'Prepping' before exercise

Today we talk about using 'Preps' to prepare the mind - body connection to perform an exercise with improved efficiency and benefit

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Greetings and welcome to the IMMT channel. So hands up, if you've had this client, you are teaching a pelvic curl, you cue the pelvic floor, you cue the abdominals, normally the TA, and you cue the glutes, the hamstrings, and bam, the lower back kicks in straight away every time. Or maybe you're the person doing it. So what to do? That's what we're going to talk about a little bit today. And we're talking about the IMMT approach, integrated movement and manual technique, and why it might be the single most useful philosophy that you've never heard of. So if you're a Pilates enthusiast, uh an instructor, yoga teacher, gym instructor, maybe a pedal player, or just interested in your general own health and well-being, stick around. Okay, so a big question is when working with a dysfunctional body, maybe it's our own or or a client's, how do we know if we're simply layering on top of a compensation pattern and making it worse, obviously? And if so, how are we gonna go about trying to fix that? And I love Pilates, you love Pilates if you're doing Pilates, and Joseph Pilates was, in his own words, ahead of his time. But Joe probably didn't have Janderslow Cross syndrome walking into his studio every hour. Maybe he did, and he probably didn't have clients who sit around for 10 hours every day and then wonder why when they're sitting doing the short box exercise, their hip flexors are screaming at them. So whilst Pilates itself may be great for so many things, how can we incorporate what we're teaching to help release and fix chronically shortened muscles? In other words, how can we use Pilates to downregulate an overfacilitated nervous system? No matter what you see on social media, it's not so simple to magically wake up a glute that's been asleep for 20 years. Okay, so um I think that's not so much a failure of the system of Pilates, but it's more of a lack of understanding of being taught the concepts of the nervous system and sequencing. So in IMMT, we believe that while structure may dictate function to a certain extent, depending uh your background where you come from, um, the function also influences the structure. Now, of course, some people will say that function determines the structure, but it's uh it's two sides of the same coin. So within with certain preps, then we're or without certain preps, we're basically asking the brain to do something of its own habitual movement, where it's gonna be recruiting the things that it normally does for that movement. So, in other words, most of us are gonna be stuck in this groundhog day of habitual movements until we do something purposeful to change it. So, what does the IMMT look like in our example here with the pelvic lift or the pelvic curl? Well, we can see how the six health factors that we recognize in IMMT can relate to the pelvic lift, pelvic curl. First of all, there's the structure and function. So, of course, we're talking here the pelvic position, the rib cage, their actual range of motion, not the one they think they have. The emotional component, maybe the client had an argument with their partner that day, or do they hold their jaw whenever they're trying to do something? So many issues might be relevant. Uh, in terms of the nutritional biochemical component, this might be beyond our or your scope of practice, but we can still recognize that things like fatigue, inflammation, um, poor sleep are all affecting the quality of a movement. And in the environment, what do they do? What's their job? Do they sit at a desk? Are they parents? Do they have a long commute? And their uh that their belief system, if they say, I have a bad back, it's a belief. It's not really a sentence. And the context of uh what their situation is. So when they go on holiday, do they suddenly get better? So the context of what everything's happening, so we can't fix it all, but at least we can recognize it as a generalist. And here's the key: you see, uh we're not seeing the tree in the forest as a specialist. Our superpower comes from being able to see all of the trees or the whole forest in order to recognize a certain condition. So when we're in a session and a client walks in with that classic posture with that uh anterior tilt, the tight quads, the weak glutes, the weak abdominals, and that tight lower back, we need to know what we can do that's gonna work. So normally we would say, oh, you need to strengthen your glutes, and then we give them a glute-strengthening exercise. But the thing is, if the body truly intrinsically knows that those muscles are weak, then it wouldn't be weak or in that state in the first place. So the nervous system would be holding a different pattern. In other words, the brain can't use a muscle, it doesn't know it's there. And if it's holding that pattern, it doesn't know it's there. So uh depending on the scope of your practice and the country that you you uh that you live in, you're probably not going to be able to do a 20-minute massage on your client on the reformer there. But there are things that you can do. So we can uh we can use some self-release using a small ball on the rectus femoris or the TFL. We can use gentle hands-on cueing to help lengthen the lower back using some traction or very light compression. We can teach some mobilization or positional stretch, the classic hip uh hip flexor kneeling stretch to start with, or using it as a mobilization. Um, and we can call this a structural release or a prep, a structural release prep. And then we use that before we activate. So now when you do the bridging or your uh pelvic movements, the brain hopefully can actually start to feel where is the glute and/or the hamstring, and the lower back isn't that first thing to completely switch on. And then the movement becomes about re-patterning something and not reinforcing something. So our uh perceived amount of exertion for the exercise is important. Remember to we need to keep it below 30% in order to have this neuromuscular re-education. And guess what? You probably just made your Pilates session 10 times more effective than adding a whole bunch of whole new exercises and getting your client to completely sweat. So, one thing that IMMT helps you to understand is that it stops you pretending the body stops you pretending that the body is just a movement machine. You know, you can release, you can stretch, you can mobilize. If you're the teacher, you can manually cue, verbally cue. And of course, if something's not inside your scope of practice, you you refer out. So, in my my own humble opinion, some of the things that happen when you adopt this approach that we have in the IMMT is that your clients then stop plateauing. So, you know, they suddenly start improving, and you stop guessing why some cues work for one person, but they don't work on this other person. And you stop feeling like you're just moving bodies in space and repeating exercises. Instead, you become an instructor who actually educates and helps people to empower themselves on their wellness journey. And this got to be good for your client and also good for you in the long run. Suddenly the hundred feels different and the roll-up feels possible, and the person that used to hate all of those sideline or uh side plank exercises start loving it because their TFL is not on fire from the compensation. And that's re-educating the brain, biomechanics of the brain, and neuroplasticity, something, of course, that the Felden crisis is very big on. So just before I sign off, about uh, how about some homework for you? In your next Pilates uh session, how about you before you do an exercise, pause and ask yourself, are you or this person, have they been appropriately prepared for the exercises to come? In other words, did you set yourself, did you set up your client to succeed, or is her or him set up to fail? And if the answer is all no prep, then maybe change one thing. Do 90 seconds of release work, uh, a little bit of stretch-in mobilization, and a cue that doesn't just say engage your core, which is going to be the subject of uh another episode coming up. So, and then you can check does that movement look different? So, if you want to know more about the IMT, stick around and subscribe to the channel. We've got lots of great topics to discuss and lots of movement and manual techniques to share. And oh, in our next episode, we will be diving into everyone's favorite topic, which is the core. So, until then, teach smarter, not harder. And remember, the brain cannot use a muscle, it doesn't know it is there. See you next time.