I entered Romana's training program in September 2000, it was called Pilates, Inc. then and I went to her Seattle training center which at that time had been around for about 8 years.
When I was still in my primary Pilates training program, I was accutely aware of serious gaps in the curriculum and during the 10 months it took me to complete that program, I began backfilling.
The two biggest gaps were 1) there was absolutely no problem solving and 2) there was no explanation of how, why and because. When clients in that studio asked questions, they were told if they really wanted to know they should consider going into the teacher training program but the catch was, once in the program they still didn't answer any questions.
What we DID learn, and learned well, was the Order, the Transitions and we learned a great number of exercises.
When I opened my studio less than a month after finishing the program, I already had my Pilates 101 lecture ready to go and I'm so proud that from our very first client, I have given that lecture - an orientation to the anatomy and benefits of Pilates - to everyone who has come through our doors.
Having been a business manager for years and being a consultant, a sort of one woman swat team for small businesses, I knew with great clarity exactly how I wanted to run my business and what I wanted my studio to stand for.
The best educated teachers, the highest quality teaching coupled with the greatest customer service and care - that's what I intended to deliver, every session, every shift, every week, month and year.
I began with 4 teachers and grew to a teaching staff of 9 teachers and 3 part time front desk personnel.
Initially, none of those teachers, many of whom came from my same primary program, embraced my vision for what I wanted my studio to stand for and virtually all the clients who had found my studio through my own efforts wanted to be on my schedule whereas the clients the other teachers brought with them were mostly happy to stay put - to dance with the one who brought them, so to speak.
I opened my studio September 17, 2001; talk about staring into the abyss. I'll never know how things might have been different if the world wasn't struggling to understand and recover from the events of September 11th but here's what happened: most of the clients who did come to learn about me and what I was about have stayed. Literally, we have many clients who've been with us from the start.
In 2002 I began researching options for continuing education outside of my primary program and found Michele Larsson. I can honestly say that, of all the workshops and programs I've dipped into, I use Eve and Michele the most. In fact, every session.
As I began getting smarter, it became clear that there was a difference between my philosophy of trying to learn from as many sources as possible and theirs which consisted of taking whatever Romana would give them. As my teachers resisted taking courses outside of Romana's program, their teaching stagnated whereas mine was expanding, clients noticed and many asked to be moved onto my schedule.
One by one, teachers migrated back to Romana's training center where many of them still work.
But one teacher stayed.
She took me up on my blanket offer that I pay 100% for any relevant education she'd like to consume and in addition to being open to diverse education, she began to learn from me to be a better teacher.
That would be none other than Miss Heidi Byrnes. One by one, the others left but Heidi stayed.
She pulled long and full shifts for years. She had a baby, she got married, she got divorced, she kept working, she went to courses, she kept learning and trying and caring and she even, after over 3 years of hearing it but not giving it, gave her very own Pilates 101 lecture.
There was nothing particularly special about my relationship with Heidi, it wasn't as if I said "I want to work with you the rest of my life" and she went "okay!" Things just happened.
One year became the next and before we knew it, we'd happily arrived at being a well-oiled 2 man shop, a Pilates boutique, 2 very different people who are united in the cause; she's adopted my mission as her mission. She teaches distinctly differently than I do, she's quiet and submissive while I'm loud and bossy and after 8 years of knowing her, we can't imagine working any other way. I love her tremendously, I love her daughter as I would my own and I hope to leave the business to Heidi and Lili when I'm too old to get out of bed. Heidi is the beneficiary of my million dollar life insurance policy; I will not be like Joe in that regard, I do have a succession plan and I will not allow my work and all that I've created to disintegrate once I'm gone. This work is worth the planning it takes to preserve it. We can all do better than Joe when it comes to business management.
By 2004, I had been to a couple of PMA conferences, explored the offerings of most of the other big schools and had first hand experiences with the leading educators in our industry.
By then, I felt I had a pretty good idea of what was being left out of basic programs and from 2004 until 2007, I worked and reworked content that I felt a good teacher would need to know that wasn't included in my program or most others.
Here's what's missing: There are 2 factors always present in any successful Pilates client-teacher relationship: 1) somehow the client has become aware of the value of the work and 2) the teacher teaches every session to develop the client's potential.
When a teacher can't solve problems, the client is limited to the teacher's potential, not their own. As teachers, we need to get out of the way of our clients and develop their technique to their own limits, not ours.
An example of a client being limited by her teacher's potential is that if you can't teach a proper Roll Up, odds are slight that your client will magically be able to do a proper Roll Up. Their ability is capped by yours. Living that forward, the clients doesn't feel like they're progressing, they don't understand why and you can't tell them, they begin to wonder why they're continuing to take sessions if they're not getting anywhere and then, they slip away. They either don't re-up, they don't survive a holiday schedule disruption, they change jobs or move and they're just gone. Many, many leave money on the table. It's just not worth their time.
And what happens for you, the teacher, is that your exhuberence in teaching is diminished, you dread teaching - I hear this all the time - you begin to cut your hours, think about returning to nursing, real estate, banking.
I talked to a teacher just this week who was in her car when I returned her call, she pulled over and parked while we talked. As I was telling her what I can do for her and I got to the part about how so many teachers are lost to our industry because of this massive disillusionment, and that many pick up other jobs to make ends meet. She said that, at that very moment, she as parked at a Starbucks about to take her application for employment inside. She's out of Physical Mind and almost out of her own mind trying to work successfully with what they gave her. She's trying to get to Seattle for one thing or another and I told, go ahead and submit that application, I'm sure she'll get the job but she needs to be prepared to quit when she falls back in love with teaching Pilates.
It doesn't have to be that way and, the great news is that it doesn't take much to change it.
A true teacher unlocks her student's potential and when that happens, it's a very beautiful thing.
The feeling surrounding that is what we catch glimpses of and we chase, hoping that it will return, but many times we don't know what we did to create it and we don't know how to go about getting it back. Teachers will stay in the industry for years, sometimes decades, because the lust for that feeling is so enticing and yet, they don't have the skills to manufacture that feeling, day in and day out, every single session.
If you understand Pilates and if you can convey to clients that understanding, you can replicate that feeling on demand.
That, simply put, is what I teach you to be able to do in my Pilates Excel program.
If you read the testimonials on the PilatesExcel.com site, you'll hear a common refrain. Everything seems to make sense after Pilates Excel, there's a feeling of tremendous synthesis, confidence and peace. I can honestly say that happens consistently, so much so that I'm confident I can deliver that revelation to anyone who gives me the chance.
And that feeling, that sensation of empowerment, authority in the session and confidence in the Method isn't because there's anything special about me or how I teach.
It's because what I teach is underneath everything else they've learned but without the fundamentals underneath it, there's nowhere for all that wisdom to rest. When I come through and complete the foundation, everything else they've ever invested in suddenly has context so the feeling is magnified, exaggerated and super good.
In its entirety, Pilates Excel is about 75 hours of content but I can cram the essence of it into about 32 hours. I've taught it all over the US and last August, I took it to Geneva. We only need as much space as it takes to lay us all down on the floor and for equipment, all we need is 1 Reformer and 1 Cadillac.
Because I want to give it to you any way you'll take it, all parts of Pilates Excel can be modulized and presented independently in the form of single day workshops.
I can't count the number of times I've presented the Anatomy & Fundamentals module and it flows right into the second super impportant piece, Safety and Progression Theories. The other major modules are on Balancing the Body Side to Side and Businss Development, Service & Goalsetting.
When I teach Pilates Excel in my home studio in Seattle, 2 meals a day are included and in the evenings, we all watch Pilates dvds - Joe, Eve, Ron & Kathy. I have 3 data projectors hanging from the ceiling, a 9 x 14 foot screen and two 6 x 8 screens - there's not a bad seat in the house. We lay around on leather sofas, zeebra chairs and bask in the soft glow of Italian and crystal chandeliers. I'm not sure there's another studio like mine . . . a super high tech learning environment and the decor of a wild west bordello with some PeeWee Herman thrown in for good measure.
When I started teaching Pilates Excel, most teachers wanted more, a more real life in-the-trenches experience of seeing how the model of teaching that Pilates Excel prepares them for is actually put into practice.
That's why I began offering Open Studio Week.
Open Studio Week is 5 - 6 days of time spent in my Seattle studio where we can show you my Pilates model in action and teachers leave OSW with a clear plan of implementation.
It's casual as opposed to the intensity of Pilates Excel.
Every day of Open Studio Week, you'll meet one of our more interesting clients (gym conversion, bad back, recovering chiropractic addict, hypermobile, etc.) and they'll spend an hour telling you their stories, how they came to us, how they've considered us and what we stand for, how they've accepted us and submitted to the work, how they've benefitted and been able to afford sometimes years of multiple sessions a week, and how they've come to love the gifts we all receive from Joe & Clara.
Also during Open Studio Week, teachers can observe, they take Developmental Privates from Heidi and I and they practice teaching each other and working themselves on what they're learning.
A Developmental Private is very different than a regular Pilates Session. It's best characterized as your own personal workshop. Whatever you need help with whether it's for yourself or your clients, we'll break it down, do it every which way and make sure you are rock solid in your understanding of it. Sometimes teachers ask to learn every way I know to teach a particular exercise. Another high demand option is how to figure out where they lose control during spinal flexion. Getting teachers out of their quads is a huge issue and I do a lot of that in Developmental Privates. It's whatever you need, whatever you want, however you want it. All those Developmental sessions are observed by everyone in the studio so the value is spread among us all.
In addition to the loose and free form schedule of Open Studio Week, it also includes formal workshop content which I teach in the mid-afternoon and it's always the 2 most important teaching technique modules from Pilates Excel - Anatomy & Fundamentals and Safety & Progression Theories.
Everything I teach carries PMA credits, I'm a huge PMA fan and I encourage everyone to join and support the organization, take the test and teach according to the Scope of Practice. It's our only hope of professionalizing our industry.
During Open Studio Week, we offer a meal plan but it's not included in your Open Studio Week tuition. We also watch those same dvds during Open Studio Week.
For teachers who've been through Pilates Excel, tuition for Open Studio Week is half price. They are designed to go together and I try to make doing both as easy as possible. A Pilates Excel teacher can also repeat any Pilates Excel I teach in my Seattle studio at half price.
In June of 2009 and for the first time, I'll be offering a 4-day Pilates Excel immediately followed by an Open Studio Week. Nine days of non-stop Pilates. The reason I scheduled it is so many teachers do both and when I can offer them back-to-back, it's one air fare, it's one extended time away from their studios instead of two.
And for teachers who want to do both but not consecutively, ideally you'd do Pilates Excel first but the sequence isn't that important.
What I am told, over and over again, is that every time a teacher hears my Pilates 101, they learn so much more. Repeating it is a good thing, especially when you're in the process of formulating your own versions. I try to give it every day of Open Studio Week so you'll get as much exposure to it as possible.
So that's the why and how, all that remains is to make it an "is."
I'm ready for you, I've been preparing to help you for years now and the only way I will succed in fulfilling Joe's mission is if every teacher who needs this type of help can receive it.
That's why I offer payment plans, free housing, meals and airport shuttle service. Joe & Clara cared comprehensively about their clients and I care comprehensively about you.
It's as simple as that.