Barb Svenson, the world's biggest New York Giants fan, a wonderfully talented teacher down in Florida, Stott Trained, PMA Certified and a graduate of Pilates Excel, writes:
Hi Rebecca, I've watched 2 videos on your (www.WorldWidePilatesMat.com) site, one of yours and one of Heidi's (which I thoroughly enjoyed) and I just have a question. Do you normally choose not to encompase your routines using flexion, extension, rotation and lateral flexion? Neither of the videos included movements in all the planes. What's your take on that? Stott really presses on including all the movements in every workout.
Hey Barb, Go Giants!
Thanks so much for dabbling in World Wide Pilates Mat, the site is getting great action and feedback has been very positive. It's important to remember that it's just everyday class, nothing special. You may get ideas about different takes on stuff you already know, and having been through Excel, you'll definitely see in action, over and over again, the concepts you learned in the Port St. Lucie Excel.
I love your question about planes of motion. Thank you for asking it and for not just assuming I'm an incomplete teacher! Barb, seriously, most people wouldn't think to follow up on it - once again, you're super perceptive and proactive.
The simple answer is that I cannot teach safely in extension in a class setting. I just can't. Side bending and rotation is also a prime opportunity for clients to seriously lose length in their spines, dump out of their pelvis and sink onto the front of their spines.
Several years ago, I eliminated Neck Roll and Double Leg Kick because of the tendency to dump out of the front of the pelvis but I still taught Single Leg Kick up until relatively recently. I finally gave up on that when, during the exercise even some of our strongest clients would feel that "not good" feeling in their low backs.
While I was decreasing the number of extension exercises, I substituted all sorts of variations on the Plank to work the same muscles while keeping the spine stable. It's certainly my personal experience that a solid Plank series is a far more vigorous engagement of all those back muscles and the obliques than a tour through Criss Cross or any of the series on the tummy.
Rowing, especially Hug & Shaving, on the Mat works the extensors big time and I also started teaching more of Head Heart & Hands in order to work the upper back in high extension without inviting the low back to the exercise party.
That pretty much became my standard approach within the construct of a group class.
I was migrating away from extension simply out of my own concern about safety but then I saw in Anatomy of Movement Exercises that the authors Blandine Calias-Germain and Andree' Lamotte recommend planks to work those muscles (p. 73-8) and I realized that I'd been on precisely the right track all along.
That's when I made the decision to almost entirely stay away from anything too too much of a spin and too too much of an extension in class. I still teach the hell out of those planes in privates but not in mat class.
Many schools teach all plane/full range as an ideal and I realize I've departed from that but it's because I cannot justify teaching something that is too dicey for our super strong, super committed clients to do safely when it's so easy to still work those same muscles on exercises that are so much easier, biomechanically, that they stay so much safer. Make sense?
Thanks so much for asking about it, Barb . . . there is always a reason for everything I do.