[00:00:00] Welcome to Pilates Teachers' Manual, your guide to becoming a great Pilates teacher. I'm Olivia, and I'll be your host. Join the conversation on Instagram @pilatesteachersmanual. Today's chapter starts now.

Hello, hello everybody. Welcome back. I've got another fantastic episode for you today about another training that I was able to take during stay-at-home adventures in Chicago, and that was a Pilates focused Barre Above training. I really loved it. I'm [00:01:00] happy to share some of the takeaways that I got from this really cool course.

It is an eight hour training and it does give you certification in barre. I don't know how comfortable I would have felt if it was the only certification I had ever done. I feel like it was a really great complement to Pilates teacher training. So I called today's episode Incorporating Standing Exercises into Pilates because especially while we're working at home right now, if you're doing traditional mat exercises or classical Pilates mat exercises, it is a lot of on-the-ground work.

And I totally get it because if you're doing classical Pilates, you may also be doing Pilates on the reformer. And unless you have a reformer, you might just be doing Pilates and it might just be mat Pilates, especially if you're doing like strictly classical work. 

I think that standing work is super duper important because life happens standing up. The majority of [00:02:00] movement that we do in our lives happens while we're standing, not while we're lying down. I love doing supine work. I think that the mat, or if you're lying down on the reformer, the carriage, is giving you feedback about your spine so that you'd begin to feel what neutral feels like with that feedback.

But we don't check ourselves in neutral by lying down just as we go about our day. We do all of our stuff standing up if you're doing any active aging work, and I love Erica Quest, defines active agers is like north of 40. So it's not far in the wild senior citizen land. Like our balance starts deteriorating, or a balance starts- I mean, deteriorating sounds really stressful, but our balance is no longer improving once we hit 40. And so you can do a lot of standing balance work, which is going to be really easily transferable into daily life. 

Also since this is my third month of being in, stay at home mode. I have [00:03:00] supine matted myself out. Like I was looking for ways to make my classes more interesting, make my classes more engaging and standing work is just a really great option for that. And even when I get back to the studio, when I'm doing reformer classes, I may not have students standing on the reformer unless it's an advanced class, but I am going to try to incorporate some standing work.

I was originally hesitant to include standing work on things like the tower or the springboard, because in some ways it's more advanced. You are responsible for a lot of your joints, all of your joints, in standing work. Whereas, you know, if you're lying down the ground is holding most of you. When you're standing up, the ground is only in contact with your feet and sometimes a very small part of your foot if you're doing things with your heels lifted. 

So to have a student, especially someone who's brand new to Pilates and just have them standing, you know, there could be wackiness happening at ankles, at [00:04:00] knees, at hips, at shoulders, anywhere in the spine. There's just a lot of things that you have to keep track of in standing. But I'm going to go ahead and stand by, I'm going to stand by standing work as an awesome thing that we should all be doing. 

So the training I took from Barre Above was the Pilates focused training, which made me very happy. I actually have not done barre exercises. I don't think I've ever taken a bar class. I did take some ballet in college and some ballet when I was a very wee little person, but I haven't done any, you know, Barre Method or Pure Barre. So my awareness, like I'm aware that it exists, but I haven't, I'm not in love with the method. I'm not a devotee of the method at all. I have like very tangential interest in barre as a thing.

But I do know that at Club Pilates, we offer a [00:05:00] class called Control and that is a barre fusion class where you're doing some work on the reformer and some work at the standing bar. There's like a little mini bar that is screwed into the springboard. And so I have that awareness, but I haven't done like barre barre.

There are a lot of benefits to doing barre exercises with the standing bar, right? It's a balance tool. If you have clients who aren't there in terms of balance or having balance concerns, they've got something right there to hang on to, which is fantastic. Also using that bar really allows you to focus on your muscle engagement because it can take balance out of it. If you're holding onto the bar, you don't have to worry about falling over. So you can really focus on what you're doing. 

Vertical training with bodyweight is really awesome because you always have your body everywhere you go. And this is another, you know, benefit of yoga or mat Pilates that you're using your body weight. When you are vertical, it's a little bit less intense. So [00:06:00] if you're doing things like pushups on the bar, you can be at an angle. You can be engaging your abdominals, but it's not as intense as being on the mat and doing a plank. Right. 

It also can assist you with flexibility. You can do things where you have body parts on the bar, and it will allow you to stretch a little bit deeper because it's supporting your body weight, which is really awesome. It's also a posture and alignment tool, both as a person who's using the bar, it can help you find your alignment, help you stand up a little bit taller, but also as a teacher, having that horizontal bar makes it a lot easier to assess movement. It's like having graph paper, right? It like gives you a little bit of a grid so you can check people's bodies.

I did talk about in a previous episode, something that we discussed in the Barre Above training, and that was the stages of learning. I discussed that in the Teaching Great Private Classes Virtually. So I go a little bit more in depth there definitely go check out that episode if you haven't already. 

But briefly going over it, the [00:07:00] learning stages are cognitive, associative, and autonomous where a cognitive learner is just beginning with the movement. They may not have the best body awareness. They may not know the exercises and they're going to really benefit from basic cues that just get them in the right body position. 

And they'll build from there to an associative learner that is maybe more familiar. You can cue things a little bit more specifically for them. They may also benefit from a visual representation of you showing out of alignment and then in alignment, they're beginning to make those connections between their brain and their body. 

And then autonomous learners are very comfortable with the exercises with their body. They're going to benefit from very specific, fine tuning cues, from coordination challenges, because they have that foundation already built.

So we talked about those types of learners, depending on what type of learners you're working with is going to change the way that you cue and the way that you lead a class. For [00:08:00] sure. And also the types of cues, that there are people who respond really well to verbal cues. And there are people who respond better to visual cues, or there are people who really appreciate tactile cues.

As studios are opening up, tactile cues may not be an option anymore, but you can do a lot with just those verbal cues and those visual cues, demonstrating exercises. 

Principles of barre are pretty much the principles of Pilates. I don't think I was the only person who noticed that, that we're focusing on our breath, our centering, our concentration, control, precision, flow. Those are old hat principles we know that from Pilates and it applies to this because the cool thing about Barre Above's training is that it is contemporary barre. 

So what I know of barre being from sort of this ballet inspired movement, is that in ballet, you're in a tuck most of the time, you're not in neutral spine, you're in a posterior tilt in your pelvis. And I [00:09:00] think the ballet is amazing, but I don't think that living your life in a posterior tilt is necessarily what we want to do or what we're going for. 

So Barre Above really focuses on this neutral spine and this neutral pelvis and the Control class that happens at Club Pilates that Barre Above designed is that you want to emphasize a neutral spine because we live in neutral and functional movement happens in neutral. They call the Control class standing functional movement. So we are working in a neutral spine always.

The training also reviewed things that are good to know things that you just want to know. And those are your planes of movement. If you are not familiar with them, there are three, the sagittal plane, the frontal plane, and the transverse plane.

I will tell you how I remember them. The sagittal plane, I always think of Sagittarius. No, I'm not huge in astrology, but Sagittarius is that sign that is the archer, right. And if you [00:10:00] think about the movement of drawing an arrow back, that happens in the sagittal plane. So sagittal plane is extension and flexion. So that's how I remember it. Sagittal, Sagittarius.

 The frontal plane would be if you cut yourself in half, so that the front of your body, your face, your chest, your belly is in the front and then your back body, your shoulder blades, your glutes, all of that is in the back. That is that plane. So that's going to be lateral movement.

And the transverse plane happens if you took that piece of glass, it runs parallel to the ground and it goes right through your midsection. So that's only going to be rotation. Rotation happens in the transverse plane. I'm not gonna lie. I do not have a mnemonic at all for the transverse plane. It's just the third one and it's the only one that's left. 

To reiterate: sagittal plane, think sagittarius. It's extension and flexion. The piece of glass would be bisecting you right through the center of your face. So going like right down your nose, right through your [00:11:00] chin, through your sternum, down your pubic bone. So in order to stay anchored on that piece of glass, you're going to only be able to move forward and back that's extension and flexion.

In the frontal plane, that piece of glass is cutting off your front. So it's going like right through your ears, through the sides of the shoulders, through your hip bones, so that your face is in the front and the back of your head is on the back of that piece of glass to state on that piece of glass and move, you would have to go sideways. So there's your lateral flexion. 

And transverse is going to cut you right through the middle. That piece of glass is parallel to the ground when you're standing. And that allows you to rotate. Those are the three planes of movement, and we always want to move in all of those planes of movement because our life happens in a combination of those things.

We very rarely are just laterally flexing. We're often laterally flexing and rotating, or we're bending forward and a little bit in rotation. Like it happens as a combination. We learn those planes of movement in isolation, but the majority of movement happens in a [00:12:00] combination of those planes. That's just a teacher thing. So yay. 

Coming up after the break, I'm going to talk a little bit more about barre as bigger than just standing exercises and some of the other takeaways that I took from this training.

Hi there. I hope you're enjoying today's chapter so far. There's lots of awesome stuff coming up after the break as well. Please share this episode with your friends and followers and share the Pilates love.

Now back to the show.

Barre [00:13:00] exercises, of course, are not just standing. I'm harping on standing because I do feel like there's not a lot of standing work that happens in Pilates and standing, as I have said, repeatedly, is really important to us as movers and shakers in the world. There is a prone series, a seated supine exercise series. That is part of the Barre Above system, but standing is what I'm the most in love with. 

Range of movement is a big thing in barre, I've heard and I've learned through this training. The idea is that there's like a start position for every exercise. There's a mid point. And then there's an end range of motion.

Initial is going to be the setup for it. So if you're doing something like a plie, you're set up, you're standing. Your mid range. You're starting to bend your knees. Your knees are tracking over your toes. Your shoulders are over your hips. It's amazing. And then your end range of movement is going to be the deepest expression of that.

And everyone's end range of movement is different. So it [00:14:00] is important to know that when you're cuing exercises or when you're doing exercises, if you are playing with this end range of movement, everyone's end-range movement is going to be different. And on each exercise, it's going to be different and every day it's going to be a little bit different. 

When you're sequencing bar exercises- and I kind of love this for Pilates as well. This is definitely something that I've incorporated into my classes- you can do full range of movement from your initial starting position to the end range of movement. You can do that as a full range of movement. You can do a half range of movement and it could be anywhere in that spectrum. You could go from initial to half and then back, or you could go from half to full and then back there. So you can work in a smaller range of movement, pulsing and then static holds. 

And those are things that don't always happen in Pilates, but they can really add challenge to an exercise. If you're doing something, literally, anything, even something like footwork on the reformer. If you start working and half range of [00:15:00] movement, if you start incorporating pulses, incorporating holds. That is really going to up the challenge. And so when you're working with things, especially in exercise that we do all the time, like footwork, you can throw that in. And that makes things interesting. 

When we're doing stuff here, we're working at home, doing things like half range of movement, full range of movement on exercises and everything from a roll down where you can go in and out or roll back, moving in and out of that half range of movement or, my favorite, static holds right at the crunchiest bit, right where you like catch yourself and you have to recruit a few more muscles to really get yourself up or get yourself down. Having holds there is really a great way to get people to tune in to the muscles that are working there. And also again, add challenge. So that's really fun. And you can do that beyond barre, of course. 

So there is a musicality component to barre, especially  traditional barre or classes that are just barre classes, this idea that you're doing the exercises with the *music, and this is something that I think is so cool, but I'm just going to tell you, I [00:16:00] cannot. My heart wishes that I was a dancer and I could sync movement to music, but I'm really stuck at just syncing the movement to the breath. Teachers who can cue to music, I applaud you and I admire you and I aspire to be at that level of teaching, but I work a little bit slower than oftentimes what the music sounds like.

So, if you are teaching to the music barre, as you know, that ballet inspired doing these sort of short focused movements, it goes really well to the music. Pilates as a whole, I don't think goes great to the music, the same way yoga. I don't think goes great to the music because everyone breathes at a different pace. Everyone's range of movement is different. It doesn't work for me, but if it works for you, amazeballs, like awesome. 

Something that I really loved and really appreciated that we talked about in this training is their emphasis on empowered cuing instead of the opposite, [00:17:00] disempowered cuing, really focusing on complimenting students on their form when they're doing something good, that you're letting them know. You're offering progressions to exercises without shaming anyone who isn't taking that progression, that you're really framing your progression positivel. That if you choose to take it a step further, that's amazing. But if you choose to stay where you are, that's amazing. 

And that really does take some practice because it's easy to say something like, Oh, this is the level one option, this is the level two option. But to make your students feel good about where they are and really emphasizing the benefits and what they're working on where they are. And that progressing is just going to add the layer of challenge. It doesn't take away from what you're doing, where you are. 

That's a really great thing to do in a really great thing to practice, especially now when we're teaching at home, because everything you're doing is verbal cues. So what you say really matters, and you can really shape the student's [00:18:00] experience. If you are using these positive and these empowering cues, that's going to make a really great impact on your students. And then students are going to want to take your classes because they feel good when they take your classes, which I think is great.

Overall, this was a really great complement to my teacher training. I really think that the Barre Above, especially this Pilates focused far above training was excellent. I love reviewing things, I think it's important. It's really easy when you're just teaching to forget about things like the planes of movement or ranges of movement. And so anytime you can revisit those things in a cool way through a training is really beneficia,  in my opinion. 

I also got to take the training with Leslie Bender, who is one of the co-founders of the Barre Above system. And that's really cool because she's a big name in the fitness world and she is a really excellent teacher with really excellent cues and just so positive and so supportive.

And this class was offered virtually, again, which is amazing because this specific [00:19:00] training was being offered at Club Pilates studios across the country, but like not in Chicago. And I've been looking at taking this training for like a year. So I'm really excited that I could check this off my to do list, and take it with Leslie vendor was even more amazing.

I'll link in the show notes if you're interested in doing that Barre Above training. They are offering more virtual trainings in the future. And they also have like a ballet focused one called Balletone, and then they have regular barre training and then this Pilates focused training. 

I did the Pilates focused one. It was a lot of fun. It was definitely worth my time and it feels good. It is a fun way to move. I don't think that I'm going to be just a barre teacher. I really love teaching Pilates, but I do think that this gives you another tool in your toolbox that you can pull out and kind of keep yourself interested in what you're doing and also offer new and interesting challenges for your students. So be sure to check that out.

[00:20:00] Thank you so much for joining me for today's chapter of Pilates Teachers' Manual, your guide to becoming a great Pilates teacher. If you loved today's episode, subscribe and leave a review. You can reach out to me on Instagram @pilatesteachersmanual or send me an email to pilatesteachersmanual@oliviabioni.com.

The adventure continues. Until next time.