12 Inches

12 Inches

We stand on them everyday, we depend on them from the time we set them onto the floor in the morning until we lay back down at night.

The foot is very complex. One-quarter of the bones in the human body are in the feet – thirty-three joints – over one hundred muscles – all  this  complexity collaborates to give our body balance and motion. If there is a structural problem in any one part of the foot, it can lead to problems elsewhere in the body.

Most of your reformer classes will begin with Foot Work. This is where you rest your feet on the Foot Bar and you push away with spring resistance. Your instructor is always keeping a keen eye on what your feet are doing, what part of the foot your pushing from and scanning up your leg to your hip socket to see what is going on in that area. When performing Foot Work, your feet telegraph much of what’s going on in your body throughout the day – from tight hamstrings or Achilles tendons, to what part of your foot you place your weight on, even the pair of Jimmy Choos you wore all day. When you are engaged in Foot Work you are strengthening the 20 muscles that are responsible for much of the movement needed just to walk to Starbucks for your morning soy, no foam latte.

So now you have a pelvis that is neutral, a spine that is neutral, scooped abdominals and we just added your feet to the picture. Man does this ever stop? Nope. It just gets better.

I have been to many exercises classes and I’m proud to say that Pilates really addresses your feet like none other. Pushing into a bar with resistance and trying to line up your body and use the correct muscles all starts down there with two things you sometimes just take for granted – your feet. We stuff our feet into shoes, sometimes comfortable – for the fashion forward, not so comfortable. Just think every time you push against that foot bar your engaging muscles in your feet that help you to walk, stand and jump.

Here is an exercise you can try:

Lay a towel out and sit on a stool with your feet in parallel, near the bottom part of the towel. Now take your toes and start curling them to bunch the towel up towards you. Now reverse the action. You have just engage muscles if your feet.

Another thing to test is how you use or abuse your feet daily. Consider your foot as having three “centers.” Your foot centers are under your heel, and on your foot pad – near your big tow and little tow. Stand bare foot and consider where you’ve placed your weight. If your weight doesn’t feel evenly distributed, correct it and see how it changes your balance and posture. While you are at it, look down occasionally when you are standing still. If you turn your feet in, one is consistently placed ahead of the other or you are pigeon-toed, I will almost guarantee you are looking at exactly the position your instructor continuously cues you to correct on the reformer. When you are standing, walking or running, how your feet touch the ground directly impacts how you hold your pelvis (back to that neutral spine again). If you are not balanced on your feet, the rest of your body has to adjust just to keep you upright.

So remember every time you go to your Pilates session your giving your two best friends what they need – some strengthening – but don’t forget to take what you learn out of the studio.

The scoop on Pilates Lingo

You’ve made the decision to begin a Pilates program, done your research, paid for you’re your first package and you are now actually taking Pilates. Your instructor tells you to ‘scoop the abdominals’, ‘sink your naval to your spine’, or, my favorite, ‘make a C curve.’

Your first thought is, “Cripes, I need a decoder ring and an anatomy degree to get through this session.” You quickly follow with, “Okay, so I have to ‘think about’ my shoulders, my belly button has just entered the picture, and their using letters from the alphabet to get me to do something that makes absolutely no sense.”

Welcome to Pilates – perhaps we can try harder to make you feel stupid with language we’ve made up, while in reality, we are supposed to be teaching you how to properly use your body.

Lets start with this ‘scoop’ concept. I always think of ice cream when I here the word ‘scoop’. I can’t help myself but to think of scooping out a serving of Vanilla Heath Bar ice cream. The word ‘scoop’ according to Webster’s Dictionary means ‘a large ladle’ Let’s apply that to your abdominals. There are four layers of abdominals if I were to take a large ladle and scoop, you would feel your abdominals engage and lift upwards. Think of the action of your hand when your scooping ice cream it goes down and comes up. The same action of your stomach muscles can be applied. I always tell my clients to pull the naval to the spine and gently lift it up under the first rib.

Now if after reading that last line, you are thinking – I am so glad I’m not his client because I have no idea what ‘pull the naval to the spine’ means – let’s go there next. The most commonly used phrase in any drop-in mat class, video or even beginner reformer class is ‘sink your belly button to your spine.’ New students do one of two things when asked to accomplish that; they suck in their tummy and hold it in with all their might, or they flatten their back – losing their neutral spine. This is really just a cue to pull up through your pelvic floor and engage your abdominals. Lost you again? Try the following. Sit upright on a chair, feet on the floor and put your hip bones right over your ‘sitz bones’ (the boney part of your butt). Now, put a child’s playground ball between your thighs and squeeze the hell out of it. Do you feel how your low belly jumps into action and everything tightens up? Do it again and feel that pulling upward of the low abdominals – it will feel like they’ve pulled upward and in at the same time – as if they are headed to your belly button. And bingo – you understand the feeling and just have to practice it until you can control the movement without the inner thighs leading the motion.

Now we have the ‘C curve’ – stay with me, this is something you can get, I promise. When I’m sitting tall on a chair and I think of a ‘C curve’, I pull my naval so far into my spine that my back makes the letter C. I always think of rounding over a beach ball, or as if someone punched me really hard in the low belly and I’ve curved over their fist. Now I want a strong capital C so I watch that I don’t collapse into my ribs or sink my chest (allowing my shoulders to cave in towards each other). I always give my clients the cue to think that their spine is a bow from a bow and arrow. The bow is a bit like a ‘C curve’ but it’s very strong.

Now with your abdominals ‘scooped’ and your back in a ‘C curve’ your instructor now tells you to breath. Try not to hurl the closest object at him/her. If you are like me, this is where you will want to stand up and tell them that you have always been a great multi-tasker, but frankly, you’ve just reached your limit and it was lovely to meet them. You have your abs scooped you’re thinking of ice cream and you’re scooping over a beach ball and thinking it would be much easier to throw on a sarong and T-shirt, go to the beach and eat some ice cream on the way. Just hold out and work through all this. Find some focus, remember that you and your instructor are both on the same team and your team goals are making you stronger and healthier and I promise it will all come together.

The thing is all the cues and imagery used in Pilates are to help you find the deeper muscles, not just the big muscles you’ve been working your entire life. But if your instructor’s cues don’t make sense to you, keep asking for new ones – something that hits home with you and allows you find those muscles and bring things to a whole new level.

Neutral Spine and Pilates

Neutral Spine and Pilates

You’ve decided to start a Pilates program. You are brand new to Pilates and your instructor keeps asking you to ‘find your neutral spine’.

“No problem,” you think, “if I had any idea what ‘neutral spine’ meant, I’m sure I could ‘find’ it! That is, of course, right after I manage to ‘drop’ my shoulders and ‘engage’ my abs.”

Yes – sometimes Pilates instructors fall into the habit of using language and cues we know and our existing clients have learned, but we forget to give the dictionary/how-to guide to someone brand new to Pilates. I sometimes think of it as the adult understanding of a teen-agers text message. We might as well be speaking in Greek – but our very polite new client doesn’t want to appear stupid or interrupt and never asks us to speak English!

Neutral spine embraces all the natural curves you have in your spine. A normal, healthy spine has curves in the thoracic and the lumbar region of the spine. With these curves in your spine your body is able to perform in it strongest most balanced position – this is correct posture. By holding your body correctly, you reduce wear and tear on your joints, muscles and vertebrae and efficiently move in more structured way. It would be similar to shifting gears in a car – when in gear the car moves easily.

So how do we find neutral spine?

I start by letting my clients sit on a stool with their feet parallel and on the floor. I let my client slouch in to a position where the chest drops, they sink into their hips and the head protrudes forward. Then I have them reverse this by sitting in a very rigid upright posture. Now I tell them to sit back by 15% through the lower spine and there is neutral spine for most clients.

I think one of the most challenging parts of finding neutral spine is finding the neutral position of the pelvis. I always use the image of balancing a glass of water on the lower belly. Lying my client down with knees bent feet 6 inches away from the sitz bones I give them the image of a glass of water balancing on the lower belly. I let my client dump the water toward them helping them go into a pelvic tilt and let the water fall away from them by tilting their pelvis forward (overarching their back somewhat). I let my client do this a few times, helping them to engage the abdominal for this movement. I pay close attention to the legs and the placement of the feet during this process.

Another visual for my clients to find a neutral pelvis is to have them put the heel of each hand on their hip bones and allow their fingertips to come together at their pubic bone in a ‘V.’ When the ‘V’ is perpendicular to the floor, they are in neutral pelvis. I then ask them to tilt their pelvis forward and watch the ‘V’ and then tilt their pelvis backwards and watch the ‘V’. We then repeat the same procedure on the floor with knees bent. Once a client understands a neutral pelvis, they are on the path to learning to hold neutral spine.

Working in neutral is – well – work. But once you achieve this position you are well on your way to getting deeper into your sessions with your instructor. When I first learned the Pilates method we were still imprinting our lower backs into the carriage. All an imprinted spine ever did for me was give me a soar lower back. Being a ballet dancer, I wanted that natural curve to absorb some of the shock of jumping.

Coming soon:
We’ll talk about the phrase ‘sink your belly button to the floor’, what an instructor actually means when using that phrase, and why it might not be the best cue to use on a new client.

We’ll discuss the importance of your feet to your overall posture, both when standing/walking and on during footwork.

Your Posture and Pilates

Each day, as clients walk into my studio, I visually access their posture. I try to visualize the body as building blocks and to align those blocks (upward) creating a strong center line. Having this alignment in the body allows for a strong supple spine.

I see more poor posture than one could imagine – rounded shoulders, narrow chests and very thick waists. I always picture a person’s muscles in full drive just to keep the body upright all day and the resulting lack of energy. Having good posture is a statement of grace, of confidence. Taking Pilates is a way to improve your posture. Every exercise that I teach incorporates postural awareness with each movement.

Pilates promotes proper posture by balancing the body and distributing day to day stresses like standing or moving to the correct muscles and bones.

The spine is made up of 32 to 34 bones called vertebrae. It is designed to provide a range of motions and support for the body with a minimum of wear and tear on the spine joints, or Intervertebral discs. The spine has four natural curves. When your posture is good these spinal curves lend shock absorption, extra flexibility and a range of motion to your movement. Developing your back and abdominal muscles evenly assist in supporting the spine. When there is too much or too little in the curves in your spine or they do not balance properly with one another, your posture is incorrect on a daily basis, leading to set-in postural problems and back pain.

When I see this in my clients I picture certain muscles continuously engaged and working so hard to correct the problem or carry the weight of the body, all the while opposite muscles are becoming weaker. Heavy bags or briefcases can contribute to uneven muscle development. New mothers can face the same issues – simply carrying an infant or balancing a child on the same hip start those patterns of misalignment. As important as guiding my clients within the studio, is the information I get about their lives and patterns outside the studio.

A good Pilates session can often uncover all these important aspects of your spine. I can remember seeing the statue of David and thinking to myself man that guy is going to have some serious back problems from the way he sits into that right hip. And that perhaps is the curse and joy of a good Pilates instructor, from art museums to grocery stores, we cannot help but see postural issues and want to “fix” them.

Pilates Teacher

I first heard the word Pilates at the age of 16. After an injury in Ballet Class, I was sent to a man to “strengthen my core”. From that day forward, Pilates has been my passion. Since then, I have done most of my training with Pilates “Elders” – a privilege I never take for granted. Additionally, I have trained with some extraordinary second generation teachers. But since the age of 16, I have been a student of Pilates.

18 years ago I began calling myself a Pilates teacher. I teach six days a week in my studios in Cleveland, Ohio. Each day, I wake up excited to start my day with my incredible and loyal clients. Each day, I learn something new about the body through Pilates.

My personal Pilates practice is part of my own wellness ritual. I believe that to be a good teacher, one must continuously be a student and that without a continued passion to do Pilates, I would have no right to teach it to others.

I work out daily on my 1950’s reformer, purchased from one of Joe’s original clients. The history in this reformer allows me to connect with those who’ve come before me. As I hear the wheels roll over the track and the springs groan and strain, my body begins to embrace the ritual I look forward to daily. This is my time to tend to my own body and to listen to myself, mind, body and spirit. I treat my workout as mediation. As I focus on the movement, I let my body communicate with me. My body continually craves the feeling that I only get from a good session. I love the feeling of creating space between each vertebrae, giving me more mobility, but also a feeling of security and power from within. My Pilates practice gives me the ability to go through my day with energy, clarity and calm.

There are many incredible teachers out there to choose from. Find one you are comfortable with and enjoy the journey. Your teacher should display a clear knowledge of anatomy and have studied from a recognized teacher or teacher training organization. But as importantly, your teacher should be watchful, thoughtful and able to figure out how best to communicate with you, through their words and their touch. When you find the right teacher to connect with, you will be on a journey of your lifetime.

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