape right so the dish shape that
::we make in long stretch hold on
::i think you just lost three quarters of our audience because most of
::them probably do long stretches a perfect straight line from
::neutral line okay well go and look at your photos of joseph
::or go and look at gymnastics which is where he got the shape from and and you
::can keep teaching it in neutral if you want but uh i i when i started realizing
::that And after I heard Christopher Summers say fuck neutral and I started wondering
::what on God's earth he was talking about and started looking at gymnastic shapes
::and realized they were the shapes Joseph was making in his photos.
::And Christopher Summers being
::the US Men's Olympic gymnastics coach for a couple decades. coats. Yeah.
::And also when I started to try and hold my own body weight in gymnastic rings,
::I discovered that I was able to generate a lot more force against my body weight
::and gravity by just pushing,
::you know, like trying to push my shoulders as far forward as possible, which,
::amounted to protraction of my shoulders and flexion of my spine.
::In gymnastics, I call it compression or hollow body. Hollow body, yeah.
::And that is the classical 100 shape. So if you're not sure what we mean,
::Google Joseph Pilates 100 and make sure it's the black and white grainy photo
::and you'll notice that he's fully flexed and chin to chest and shoulders are
::protracted and turtle shell shaped and all of that. Same with his teaser position.
::Right. He only does two movements. Yeah.
::And one of them's a cat stretch. Yeah, one of them is a cat stretch, yeah.
::So when I learned from you about some of the nuances of serratus anterior And I realized, oh, wow.
::Okay, cool. So when I do scapular pushups, which is to protract and then unprotract
::or, you know, retract maybe multiple times, I thought, okay,
::I'm working serratus anterior.
::And I am. And if I couldn't do 30 reps, then I was probably,
::or 20 reps or 15, I was probably making it stronger.
::Um, but, and I could, if I really tried sort of feel sensation in and around
::my rib cage, if I did enough reps.
::Then I made what I now feel is an error of telling clients about the fact that,
::you know, if you do this and you feel this, now you're feeling your serratus anterior working.
::And now I can tell you all about serratus anterior if you want.
::None of that actually added to their ability to use their serratus anterior
::under load. Like what they needed to know was push as hard as you can against the rings.
::Don't let them fly out from underneath you and hold that for time.
::And you might find it easier if you copy this shape, if they weren't sort of
::working that out for themselves. You didn't need to explain the muscle.
::But it took me a while to realize that me explaining the muscle didn't help
::them find the muscle, didn't help them be better at using the muscle.
::And in fact, if anything, I was probably distracting them from just a simple
::outcome-focused cue that gave me more than just the one muscle,
::you know, give me a spinal shape or whatever else, which that's another conversation
::we've had about, you know, one cue to rule them all.
::Trying to speak to an individual muscle means you're not talking to the movement,
::you're not talking to the rest of the muscles.
::All right. So let's examine that, you know, idea that thinking about the muscle
::or becoming aware of the muscle activating improves your control,
::you know, is necessary to improve control and precision in the movement.
::And just a brief 30-second thought experiment, you know, completely different.
::Disproves that because if you think about many other
::movement disciplines where people achieve
::extremely high levels of precision and control in
::their movements i think about something like breakdancing or gymnastics
::or uh table tennis or or
::you know many other disciplines like
::soccer um you know people who if
::you think about elite athletes in a lot of these sports archery um
::you know darts you know people people who
::can do incredible card tricks you know like shuffle you
::know three packs of cards in one hand those those sorts of people people that
::can juggle you know seven flaming brands or and a chainsaw you know like people
::develop incredibly high levels of precision and control and you know Cirque
::du Soleil acrobats you know who can balance a one-handed handstand on top of
::a pile of eight chairs all standing on top of each other,
::or stand on a fitball on one leg whilst juggling or whatever.
::Just incredible feats of control and precision.
::And if you look at how these people learn and practice, those musicians,
::pianists, violinists, flautists, you look at how these people learn and practice,
::they never think about specific muscles.
::They learn the movement. You practice the card shuffling movement.
::You practice the piano scale. You practice standing on one leg on a ball.
::Like you don't think about which muscles you're doing. You just practice keeping
::the ball still or you practice moving the cards.
::And so that is like you can easily disprove the idea that you have to think
::about which muscles you're working in order to or become aware of which muscles
::working in order to achieve high level of skills. Just plainly not true.
::Yeah. So. And then. Go ahead. No, no, no.
::What were you? I was just, I was thinking through some of the conversations
::I've had with people in various contexts about that.
::And especially in terms of, uh, Pilates as a support for athletic training.
::So, you know, if you, and the, the idea that if you can, if you go to a Pilates
::session and you do tippy birds and you feel your glute working,
::like you've never felt it before, that that's going to have a spillover effect to your glute.
::And I quote, I've heard people say this, remembering to switch on when you're
::doing your sprints, basketball, whatever.
::And I mean, that's just a, that's an elephant that needs to be put to rest.
::You know, the idea that muscles have a memory.
::Well, in fact, there's actually been research specifically on glute activation exercises,
::exactly like you described, like teaching people to consciously switch on their
::glutes, do tippy birds and clamshells and whatnot, and then measuring how much
::their glutes fire when they do like loaded squats.
::And the answer is they don't fire any more or any less after weeks of glute activation drills.
::And I will put some links to research on that in the show notes.
::So glute activation drills do teach people to perceive the sensation of their
::glutes firing better, but they don't actually make the glutes fire better.
::So you learn to have an experience.
::And so if it's not necessary for developing skill, well, some people,
::and I know that there are people who feel this way.
::Feel that increased body awareness in and
::of itself is a useful goal like it's it there's
::an inherent it's an inherently good thing to have increased body awareness and i
::don't necessarily disagree with that although i think
::you and i heath would probably disagree with their
::definition of body awareness i think we there are two different ways that you
::can two different concepts that you can uh that we use that frame for body awareness
::for and one of those concepts is being consciously aware of sensations in your
::body at all times and really focusing on what's happening.
::And another one is actually really what I mean when I think of body awareness
::is actually not about being consciously aware of your body.
::It's about having an unconscious awareness of your body.
::So like a cat, for example, or a highly trained martial artist or dancer or gymnast,
::somebody who is, if surprised or perturbed off balance or whatever,
::they very, very quickly adapt and don't, you know, like they basically remain balanced and, you know.
::In control of their body in a wide range of situations, but they're not necessarily
::thinking about their body, but they move gracefully, they adapt to the environment
::easily and unconsciously, like a cat, you know.
::And so I think, you know, if I said like, okay, there's high-level martial art
::of Bruce Lee, you know, he had great body awareness, right?
::What I mean by that is it was hard to.
::Put him off balance. It was hard to trip him over.
::It was hard to catch him out of position. He was always in the right place.
::He had an awareness of the space and other people and gravity and where his own limbs were in space.
::But that awareness wasn't him consciously thinking about it.
::It was just part of the non-conscious computational processes happening inside
::his brain so that he was just always in the right position with his weight distributed
::properly on both feet, but he wasn't thinking about it all the time.
::Whereas I think a lot of people think about body awareness as being like actually
::thinking consciously about the sensations in your body at all times.
::And there's a kind of a, you'll probably be able to lay this out more concisely
::than I was. So I'll vomit it onto the table and you can clean up the mess.
::There's some kind of like paradoxical continuum there that, this goes back to
::what I was saying. So Pilates is so often a transformational experience for
::people, this has been my observation.
::This is not the only way, but for people who often through pain find their way
::to a Pilates session and they're doing a one-on-one, someone recommended it.
::And then the Pilates instructor, the facilitator, does something.
::It doesn't always have to be specific muscle stuff that brings that person into
::a new relationship with their body.
::And I would draw a kind of parallel with that person didn't have a relationship
::with their body at that level before.
::And you could get the same thing from someone maybe taking you through from
::a mindfulness meditation or a body scan or something, as long as it wasn't cerebral
::and it was actually about your body.
::And that can be transformational for people. And similarly, when you talk to
::people, when I've talked to people and explained the idea of discomfort being
::the same thing as pain before it's injury, you know, people just often haven't thought about that.
::And it's like you lift the veil of it and they go, oh, I'd never thought about
::that. Like, yeah, of course, the feelings come and go.
::And if I don't have to worry about it being an injury, then I don't really care.
::And it's like, it's, that's a, a, a moment of transformation and empowerment
::for them equally, you know, discovering, oh, like I like using my body.
::I don't really know I've never done.
::I mean, people doing feet and straps for the first time. I can't count how many
::times people have come out of
::feet and straps and said, I haven't had that much fun since I was a kid.
::And it's like, well, what have you been doing with yourself?
::And it's like, well, I've been working. And it's like, yeah, right.
::A lot of people don't play in their body like we're lucky enough to do as Pilates professionals.
::And it's like there's some sort of, so then it's like, okay,
::at the early stages of that, helping people know where their body is in space
::is actually something that you do sometimes have to do.
::Like we've all had the client where you say, what was that exercise on the caddy?
::Opposite, like stepping and punching, right hand, left foot, left hand, right foot.
::You know and the quiet joke in the back of your mind was are you going to
::be the one in 20 person who actually does contralateral when
::i say that you know because people it's a new skill and they're
::like wow i never done anything you know on the reformer there are heaps of examples
::like just getting your feet into the straps for the first time is a massive
::challenge for a lot of people or knee stretches is a classic one people push
::with their arms instead of their legs doesn't matter how many times you say
::push with your legs keep your arms still you know they'll still be like half
::the class pushing with their arms yeah and so what that's right so all of those examples.
::But um as they continue that you go from i don't know where my left i literally
::don't know where my left hand is while i'm doing something with my right foot,
::to a point where theoretically we help that person become more body aware as
::you laid it out and skillful that they do those things without thinking.
::So the continuum would be conscious awareness where you didn't have awareness
::to a point where you have unconscious awareness.
::And that should be what we facilitate rather than a kind of constantly drilling down and making you,
::let's focus on our neutral and lift your pelvic floor and
::now feel your powerhouse and relax your shoulder blades down before
::we move folks before we move you know like we should
::be moving towards a more aware yeah well
::i think i would say you i would say yes but
::i think yeah like you say we don't want to go into more and more and more and
::more conscious awareness as we become more skillful actually it's quite the
::opposite you want to become less and less aware because the the virtuoso guitarist
::isn't thinking about which muscles they're contracting in their finger as they're playing, you know,
::on stage, like you have to become less aware of the individual components of your body.
::That is part of the process and definition of skilled movement.
::And I would say even at the very beginner stage where it's like,
::okay, this is your left hand, this is your right foot stage.
::Like that is what they need to know. Okay. This hand goes here.
::This foot goes here. Push.
::You know, that's, that's the level of awareness that they need.
::Not like, okay, you need to squeeze your left quadratus femoris 12% more.
::It really is about the simplest instruction that will achieve the outcome,
::which would be your foot goes here, your hand goes here, now push the carriage out.
::That is what will facilitate them progressing their skill and actually developing
::the ability to, quote, know where their body is in space.
::Now, when I say no, I don't mean could write an essay on it,
::could explain it in, you know, which muscles and bones and joint alignment.
::What I mean is can do it, can do it.
::It's the difference between academic understanding and the ability to actually do the skill. So...
::You know, saying like, I need to activate my X, Y, Z muscle and my alignment
::should be A, B, C and whatever is not the same thing as being able to do the skill.
::And being able to do the skill doesn't mean you would necessarily know any of
::those words to explain it.
::Yeah. So they're just different. They're different things. And I think to a
::certain extent, they're not compatible. Yeah.
::One way that I find myself trying to explain that to people is knowing the details
::of the muscles that will create the movement is not the same thing as being able to do the movement.
::And so which one do you want to focus your attention on? Yeah, right.
::All right. And so what about the idea then that, you know, so what is,
::well, I just want to just, you know, keep on this idea of increased body awareness
::for a second because, you know, people do think of it as a good thing in and of itself.
::You know, like one of the benefits of Pilates is increased body awareness. People say that a lot.
::And I think, you know, like you say, if somebody kind of lives in their head
::all day, maybe they have a job that requires them to just be on a computer all
::day or think about stuff all day and they never exercise or stretch or breathe
::or do any of those things,
::it can be really valuable to do something like a body scan or progressive relaxation
::where you just lie down, you think about, you know, your feet,
::then you think about your ankles and you think about your calves and you think
::about your knees and you consciously sort of go through your body or you think
::about your breath, you know,
::all of these things can be really valuable to bring you into being,
::you know, like mentally present in the moment in your body, right?
::And that is a good thing in and of itself. and there's actually good evidence
::or a reasonable amount of evidence that I've seen that that actually does reduce
::anxiety and reduce pain and improve people's quality of life in those regards.
::But the thing is, you get those exact same benefits by going into a flow state, right?
::So you get out of thinking, because the definition of a flow state is you stop thinking.
::That's the definition. That's what it is. You're in the moment, truly in the moment.
::And a flow state can, one of the ways you can facilitate a flow state is extremely effortful exercise.
::Like you cannot sprint flat out and feel anxious at the same time.
::Or worry about what you're going to have for dinner at the same time,
::or what Jenny said at the office.
::And you cannot be doing your final rep of long stretch and quivering like a
::leaf on that final rep and not even sure you'll be able to pull the carriage back in.
::You can't be there and also just be having mental dialogue at the same time.
::The effort is too intense. You go into this flow state, which has those same
::benefits as doing a body scan or progressive muscle relaxation relaxation in
::that it just removes conscious thought and makes you inhabit your physical body.
::But when you're doing that final rep of long stretch and you're quivering like
::a leaf, you're also getting all of the health benefits of actually building
::strength and range of motion through your shoulders, and not to mention abs
::and all the other good things.
::And so that is where the Venn diagrams do overlap, where we get body awareness,
::if you want to call it that,
::being physically, I guess, mentally present in your body, as well as the health
::benefits of Pilates, which all accrue from that strength and range of motion work.
::Whereas just if we're doing a much lighter, smaller version of an exercise in
::order to consciously become aware of a certain muscle working,
::we lose all those health benefits.
::Let me so let me well said so what you just described there's a lot of assumptions in it for,
::anyone who's been trained in the education models out of which we shook ourselves
::out of and they're still out there and they're still the dominant models so.
::We all, I haven't yet met an instructor and I'm thinking of the workshops we
::run where I meet instructors who I haven't trained and haven't trained with
::URI and haven't trained in evidence based models.
::I haven't yet met anyone that doesn't want to and believe that Pilates helps
::them to make their clients stronger.
::And at the same time, there's a concern about, I want to make people strong.
::Well, I believe that what I'm doing is making people stronger with whatever
::level of understanding about strength versus endurance versus no
::minimal effect at all and i'm
::concerned about i have concerns about safety because i've
::been inculcated with safety culture and all of that and
::so then when when you then then and then like and this is where i remember being
::and i look back and i can understand i can like really feel for little baby
::heaths because i didn't so you could see that people had a command of the movement
::and you wanted to add challenge.
::But no one's taught you about the...
::I mean, and I'd been to the gym.
::I knew how to add load on a barbell in a bench press or a pin machine.
::But then you're doing these funky movements on reformers and Cadillacs where
::you're using springs and body weight.
::And it's arguably a bit more complicated to start thinking about how you add
::challenge because when you change the challenge, it often changes the balance
::or it changes the shape or, you know, changes the tension but not the actual
::load and the further out you are.
::And there's a lot of variables. and you want to, you want to add a challenge
::for your client, but you, God knows you want it to be appropriate because fuck,
::you don't want them to fall off the BOSU that they're standing on while they're
::doing their punches, or you just don't want them to fall off the reformer.
::You know, you know, it's, it's not, it's not invalid to be concerned about their safety.
::And you don't, so in, in the, in the vacuum of confidence to know,
::okay, if you can do 15 of them on one spring, I'm going to go to three, two springs.
::Or if you can do 15 of them on a half spring, I'm safely going to assume that
::you can do seven on two and a half springs.
::And so there's a few things in there, like what's this appropriate number of
::reps before you make it harder? How good does the movement need to look before you make it harder?
::And then the other thing that we're building into our programs,
::and I've found transformational when I explain it to people and forget how transformational
::it was for me, is that if you're doing a wobbly movement.
::Then you need the load to be moderate so you can get the reps in to find your balance.
::But if you're doing a stable movement that's good for force production and strength
::training, then you want to load up the load and you need to know a bit about
::how you read the reps, but you actually want their form to suck if you want to make them strong.
::There's lots of things to be confident with, which I look back and my education
::in Pilates didn't empower me with that.
::So then what the default is, find a load that they can do lots of,
::make sure they're not want to fall off the thing and then make it more complicated or more nuanced.
::And you can do that by making it unstable. And you can do that by adjusting
::the bone position so they feel a specific muscle.
::And both of those things give the client the experience of increased challenge,
::but not the output that we all agree we want, which is for our clients to be
::stronger and more flexible and more skillful.
::Well, I think in Pilates, we very frequently confuse or conflate adding complexity
::or adding instability with improving skill.
::And they can overlap. Like obviously to do something more complex requires more
::skill and to do something more simple. But you can absolutely...
::Progress skill in doing something simple. Think about a simple chord on a guitar
::played by a master versus played by a beginner.
::It's going to sound different when the master does it.
::Think about a simple punch in
::martial arts or a single note on a violin played by a master or a newbie.
::It's going to be different. And so you can deepen skill without adding bells and whistles.
::And you can do simple movements and become better and better at those movements
::more and more precise over, you know, weeks, months, and years without adding more instability.
::And I think we over-rely on instability, you know, to a very large degree in
::Pilates because we actually don't have those tools, like you said,
::of just actually progressing the other dimensions of the movement being just
::the strength and the range of motion.
::So, and I think that really, and I think that comes, you know,
::partly from just lacking the skills and lacking the knowledge to do that because
::that's just not taught in Pilates,
::education and partly it comes from what you said fear you
::know the safety culture the idea that you have to have
::control and stability whatever the fuck
::that is before you add load you
::know you have to quote earn your you know load and
::range of motion before you you know before you do
::that you have to show us that you can find the right muscles and keep the right alignment and
::be body aware and all that and i think that completely is back
::to front you start by loading
::them up in a really simple stable you
::know movement where it's very difficult to get it wrong and you
::just load them up and add range until they get there to the right
::zone of challenge and then you start refining you know then you start refining
::uh so you know that's exactly backwards um because actually the benefit well
::we actually you know we actually know from motor learning research that skill
::is specific to a large extent.
::And so the skill of doing, let's say, long stretch with your knees up on a very light spring is,
::is not the same and doing that at full range until the, you know,
::the carriage almost touches the pulleys.
::That skill is not the same skill as doing it on your knees through half range
::on one and a half springs.
::You know, there's an actual skill in doing the load itself and the range of
::motion itself are part of the skill.
::And so practicing it small and light doesn't automatically transfer to doing
::it large and heavy, you know?
::So that whole idea, I think, is mistaken.
::And the idea of stability is just such a nebulous concept that actually doesn't
::mean anything, and we don't have an agreed definition of stability.
::And it's one of those things that's like, when you think about it on the surface,
::it seems like, oh, yeah, keep it stable.
::That's totally obvious. It's like, okay, but specifically, what does that mean?
::Oh, it means keeping this body part still whilst moving the other body part,
::or it means keeping your scapula flat and flush on your rib cage,
::or it means keeping your hip joints aligned in a certain way.
::Okay, so, well, what's the difference between just keeping still and being stable?
::You know, all right, so just say it's about keeping your rib cage,
::you know, quote, connected to your pelvis.
::Well, one, what does that mean? two how do you measure it and three well how
::at what point does it be shift from being stable to being unstable right so
::if i move my ribs like one millimeter is is that still stable like what about
::half a millimeter what about 1.3 millimeters and it's like.
::And, and what happens between zero
::millimeters movement and one millimeter movement, like why is that bad?
::Right. So just say I did a long stretch with keeping my ribs perfectly,
::perfectly connected to my hips with zero movement.
::And then I did the same move with the same spring, same range of motion,
::but I moved my ribs two millimeters. It's like, okay, why is that a problem?
::Oh, well, it's going to cause wear and tear. Really? Well, what about cat stretch?
::I mean, I moved my ribs like, you know, eight inches, right?
::So is that going to like destroy my spine? if 2mm is a problem, like is,
::like 150mm a problem? You'd expect it to be a lot more of a problem,
::wouldn't you? Well, it's not a problem, so why is 2mm a problem?
::And so it's just like, the closer you examine, the more you put the magnifying
::glass onto this concept of stability, the less it actually means.
::It's a will-o'-the-wisp. You can't find it. It's a mirage. So the idea that
::you need to be stable before you add load just is a meaningless concept.
::Doesn't mean anything. changed my mind.
::I, I, I, I, while you were talking, there's something, I'm not going to change
::your mind because I agree with you.
::Um, um, something just, again, I'll just sort of, sort of,
::you, you said it and maybe I said it too, but what we see so often on the Instagrams, et cetera,
::and in, in, in studio culture is the use of making something wobblier or more
::complicated as the means of making an established movement more challenging.
::And it's not wrong. It's true that it makes it more challenging.
::And I think one of the things that's missing in that is, and I know I'm going
::to sound a bit like a broken record, but...
::Rather than thinking about how to make something more complicated for the client
::is train them to be so automatic and masterful in that given movement that,
::that then you can take the movement somewhere else.
::Like, and then it comes back to that idea of, and you're solving that problem.
::If you make it more complicated, you're taking it into a complex kind of wobbly, wobbly thing.
::What, what I've, what I've tried to do in my programming and I've found to be.
::You know i get it seems to work for me and for my clients and now for the courses
::and our students is progress the strength and the flexibility and let the skill
::kind of follow as you try and make bigger shapes that require more flexibility
::and more strength and as you try and increase the size,
::and and often thereby the load of the shape that you're making
::you've just got to keep the skill tracking you know it starts out a bit
::wobbly then you find it okay once you found it can you give me eight
::to ten good smooth reps you can okay great let's add
::a bit more load because as i add more load and i'm going to take that movement to
::a longer lever or i'm going to take the springs down so that we can do this that
::or the other so without getting bogged down in the specific
::progressions that that that
::moves your that gives you this when you start to think like that and program
::like that you you do make things harder for people once they've established
::that they can do it but you're doing it in a different direction you're pushing
::into load and flexibility which then of course assumes that you're comfortable
::and confident with reading the reps and like.
::You're getting enough reps that they've demonstrated their control of the movement,
::but also that their form dissipates soon enough that you know that they're getting stronger.
::Or if the form doesn't dissipate, great. Now I know you've got capacity to do
::a heavier version of this movement. Now how am I going to do that?
::Because it's more complicated than just adding a weight plate.
::And in defense of the difference is, you know, I think a lot of people,
::what a lot of people love about Pilates is that it is a different movement than they do at the gym.
::You make different shapes. And then I think it's, you know, and then,
::yeah, so the fertile ground for the instructor is how to mine that,
::but in a way that does continually make people stronger rather than just dealing
::with more and more complicated versions of the same thing.
::Right and i think what you said there is exactly right
::that the skill needs to you
::know sort of match roughly the the strength and and range of motion challenge
::and so you don't develop all the skill before you develop any strength you develop
::a bit of strength and a bit of skill a bit of range and then a bit more strength
::a bit more skill a bit more range and so you know so at the very beginner level
::when you're learning a movement you do need a base level of skill to actually do the movement.
::Like if you're doing knee stretches and you're pushing with your arms and your
::legs are not, you know, your legs are, your hips and knees are staying at 90
::degrees and just doing basically pushups on the bar.
::It's like you, you're not skillful enough to actually get the benefit of the movement, right?
::So you, you do need to have some level of skill, but I think the basic level
::is like, okay, keep arms still, move legs.
::Okay. If you're doing that, that's good enough at this point, right?
::We don't need to worry about the infinite, you know, details of
::your pelvic alignment or scapular positioning or
::whatever it's like okay that's fine but then as you get to
::a higher level of challenge and mastery with that well slight adjustments to
::the position of your torso hips etc will give you additional challenge like
::if you can really get into that compression or that hollow body shape for instance
::in a round back knee stretches you know emphasizing that shape even more like
::one more centimeter of posterior pelvic tilt,
::will give you more load in that movement, you know?
::So it works together, but at the basic level, when you're just trying to figure
::out where your legs are and where your arms are in space, it's like that level
::of refinement doesn't really add anything at that point and it's not necessarily,
::you know, what you just need is to like just do some movement
::with some load and, you know, get some tension through those muscles through a range of motion.
::So, all right, so turns out we haven't changed changed each other's minds on this.
::And that kind of notion of willful contraction of a muscle or,
::just conscious awareness of which muscles are working or being able to name
::which muscles are working is not really of great benefit.
::Well, although whatever benefits you get from it in terms of getting out of
::your head and into your body,
::so to speak, you can get those benefits equally by
::just working hard physically and when
::you work hard physically through full range you also get the massive freaking
::humongous array of benefits that come from that like longer life better mental
::health lower blood pressure all of those you know bazillion you know better
::function and better joint health, et cetera.
::So I think where we land is you don't need to cue people to think about their
::muscles, and it doesn't matter if they can feel it or not.
::And when they ask, where should I be feeling this, you just say in your body.
::That's always the right place to feel it, I find.
::To paraphrase Joseph Pilates. Yeah. All right. Good talking. Yeah. Thanks, Raph.
