Reading the Reps Pt2

This was written after a conversation with some instructors who had been trained in Pilates school that prioritised offering a choice of spring tensions/layers at the beginning of a movement sequence (layer).

If you’ve grown up in a model where you’re careful and you don’t progress load in the way that we advocate here, what you do have is an eye for watching when people are challenged.

We’re brought up to say that as soon as someone’s form dissipates, you should stop, or at least coach them to improve it. And if they can’t improve it, you should stop.

So you’ve got the skill of observing a breakdown in form. That’s one of the hardest things to develop as a developing instructor. When you’ve already got that, it’s really just a tweaking, or an inversion, of the skill you’ve already got.

When you realise that the signs of challenge are not a signal to stop, but actually that’s when the good stuff is starting to happen, you can harness that skill very effectively.

Tell, don’t ask

Once you understand the premise of the layered approach — Meat and Potatoes, then a layer, then a layer—if their reps are good and you know that the increment of the next layer is appropriate, you tell them to take that layer and offer to go back. Don’t ask. Don’t offer choices where the consequences are not made explicit. 

You trust your skills of observation and pattern recognition. If they take the layer and the form breaks down, you direct them back to the layer before. You overestimated it slightly.

The skill you’ve got of watching people’s form is your insurance. You’ve just got to think about how you’re using that skill. You’re turning it into a strength coaching mechanism.

If you’ve said “elbows tight” on a push up (grasshopper push up) and they’re at eight reps, ten reps, getting their chest to bar and elbows in tight it’s time to make it harder, amd look for the tell - elbows flaring/chest NOT getting to the bar.  Establish the achievable success conditions, get moving and look for the tell.

That’s a very powerful tool.

There’s a caveat on “tell, don’t ask”: if clients don’t come back, we don’t have classes to teach. They’ve got to come back.

If you’re getting to know a new client and they’re cautious about challenge, that’s not the person you’re going to say, “All right, Barry, add another spring.”

You’re going to say, “I’m pretty confident you can, but, no pressure. Do what you can. Stop if you need to.”

Conversely, when Barry has been with you for a month or three and has had the opportunity to understand the layered teaching approach, to know in his own experience that as the challenge increases, he can trust his own achievement of the success conditions (which are more and more familiar by virtue of our strategic repetition) and he has learned to trust us as his coach that when we ‘tell’ him to take the knees off/spring up/spring down, he can do at least a few repetitions, so as his coach I will be more assertive with my “tell don’t ask”

The tension between those two versions of Barry is how we manage different people.

I’ve had lots of student teachers say to me, “Why didn’t you make that person work harder? They could obviously work harder.”

The answer is I don’t know them well enough yet. I’m not ready to push them yet. I don’t want to scare them away.

If you don’t come back, I don’t get to work with you. So my number one job is to get you to come back. Then to get you to move, to see where your comfort and discomfort is, and to work with that.

It’s great that you want to make them stronger. But if you scare them off, you don’t get to do anything with them.

So be really patient.

Layers solve for challenge

Layers solve for challenge at the individual and group level. You get really good at layers by teaching the same stuff over and over again.

You’ve got that person who, for one reason or another, doesn’t want to go up from two and a half springs for their footwork despite 25/35+ reps. Okay, no problem. Meanwhile, you’ve got Barry next to her and Sally next to her doing full springs.

One day, maybe one, two, six months down the track, you point out, “Sally used to be on one and a half springs. All she did was keep coming.”

You drop the seed.

The premise of this system is everyone rides together and can move through layers that create meaningful physiological change without having to sit out.

In its essence, everyone riding together means no one is sitting there doing nothing. It doesn’t mean that someone, for one reason or another, can’t be doing something visibly different to what everyone else is doing. Where we come in is to make sure they feel empowered about doing that rather than disempowered.

Teaching activity: 

Choose one layer you already teach.

• Are their reps good?

• Do you know that the increment of the next layer is appropriate?

• What is the tell you’re looking for?

• If you’ve overestimated it, which layer will you direct them back to?

• Do you know this person well enough to push them yet?