As a Pilates Instructor, it's natural to feel a little intimidated by the advanced exercises. But it's time to face this challenge head-on and get smart with how you teach them. Not only will your clients thank you for it, but you are going to feel a hell of a lot more confident with your teaching too!
Here's a 3-step strategy that will help you teach advanced exercises without overwhelming your clients:
Break the exercise into components: This will make it easier to understand and remember the different parts of the exercise.
Teach each component separately: Start by teaching each component of the exercise, making sure your clients are understand that movement pattern first!
Join these components together: Once your clients have mastered each component, you can start to join them together, slowly building up to the advanced exercise.
Let's take the Upstretch exercise as an example:
Teach Elephant, Plank, and Longstretch exercises separately
Join Elephant into a Plank moving the carriage
Elephant into a Plank with Longstretch repetitions
Elephant into a Plank with the carriage closed
Combine each of the skills together to complete the Upstretch (Elephant shape - to - Plank - to - Longstretch - to Elephant shape again)
With this approach, both you and your clients will feel confident and comfortable when performing advanced exercises.
Want to learn how to do this for yourself? Then why not join my HQ Exercise Toolbox for Reformer Pilates teachers (click here to find out more)
Steph