Mother Superior,
I LOVE your website. Recently recommended at a workshop on Scoliosis in London run by Jacqui Schirm.
I have lots of questions but my most urgent one is how to keep my clients warm in a matwork class when room termperature is cold.
Do I tell them to wear more layers?
It is a farily basic mixed ability class held in a fitness club run on a shoestring. I am badgering the management to install more heating but until that time comes I need to give them a good, safe and effective Pilates workout. .
At the moment I give a fairly fast warm up standing but they soon get cold on the mat. Ideas please would be welcome.
Thanks, Sarah
Dear Sarah,
So glad you found me and I'm delighted you got a chance to learn from Jacqui, she's billiant and an impeccable teacher.
Okay, I totally understand your dilemma and here's something to try.
Our bodies are heat factories and the deeper the muscle, the more deep the heat generated by the biological work of using that muscle. I understand why you begin with standing warmups but you're not going to be able to keep them moving quickly enough or long enough while standing in order to thoroughly warm them up, standing up.
Standing warm ups are a great idea and I think you should preserve your use of them but try following them with some supine warm ups that are what I call pieces of Pilates.
A modified Roll Up, Pelvic Lift (shoulder stand), for instance, or Knee Floats & Stirs are examples of pieces of Pilates. Anything that will drive your class into their deepest muscles so those deepest muscles can begin heating them up from the inside out.
If you leave the deepest muscles out of it and focus on the superficial mobilizers, it takes longer to warm up.
The heat that deep prep work causes is often a bit startling for clients when they realize how warm they are but they're not sweating. They haven't made big movements to be able to associate action with a rise in body temperature.
Using pieces of Pilates as preps at the beginning of class, it takes a while before sweat breaks on the skin.
If you don't know what I'm talking about by pieces of Pilates, go to my video website and buy a class and you'll see ways to teach those types of preps. www.WorldWidePilatesMat.com. We always start every class with a nice slow deep heat-generating series.
Let me know if this makes sense and how it goes if you try it.
Thanks again for writing,
Scooped & lifted in Seattle,
Rebecca
Scooped and lifted in Seattle,