Alan Herdman is one of our greatest Pilates elders. Alan was a recent guest on: ‘Beyond Reformer’ with Nic. He discussed how modern day living, is in a constant of flexion and that we must adapt the way we teach and coach to the person in-front. We gravitate to flexion from when we rise, to when we sleep.

Here is a typical example of a daily routine of the average person:

  1. You get up and go to the toilet #flexion
  2. Have breakfast #flexion
  3. Commute to work either on public transport or car #flexion
  4. Sit at a desk all day #flexion
  5. Go to an exercise or movement class after work such as spin or a Pilates class which is predominately flexion #moreflexion
  6. Run the children to various clubs and wait about #flexion
  7. Go home and have tea #flexion
  8. Plonk on the sofa #flexion

Now there is no such thing as a bad exercise but there is such thing as a badly prescribed exercise. If a person has a rounded kyphotic posture, choosing the wrong exercises and doing the wrong programming is actually reincurring the wrong firing patterns.

I am completely with Alan that we need more extension in our work, probably 70 %  extension as he stated. This also works at a subconscious level, when we are extended, open at the heart centre and working optimally in extension, there is little room for the psyche of the mind to be depressed. Our mindset can be handled through diet, lifestyle and belief systems. Remember our body holds onto past programming at a cellular level.  In order to change our lives and posture, we have to be prepared to address:

  1. Emotional balance through mindfulness, gratitude and purpose.
  2. Improve physical health through breathing, sleep, hydration, nutrition, thinking and the correct movement pattern.
  3. Find purpose and connection
  4. Address root causes of stress, emotion and trauma

Our posture and our bodies reveal our emotional state.

My personal experience of being a movement and Pilates practitioner for over 30 years, is that people need to work on more than just movement to release pain, faulty movement patterns, poor ergonomics and poor posture. Otherwise you are working at a superficial level.

For example most Pilates teachers and clients actually have a reverse or faulty breath pattern.  This is because  of faulty programming and lack of questioning on how the breath works with the rest of the body. The quality of our lives is always based on the quality of our questions. The belly should always rise on an inhale, that being 2/3rds of the breath starts in the belly and the final third into the chest . You can read my breathing blog part 1 here:

Breath and posture are intimately linked, think of a starfish, jellyfish or a foetus of any sort. An inhalation works hand in hand with extension, abduction(take away from the midline) and supination. Where as an exhalation works with flexion, adduction (towards the midline) and pronation.

With the popularisation of Pilates and reformer, especially from big gym chains faulty neural patterns are doing more harm than good in the gain of aesthetics physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Flexion is being taught without balance, being that of a pulse and burn workout, without correcting the root movement patterns. Remember Pilates is now a generic term and anything can be called Pilates, including frying eggs on a reformer. I coach and teach in order to maintain high standards, in other words, less is more. An ideal situation is always balance in life. Most of us actually need more yin, not yang in our lives. Yin represents anabolic repair. Remember everyone is different and one sizes does not fit all.

Pilates is a beautiful system (in-fact an art). In an ideal situation everyone would either be comprehensively trained and running studios on a one to one basis. As we know this is not possible for everyone financially. The rise of reformer worldwide gives everyone access to this machine. At a subconscious level, we are lacking in play, meaning the child archetype. My personal opinion and feeling is that reformer Pilates has taken off because of our lack of play and creativeness. The reformer returns us to our playful child with the use of the tilting reflex.  Of course we have the rise of social media, but this moving platform can be great fun, create community and bring many people together who world normally not move.

In order to change posture and improve any sort of movement, we must first work in this order:

  1. Mobility/flexibility
  2. Stability
  3. Strength
  4. Power

Training in other modalities is very important. If you watch Elaine Ewings Instagram archives on her channel, you will see the predominant use of weight training, callisthenics and bouncing.  Remember once we have established optimal joint ROM and stability, the skeletal system needs to be loaded in order to definitive tissue change. There are many variables on time under tension, depending on what the desired outcome is.

So if you truly understand the powerhouse, bandhas and core they should be trained in full range of movement. So in other words the abdominals must go through full motion. Most people doing crunches  don’t realize they are training half the range of motion. Flexion or a crunch form floor level will only go through 30 degrees range of movement, but your spine actually should extend from 35 to 70 degrees. So if we think of a footballer kicking a ball, the spine naturally goes into extension prior to the move.

We can only develop according to our level of awareness. This is why it is important to look at ourselves first then at society and ask the question: ‘Is what we are doing actually working?’.  Old habits and belief systems are hard to change, and as we know change takes energy and commitment.

“When the flexion‑reflex is elicitable poorly, as, for instance, in spinal shock or under fatigue or weak excitation, the crossed extension does not accompany the homonymous flexion and does not appear. But, where the flexion‑reflex is well developed, if not merely one but both feet be stimulated simultaneously with stimuli of fairly equal intensity, steady flexion at knee, hip and ankle results in both limbs, and extension occurs in neither limb. The contralateral part of each reflex is inhibited by the homolateral flexion of each reflex.” – Frederick Gymer Parsons, Edmund Owen, and Charles Scott Sherrington (1911, Encyclopædia Britannica)

Bibliography

Beyond the pod – https://podcasts.apple.com/rs/podcast/how-to-cue-pilates-like-a-pro-with-alan-herdman/id1812846166?i=1000776531115

Elaine Ewing – https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbAxQNCRZFh/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Paul Chek – HLC 1