A common mistake is assuming that two Pilates exercises are the same just because they look identical.

However, the actual "exercise" depends on where the load and force are being applied.

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All right, something that I hear a lot and which I actually agree with is that

Pilates is a system and that if you follow the system, it works better and that

Mr. Pilates created this amazing system.

Now, I happen to agree with that, but I think oftentimes the people who say

it, I don't agree with them on how they actually use the system.

Uh let me give you an example and

it's specifically about mistaking the

muscular action of exercise and therefore

how to basically progress or regress movements

so if you look at you know the the the different apparatus you've got the reformer

the mat the the ladder barrel the small barrels the cadillac the you know all

of that etc basically you do the same sequence of moves and you can do, you know,

very similar moves on each apparatus, but each apparatus has its own unique

sort of way of making the move more supported maybe,

or more guided, or more challenged, or, you know, or a larger range or a smaller

range of motion, et cetera.

So for example, you can do 100 on the mat, you can do 100 on the reformer,

you can do 100 on the Cadillac, uh, et cetera.

And so, and I think, you know, this is great because you can move,

once you can do 100 on the, on the mat, well, you can progress to doing it on

the reformer, it's a bit harder.

And once you can do that, you can progress to doing maybe teaser on the mat.

And then once you can do that, you can progress to doing teaser on the reformer and so on and so forth.

Right. And maybe you can do some rollups with the push through bar and stuff,

teaser and push through bar, you know, somewhere in the middle there.

But, where I think people frequently mistake this concept of the system is they

look at two moves and they think these moves look similar.

So, for example….

A, you know, like an elephant on the reformer or arabesque on the reformer maybe,

where your foot's on the carriage, hands are on the foot bar,

one leg's in the air, and it's on a light spring, and the carriage is,

you're using your abs and your flexes to pull the carriage in.

And then looking at something like on the chair, a mountain climber,

you know, or you call it forward step up or backward step up or backward step

down, I can't remember what it's called these days, but basically one foot's

on the chair, one foot's on the pedal,

the foot on the chair is bent and you're pushing back and forth,

like a scooter sort of thing.

And saying that like, you know, one's a progression of the other or one's an

equivalent of the other.

And it's like, yeah, it's the same body position is in one leg's forward,

one leg's back and you're kind of moving your legs back and forth,

but it's the opposite exact muscle group.

And I think there are instances of this that I'm sure Heath,

you can point out that are probably a simpler comparison than the one I just pulled out.

But I think, yeah, so basically I feel like,

yes, Pilates is a system, it's a fantastic system, but I think where people

mistake it is they don't actually a lot of the times get which muscles are actually

working hard in an exercise to therefore accurately progress people from one to the next.

And I know that you've made that your essentially life's work to do that.

So, you know, where do you see, you know, where do you see people going?

I mean, I'm just assuming that you do see people going wrong with this.

Where do you see people going wrong with this? And how do you think differently about it?

Um yeah all right there's a bunch yeah i have thought a lot about it,

which makes it a very real risk that i'll disappear down a wormhole really quickly

well we've we've got dear listener and you know this because you're watching

the podcast recording time and you know that we've only got 19 minutes remaining yes,

and i'm like when you're sitting out there in listener land going oh holy crap

how did you know you've got 19 minutes it's like yeah because heath and i both

got a class at the top of the Yeah, well, that's why.

So you're absolutely right, and I think people do get confused or they maybe

have been taught to think about it at a level that's not as deep as it could be.

And there's a bunch of things that we build into our courses and I've had the

great honor to sort of have to think out loud through that have helped people.

With it. So one idea, one little heuristic that is often applicable is that

the muscles that are creating the shape.

Can, well, as you said, it can be completely different muscle groups with the same shape. Right.

So if you take a photo of someone in a shape, you don't know what muscles got

them there is kind of a way to think about it.

You've got to see the movement and see where the load and the force that they're having to create is.

And when you start to think like that, then you start to be able to problem

solve how one thing that might not look like another is actually more closely

associated than something else that looks a lot like it.

So what's a common example you see, you know, because you've given a crap ton

of workshops and taught a lot more teaching workshops than I have now.

What's somewhere you see where maybe instructor students or maybe instructors,

you know, commonly get confused and think that two exercises that look the same

are the same when in fact they're actually working opposite muscle groups?

Yeah. Well, yeah. So, all right. I think anything on the reformer that has hands

on the footbar, feet on the shoulder pads is fertile ground for understanding spring tension.

Oh, right. So yeah, long stretch with the heavy spring versus the light spring.

Is that what you mean? Yeah. Or tiger stretch or down stretch or knee stretch.

And what we call, we call this the law of the spring in the certification program and the mentorship.

So, and that's how I've found it useful to...

The idea of it is that the further out the bed travels, the more spring tension

there is, and that is always true.

Then it depends on how many springs are on and what the movement is.

So it's a way to kind of remind yourself to come back to the fundamental thing

is how far is the bed traveling, what springs are on, and the further out the

bed travels, the more spring tension there is.

And then the way to sort of start making sense of it is in a long stretch where

the springs are light, your body weight becomes more of a problem the further out the bed goes because.

You're more, and you can talk to the biomechanics more efficiently than I can. You're inching a lever.

But on very, yeah, so it's a longer lever.

So suddenly it's hard to keep your body off the ground because gravity is pulling

you down and you're not getting much pushback from the bed.

On the heavier springs, you're essentially being sandwiched between the spring

tension and the foot bar.

Right. So you have forcibly, you have to push the bed out. so like

long stretch light springs armpits and front

body long stretch heavy springs front shoulder

back body roughly roughly roughly and you just

play with that across multiple movements and the

other thing that i think people benefit from

thinking about is that the reformer lets

us break gravity and not many exercise equipment pieces

not many pieces of exercise equipment do that for you so most

things are a vertical force vector that you're working

against but the reformer allows you to make a horizontal force

vector heavier than than gravity so that you're not just being pulled down you

can make it so that you're trying to push across you know perpendicular to the

earth and that takes a bit of thinking about you know it's like so it's because

it's it's not enough to say that heavier springs are harder and.

Depending on the muscle group you're working, because shoulder bridge,

long stretch, anything where your body weight becomes part of the problem,

part of the weight that you're lifting, the lighter springs will let the bed move away more easily.

So something's going to have to work to offset that.

Right. So that's an example of light springs versus heavy springs.

And light springs, again, and we've talked about this before on the podcast,

but basically light springs,

what we mean when we say light spring is a spring

where the assistance you get from the

spring is less than your body weight so your

body weight becomes the actual load and

so uh and that's and you know what spring that is going to depend on how heavy

your body is and how long you are because the more you stretch the spring with

long arms long legs long torso the more spring resistance you have so you know

like you know there's no such thing as one setting that is a light spring for

everybody, but you can say, you know, on a long stretch kneeling,

yeah, half or one is going to be light for most people. Okay.

And then a heavy spring is defined as where the spring actually wants to push

you in and you have to work to push the carriage out.

And so light spring versus heavy spring on a long stretch, it's,

you know, abs and armpits on the light spring, you know, delts and upper shoulders

and maybe back and hip extensors, whatever, on a heavy spring.

Same same uh we have the same thing but kind of a

little bit different on say a lunge or

a scooter right so let's say a scooter where the

front you're standing on the front foot standing on the floor next to the foot

bar the back foot's on the carriage up against the shoulder block the front

leg is bent and stationary and you're pushing the carriage in and out with the

back leg okay if you've got a light spring let's say a half a spring okay versus

a heavy spring let's say two two and a Offsprings.

Exact same movement, exact same body position, same range of motion,

same action, same joints, everything's same.

What's different is which muscles are working. So light spring,

it's going to be all front leg, the glute, the quad, the inner thigh of the

front leg, going to be working really hard.

On a heavy spring, it's going to be all or mostly back leg.

It's going to be a bit of front leg as well yes well

the way i get people to remember that is super light

springs lunge you get back of the front leg front

of the back leg is a way to think about it and then because the flip of that

is heavy springs you get the front of the front of the front of the front leg

and back of the back leg yeah right and so so this is the point right and so

when you're looking at you know a say a lunge or scooter on a light spring versus

every spring a long stretch on a light spring versus a heavy spring,

it's like they're the same shape, they're the same range of motion,

they're the same body position, different exercise.

Why is it a different exercise? Because if you do a crap ton of long stretch

on a heavy spring, you get really strong delts, okay?

Not strong abs, not strong lats. If you do a crap ton of long stretch on a light

spring, you get really strong lats, really strong abs, not strong delts,

right? It's a different exercise.

So, yeah, I mean, so how do you, how do you see, I mean, do you see that sort

of playing out in people's teaching? Does it come out in their programming choices?

Does it come out in progressions? Does it come out in layering choices?

Like where do you see that, you know, mistake, I guess, manifesting?

Not necessarily with those two exercises specifically, but just,

That concept of looking at a body shape and going, oh, that's interchangeable

with this other one, which actually it isn't.

Yeah. So again, as you said, where do you see it playing out?

One of the blind spots that I see people having, and I had it too,

so it's something about, it emerges from education,

is mistaking the shape for the exercise.

So that you think that the shape you're making or the exercise that you learned

at Pilates school on a spring setting is the thing.

And so anytime you see that shape, you think it's the same. Yeah. And you know what?

And I know you've still got a thought there, so hold that, but I just want to

jump in here because you triggered me to think about that in our Stop Pilates

manuals, and I think this is probably the same in a lot of contemporary Pilates,

that what we were taught about, like what the exercise is, quote, for,

right, would be very, very generic.

It would be like spinal mobility or like hip flexion and extension or hip circumduction or something.

It's like, okay, flexion and extension, great, but like which one is being challenged?

You know, spinal mobility, okay, great. In which direction and which muscles

are moving you in and out of that?

So are we working the flexors or are we working the extensors, you know?

And yeah, so like saying an exercise is for something kind of generic,

like hip flexion extension, is essentially it's meaningless.

It's useless. It doesn't say anything.

Yeah. It just names one of the joint appearances that is in the movement. Right.

I think one thing I think that's for me that we could talk about and,

It illustrates this well, and I think we could probably run a really good three-hour

workshop on this, and I know that because I have, and it goes really well.

People find it really interesting.

We won't do it now because we've got 16 minutes left.

No, we've got nine minutes, people. Yeah, so when I was at Pilates school,

you taught me that feet and straps was always done on two red springs. Yeah, because it was.

Yeah, and if you did anything else, spines were going to explode and the world

would stop turning on its axis.

Yeah, yeah. You haven't done that, have you? I hope you haven't ever done that.

No, I promise I haven't. I know you have because I know I've been in your class

many times when you've done it.

Yeah, yeah. Well, one of my favorite things on the planet is a sequence of movements

that I didn't learn at Pilates school in feet and straps on full springs.

Yeah, I've done that one in my class quite a lot of times.

And of course, not everyone's going straight to full springs,

dear listener. You build it up incrementally over time. Yeah,

sometimes you start on just four, you know. And then building up from there.

Dear listener, we joke, we jest, we joke. Sometimes you start on three.

Progressive overload. Yeah.

So let's think about the lift and lower where straight legs up,

straight legs down, feet in straps. So, you know, I learned that on two springs.

And if everyone does it on two springs, then you're,

Especially if no one lifts their hips, it's just a question of can you manage

the load of two springs, which doesn't take very long.

Yeah, and I'm going to say, so back to what we said just a second ago,

okay, the long stretch on light springs versus heavy springs,

okay, and what we said about your body weight and your body length also influences

that because the springs have a particular amount of resistance and your body

might be more or less than that depending on how your body is.

And also, the springs have more resistance the more you stretch them.

And so if you've got longer body parts, you're going to stretch them more so

you'll get more resistance.

So what I find having been blessed with heavy legs is that, uh,

feeding straps lifted lower on two springs. It's about neutral.

Like it's neither a light spring nor a heavy spring. Like it's basically just

neutralizes the weight of my legs.

So it's neither much effort. You just go up and down for an hour.

Right. It's neither much effort to lift them nor much effort to lower them.

Whereas somebody much smaller and lighter and with shorter legs than me,

would probably experience two springs as a heavy spring where it's like really

easy to lift the legs up and the springs assist them to lift the legs up and

they have to work to pull the legs down.

Whereas I don't get that on two springs. Well, and the curly one would be someone

like me, who's got fairly, like my legs are nowhere near as dense as yours, but longer.

So if I haven't spent time, I've got longer legs so that I've got to press the

bed further out to get my legs back down, to get my legs down.

Um, and the other thing, if we add to this is like, if you roll to the shoulders,

so if we call it the, a short spine, right?

So as the moment your hips lift, then...

The way to think about it is exactly like the long stretch example,

as Raph said, more springs, spinal extensors.

And the more springs you add, the more spinal and hip extensors have to manage the bed.

And if you lift up to a full jackknife or a long spine massage,

tall position, it's all coming out of your spinal extensors.

As you're pressing against the straps and the heavier the springs,

the more your hamstrings, glutes, spinal extensors, calves, everything in the

back of your body is lifting you up.

As you reduce the spring tension- It's abs and hip flexors. The more it's abs and hip flexors.

And then one of the things- And maybe shoulder extensors because you're pushing

desperately into the carriage with your hands.

Or you're holding your shoulder pad handles. Thank you, Stock Pilates.

One of the better parts of their design sequencing is that you can actually

pull on something- Unless you've got one of those shoulder pads that comes out

without a bolt, just like, Yeah, you don't want that.

That wasn't a great innovation. And I wish they'd warned me about that before

I bought my second round of beds. Yeah.

Um, and then what I really like about that shape is if you, so if you use heavy

springs, you're doing Jefferson curls, you're using spinal and hip extensors

to control the flexion and extension with flexion and out of flexion via the extensors.

If you've been trained up that like doing short spine, long spine,

you know, whatever on heavy springs is like a big no, no and dangerous.

It's like, go look at the world deadlift championships and

watch people lift like just ungodly amounts

of weight with a fully flexed lumbar spine and

then go think how much is that in springs it's like 7 000

fucking springs you know it's like

yeah the human body can take it all right please proceed well so yeah so we

it's a it's a it's a movement that is is um well worth exploring once you apply

this idea so heavier springs spinal extensors hip extensors to control lighter springs.

Hip flexors, spinal flexors, right? And arms.

But then if you get rid of the springs altogether and you start to lift up to

a full jackknife and let alone you start coming down in your lever or your half

lever or your lever preps, then holding that jackknife up in the air is everything, right?

If you try and hold that straight line and break anything but vertical,

but even hold vertical, it's the front and the back of your body working.

But I would argue that the vertical part is the easy part.

It's the coming up and down that's the hard part.

Right. And this is one of the things that's fascinating about this is it goes

back to our other conversation that we will keep coming back to is...

A person with a more flexible spine who can flex their cervical easily and extend

their thoracic, flatten their lumbar and make a more vertical line will have

a more efficient vertical.

Someone with a big chest, less flexible, you and me to an extent, my neck's not great.

That stops you and all of a sudden you're not quite vertical.

So you're working like frick just to hold yourself in space and it's front and back body.

Right. Or another example of this. All right, so here's another example,

and I just want to switch gears here into one of my least favorite exercises to do personally.

Although there's probably a few more least, like I would say like crab would

be less favorite than this one.

And some of those inverted ones on the ladder barrel, I hate those.

But this one is up there for me, and it's one leg circle.

And everyone's out there thinking like, oh, I know one leg circle is such a

beautiful, gentle stretchy you know hip release blah blah blah blah and if you

do it the original contrology way it's a lovely lumbar spine stretch which i

agree it is lovely lumbar spine stretch when you do it the original contrology

way because you're rotating your pelvis,

but for those of us dear listener who are blessed with both really fucking heavy legs and also,

really stiff hips and don't tell me to stretch because i already stretch i stretch

a lot i just don't get more flexible from that's all okay because i also run a lot so it Anyway.

It can't flex our hip to 90 degrees or even anything like 90 degrees.

So I'm stuck at like 70 degrees of hip flexion with this really,

really heavy leg that probably weighs like, I'm not kidding you, 30 kilos.

Like I weigh a hundred kilos. My body weight, my whole body is like 102 kilos today.

So I reckon my right leg is probably 30 kilos or pretty close to it.

And when that leg's at 70 degrees, like I'm, my hip flexors are holding a substantial

portion of that 30 kilos, you know, so it's not like this effortless stretch.

It's fucking hip flexor torture.

You know, it's really hard work. And so for your heavier legged,

stiffer people, something that for some people is like a beautiful hamstring

stretch and a nice chance to breathe is like really, really grueling and unpleasant.

And that's because it's working the opposite muscles because the leg is the

other side of your base of support.

And it's the hip flexors supporting it, not the hamstrings and glutes like you

are when you're in greater than 90 degrees of hip flexion.

So yeah, the body position really makes a difference there.

It does. And the principle that we're talking there, we've got,

which we should pick up another time, is we've been talking quickly about different

spring tensions or different loads affecting different muscles in shapes that are the same.

And what we've just touched on is that depending on the range of motion available

at a joint, something will hit one muscle group for one person and be completely

different for another person.

I'm going to give you one more quick example of that, which I'm a victim of

also, which is the breaststroke on the long box.

So you're long on the long box. You've got probably one spring on if you're

doing it the kind of classical way, maybe one and a half.

And you're facing the foot bar and you're on your tummy and you've got your hands in the straps.

And all you have to do is just reach your arm straight out ahead,

lift your arms up above you and the spring will actually pull you up into a full backbend.

And of course, if you've only got like 150 degrees of shoulder flexion and you

weigh a fucking 100 kilos.

Then the one spring, all it does is pull your arms downwards and

so you're lifting your own body weight plus the

weight of the spring on a fully extended arm and so

it's just it's just a deltoid it's pure deltoid shoulder flexion zero stretchiness

about it whatsoever yeah and when when we think about that movement the what

when we teach that in courses i tell and we look at people do it one of the

things i've found useful is there's a moment for people where you,

where they catch the wind, where the sail, you get above, you get above the

apex of the movement and the spring pulls you up. Right. Yeah.

And I've never been there. I've just seen it. The rope goes higher than the

midline of your rib cage, but you've got, and then, then whatever spring tension

you've got will pull you up.

But until you reach that, it's pulling you down. And that's,

we should talk about that in another one. Yeah.

Right. There's a bunch of them. Great. Good talk.