Choreography, Connection, and Change

“In 10 sessions, you’ll feel the difference. In 20, you’ll see the difference. In 30, you’ll have a new body.” ~ Joseph H. Pilates

I’ve been thinking about this quote for a long time now. It creeps into the back of my mind, and sometimes, I can spend quite a bit of time ruminating. Other times, it’s just a passing thought where I think “what did Joe mean?”.

It’s only now that I’m able to express my thoughts into words behind this quote. I’m finally able to piece together my years of practice and my years of teaching to show you my journey with Pilates.

You have your lifetime to learn Pilates. Pretty cool, right? I think we can all agree when we’re first learning Pilates that we’re simply trying to remember the exercise names, the choreography of the exercises, and the order of the exercises. And that can take a while to learn and remember. It’s quite possible we’re talking years here. And that’s ok. Really. Yes…. really.

Let’s do a case study, shall we? What do you do when you hear these cues?

Bend the knees.
Arms up.
Reach through the crown of the head.

After you get the choreography down, start looking for muscular connections inside your body using the same cues from the list above.

Cue: Bend the knees.
- Choreography: Are you bending the knee joints?
- Connection: Are you doing hamstring curls while lifting the belly up and in to pull the knees in?
Cue: Arms up.
- Choreography: Are you shrugging your shoulders up to your ears?
- Connection: Are you breathing into the sides and back of your ribcage to find the lift there to extend the arms?
Cue: Reach through the crown of the head.
- Choreography: Are you lifting your chin and/or looking up causing creases in the back of your neck?
- Connection: Are you stacking your head on top of your spine, and lifting up from the belly through the crown of your head, lengthening all sides of your neck?

Pilates is about stretching in opposition, getting longer, finding length in your body. Maintain a strong middle/center to stretch long in two directions. Finding a two-way stretch.

Even the cues you may hear is the opposite of what makes sense. Maybe you’ve heard these cues recently:

Lift up as you roll down. (any overhead exercise)
Lengthen tall as you go back. (thigh stretch, anyone?)
Reach your limbs forward as you pull your waist behind you. (the dreaded roll up)
Press down to go up. (spine twist, the Magic Circle, the Wunda Chair)

This quality of movement builds a strong center so all functional movement initiates from your center, and energy moves out through the limbs. Remember your arms are connected to your back, your legs to your center, and your head to your spine. I wrote about these connections in this blog.

After you start making connections, I like to describe those connections like flickering lights. They turn on and off. Meaning engaged and not engaged. The game now turns into can you flicker these lights more frequently? Can you keep the lights on for a longer period of time? Can you keep the lights on during transitions between the exercises? Translation – that means no rest. Moving the body from one shape to another for the full session. Linking the exercises until it’s a dance from beginning to end.

Another way I like to think about this is lights on a Christmas tree. Notice how the whole string of lights turn on at the same time once you plug into a socket? So, in this analogy, your body is the Christmas tree, and the lights are your muscular connections. Can you get all your connections on at the same time, so you light up at once? There’s a reason why the mat workout ends with pushups. Have you ever tried to do a pushup starting from the mat? Can you push yourself up in one strong piece? No sagging in the lower back. No upper body then lower body. It’s the full body. The whole body moves as one.

When you start going after the connections, hopefully, you’re finding the connections, and maintaining the connections, so we can start talking about change. Real change. Real, permanent change happens when you begin focusing on the strengthening aspect of Pilates. The stretch in Pilates is the by-product of strengthening your center. Examples: The more you strengthen your center/middle, the more you can open/stretch your back. And by center/middle, I’m referring to your abdominal muscles, your glutes, your hamstrings, your inner thighs, your outer hips/haunches, your lats.

Which brings me to another Joe quote:

“Developing minor muscles naturally helps to strengthen major muscles.” ~ Joseph H. Pilates

Let’s talk about those tight hamstrings. Yes, it’s important to stretch them, and yes, they may feel good while stretching in the moment. To be perfectly honest, tightness is usually a sign of weakness. And what do we do with something weak in Pilates? We strengthen. So, time to focus on strengthening those hamstrings. Hamstring curls, hamstring curls, hamstring curls. While also strengthening your center/middle. I know, it’s never-ending work. And that’s why we practice to get compounding effects to enhance our everyday life.

Maybe now is a good time to talk about what we mean when we say stretch in Pilates. It’s more of an opening, a lengthening in the body. Remember that opposition I was talking about? I’m bringing it back as we talk about the front and back of the body. Strengthen your upper back to get an opening in your chest and shoulders. Strengthen your middle to get an opening in your lower back. Strengthen your glutes, inner thighs, outer hips to open the front of the hips. This is how your posture improves. This is where your lower body supports your upper body, and your upper body is supple. It comes back to a focus on strengthening during your Pilates workout, and the stretch is the byproduct.

Pilates is always about quality over quantity. About efficiency over the size or range of movement. It’s not the biggest movement you can make. It’s the controlled movement (can be either slow or fast as long as it’s connected, and that takes control) you can make while maintaining a strong center/middle. It’s about maximizing all of your internal, muscular connections and keeping it on while adding movement to challenge that strong and stable center/middle.

Pilates is a full body workout to strengthen the mind and body. It’s stability and mobility. It’s strength and stretch/flexibility with control. It strengthens what’s weak, stretches what’s tight, tightens what’s loose, mobilizes/loosens what’s rigid, and finally balances what’s strong.

I’m always a work in progress, remaining curious, and learning and evolving. My thoughts on this topic may change in the future, but this is where I am today.

Work with me either in group mat classes or private sessions to strengthen, stretch, mobilize, and balance your body within your control.