BY PROGRESSING YOUR CLASS PLANS & YOUR CLIENTS
There were two main things I found challenging about teaching and planning Reformer Pilates Classes when I first started out! One, is that it took me hours to plan my classes & Two, was that I felt like there was no rhyme or reason to the exercises I was choosing from week to week. I would sit down to plan a class, only to stare at a blank page for ages, and when I finally started adding exercises to this plan, I was really just picking them out of thin air. Then when I sat down to plan the class the next week I'd do the same thing. This meant, I had no consistency with the themes, movements and skills that I was teaching my clients, which ultimately would mean they'd take longer to improve. And for me that meant, fewer people in my classes. I mean who's going to keep coming to class each week if they feel like they aren't getting any better. So I had to really look at how I was planning my classes, what I was teaching my clients, and why. It's when I started to marry up my knowledge of exercise prescription and progression from my physio course and my strength training background with the Pilates method. I realised that I needed to provide my clients with some more consistency in what they were learning and then when they understood and got better at those movements and exercises I'd make it more challenging for them. This could be by adding more load, changing the base of support, making the movement more complex, and many other factors. So I looked at; a. what my clients could currently do, what level were they at in their strength and practice.
b. what exercises they found challenging & what sorts of exercises and movements I wanted to help them build up to
I then planned out my classes so that I could take them from a. where they are now to b. where I wanted to help them get to. I did this by using a class plan and then over the weeks slowly progressing the exercises in this class plan. I used some key factors, as I mentioned above to slowly do this.
And I noticed that not only did my class planning time reduce significantly but my clients started to make some really great changes and improvements in the practice and their strength. AND they and I were really loving the classes! So when you sit down to plan your class this week I want you to ask yourself this... What are you trying to help your clients achieve in their practice and in your classes AND Are you making your classes too varied or exactly the same each week? And if so how can you slowly progress your clients over the coming weeks to help them improve and get to where they want to go.
Want to see what factors to change in each exercise to make it easier or harder?
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