Why Great Programming Looks Boring
(Or, Why Experienced Instructors Repeat Themselves)
One of the fastest ways to identify a new/developing Pilates instructor is to watch how often they change their programming.
In the 4 tier āstages of teaching framework I use when mentoring instructors this situation straddles at least two stages: āNoviceā, āBeginnerā and in some cases āEmergingā. I mention this to illustrate that the pull to prioritise variety over mastery is a powerful impulse.
One of the fastest ways to identify an experienced instructor is to notice how comfortable they are repeating their programming.
A relationship over spans of time between the small - often imperceptible to clients and āyoungerā instructors changes to otherwise repeated programming is a further level of nuance we will discuss at a later stage.
If that feels backwards, stay with me.
Surely experience should produce more variety?
Shouldnāt years of teaching result in more exercises, more sophisticated sequences, more elaborate programming or at the very least more obvious adjustments to a given movement for individuals within the group?
If experience really is the accumulation of knowledge, shouldnāt that knowledge express itself more obviously in exercises delivered to individuals within the group and groups across spans of time?
After all, isnāt that woven into the fabric of what we learned at Pilates school?
More exercises.
More variations.
More creativity.
More complexity.
More novelty.
More instability
= more expertise
All quietly associated with greater effectiveness.
Perhaps thatās where the confusion begins.
The assumption is that if we know more, we should teach more. If we teach more, our classes become better.
But is that actually true? Or have we confused variety with value?
The longer I teach, the less convinced I become.
Because bodies donāt adapt in strength, endurance or range of motion through novelty.
They adapt to stress - external load, time at end range, time in effort, all at the appropriate intensities for results.
Which raises an interesting question.
If adaptation is the goalā¦ ā¦what exactly is the role of the exercise?
I think weāve given exercise variations more importance than they deserve.
The exercise is not the outcome. The exercise is the environment in which adaptation takes place.
Thatās an important distinction.
Most programming discussions begin with exercises, good GROUP programming begins with simple, scalable, broadly accessible layers that everyone can master quickly and do 20 or more reps ofā¦ then intensity is layered in according to the output we are programming for.
Strength or enduranceā¦
...and/or range of motion
...and/or movement skill
...and/or stability under perturbation.
Take something as simple as a Reformer lunge.
Is its value found in the number of ways it can be varied?
Or, is its value found in the fact that it gives us an environment of increasing efficiency in which we can progressively challenge strength, endurance, range of motion?
Those are very different questions.
Replace that lunge with a hundred different variations and you havenāt necessarily improved the physiological outcome.
Unless your goal was simply to teach increasingly complicated choreography, youāve probably made it harder to recognise progress in the qualities you were trying to develop.
Strength.
Movement options.
Confidence.
Tolerance for load.
Skill.
The overall adaptation hasnāt become richer. The constraints have simply become more complicated.
This is one of the hidden costs of excessive variety.
Every unfamiliar exercise asks something NEW of your clients.
Understand the set-up.
Learn the choreography.
Coordinate the movement.
Remember the sequence.
All of that consumes attention.
Beginners are definitively shit compared to a master, thatās why we call them beginners.
Part of that is the consumption of attention by the task at hand. Until the efficiencies are found, absorbed through repetition and sequestered to the subconsciousā¦ we have not created an efficient, master of that movement (yet)
All the attention being used to keep up with the balance challenge of halo-ing a dumbbell while in a 90/90 lunge and pulsing the front leg (all of which does NOT translate into reduced falls risks or overall movement skill) could have been invested somewhere else.
Finding another centimetre of range.
Producing a little more force.
Attention that could have been invested in adaptation.
But WAIT thatās not all.
I think the greater cost is paid by the instructor.
Every new class plan asks something of us before it ever benefits our clients.
Explanation.
Demonstration.
Organisation.
Equipment changes.
Transitions.
Correction.
And above allā¦
Attention.
When we change what we teach, the first thing we have to master is delivering the programming itself.
We are beginners with that new programā¦ Remember what we said about beginners as compared to masters?
Only after we achieve some level of mastery of how the program we are delivering fits against a group can we master coaching individuals within that group.
Those are not the same skill.
One is remembering. The other is teaching.
Every instructor experiences the lag between the two. None of us escape it. Which means every significant programming change temporarily redirects our attention away from the very thing our clients need most.
The people standing in front of us.
I suspect this is one of the defining characteristics of expertise.
Experienced instructors donāt simplify because they know less. They simplify because theyāve become ruthless about where they spend their attention.
One of the quiet shifts that happens over years of teaching is that exercises stop being the thing youāre teaching. Instead, you begin teaching people THROUGH the exercises.
The movements become so familiar that they almost disappear into the background.
And steadily, by a combination of time, repetition, pattern recognition, reflection and attention to detailā¦
Space appears.
Now you notice who is rushing.
Who is avoiding load.
Who is ready for further refinement, who is not.
Who simply needs reassurance that today, this is enough.
I often think about musicians.
A beginner spends every ounce of concentration trying to play the correct notes. A master knows the piece so well that they begin playing in the spaces between the notes. Not because there are fewer notes. Because there is now space for expression.
Teaching feels the same.
The more familiar the programming becomes, the more space appears between the beats. And it is inside that space that great coaching lives.
This is why repetition is so powerful.
Not because repeated exercises are inherently better. Because repetition creates familiarity.
Familiarity creates space.
And space allows us to observe.
To coach.
To individualise.
To make decisions.
To actually teach.
This is the thinking behind what I call Strategic Randomisationā¦
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