The word “tactile” is defined as experiences or sensations received or felt by touch. In my opinion, using tactile cueing is one of the most powerful teaching tools in Pilates. When I am practicing Pilates, a tactile cue always help me understand where my body is in space, and the touch from the teacher helps connects me to the movement. As a teacher, I use tactile cueing daily with most of my students to help them find the best alignment possible and get the most out of the exercise.

If you would have asked me pre- pandemic, I would have told you that I could not practice or teach Pilates without tactile cues. Fast forward to present day, where virtual teaching and social distancing are here to stay, I knew it was important to not lose this technique and didn’t want to go without tactile cueing in my teacher’s toolbox. I adapted quickly and developed ways I could achieve similar results without touching and maintaining a safe distance from my students.

I would like to share helpful strategies I use daily to help connect my students to the movement and achieve similar results to tactile cueing.

Proprioception is simply defined as “knowledge of where your body is in space”. Our five senses help us navigate our external environment, and proprioception has been referred to by some as our “sixth sense”. Using tactile cues increases proprioception and improves your student’s awareness of their actual body position. Here are a couple of ways to increase proprioception without touching the student, and achieve results similar to touching:

• Take pictures and videos of your student performing the exercise to provide visual feedback and help them make adjustments. The great thing about this is you can do this in a virtual or in-person session. It is a great tool as they can refer back to it in their personal practice.
• Use mirrors to provide visual feedback. By looking in the mirror, your student is able to see their body position, connect to how it feels when they are in an incorrect alignment, and to then actively correct it themselves. This is key in aiding with muscle memory. This option is easy to implement in the studio or at home, as most students already have a mirror in their home.

Using props, instead of your hands or body to make corrections, provides feedback for the student similar to the feeling of tactile cues. Props can help students understand how to position their body correctly and give them direction to perform proper technique by providing a proprioceptive effect. Some of my preferred ways to utilize props:

• Gondola Pole or Short Box Dowel. Instead of using your hands, you can place the pole or dowel in the spot where they need to make an adjustment. For example, place it under their rib cage on Elephant to encourage the lift and scoop; or place it in a spot you want them to reach their feet towards. For example, Legs in Straps or Arabesque on the Reformer, and legs springs on the Cadillac. Think about how you usually tactile cue and the ideas on how to use the pole or dowel will flow freely to you. These are great tools for in-studio sessions and are perfect for maintaining social distance.
• Provide physical feedback by adding small equipment such as balls, yoga blocks, rollers and rings to the exercises. Using one of these props can increase awareness of body positioning and help your student maintain proper alignment. This is an easy option that works virtually or in-studio.
• Use a wall or a couch for exercises that require your student to reach for support and to find length. This helps provide feedback while stacking the spine up, pressing the back of the hips into it for stability while doing twisting exercises, (such as Saw or Spine twist,) and for exercises you reach through the heels to find length (like Roll up, Single Leg Circle, Rollover, and Neck Pull). Both the wall and couch provide physical feedback similar to tactile cueing and they are easily accessible at home or in-studio.

A “hands on” cueing approach helps our body feel where it is positioned and how to make adjustments to correct our alignment. As long as a person can understand where and how they need to move to improve the outcome of the exercise, it doesn’t matter if it is the teacher’s or the student’s hands, the result will be the same. Here are a couple manual cues I regularly use with my students:

• Cue them to place their hands on their pelvis when doing exercises that require pelvic stability. This gives them immediate feedback and helps them improve their ability to keep their pelvis still while moving other parts of their body.
• Direct them to use their hands for pelvic positioning. Often times we are not self-aware if our pelvis is crooked or out of place. Coaching students to use their hands to feel the space between their lowest rib and top of the hip on each side, or the space between their back and the mat, will help them understand when they need to make adjustments.
• Hands on the ribcage while twisting will help them keep the ribcage level and connected while performing exercises that require twisting. It also helps with understanding their own breathing.

These versatile tools can be easily added to your teacher’s toolbox and will provide additional awareness of body positioning for your students, improving their connection with their own bodies. Hopefully tactile cueing will return someday, but for now, these strategies do the trick!

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The post Tactile Cueing in Pilates: Three Touchless Strategies to Achieve Similar Outcomes first appeared on Pilates Method Alliance.

You have received the “ok” from local health officials to re-open your Pilates studio. So, what are your next steps? In the past few months you have transitioned to a virtual studio and expanded your “tech” savvy to build your business. During this time, my hope is that you have continued communicating with your clients, whether by phone, email, or social media, as this will help with transitioning them to return to your studio.

Here is a question for you: have you really laid the foundation for clients to return to your studio? Have you called them to see how they are doing, or if they needed anything that you and team could provide? Were your communications about maintaining a healthy lifestyle, including mental health, during this time? If you answered “yes” – congratulations! Doing this kind of work is challenging especially when you are not even sure if you will be able to open or maintain a brick and mortar business, but it shows good will and compassion.

When communicating with your clients, do you put yourself in their shoes? What would you like to know? It is all about building a different kind of trust. Yes, they trusted you with their bodies, but now they need to trust you on a new level.

Here are some ideas to communicate to clients:

• • • Phone Calls: call me “old fashioned” but a phone call goes a long way. What to say? “Hi, this is xxxx from XYZ Studio, I’m calling to see how you’re doing.” The conversation will evolve from there. It can let you know their concerns and how to work toward addressing them. Texting is also a good alternative, or using Push Notifications.
    • Surveys: Client surveys are valuable to let you know what clients are thinking while providing anonymity. Questions can include:

  o Are they ready to return to the studio?

• o How are they doing?

• o Do they miss their Pilates sessions?

• o How do they feel from 1 – 10?

           o Have they worked out during this time?

• Video: Create video for emails and social media explaining your cleaning protocols and what you are doing to ensure a safe environment.

Remember communication is key. Even if you feel that you are overdoing it. Keep the lines of communication open.

Keep in mind that some clients may not be ready to return. Others may feel that working out from home in a virtual environment is best for them. It is important that you explain all the ways you are making sure that they can return to a safe environment, such as: masks, cleaning products and frequent cleaning, and staggering the schedule to reduce the number of clients in the common areas. Any and all protocols you are taking to keep them and your staff healthy should be communicated continually and clearly.

Even if you do all of the above, Pilates is not cheap. You may need to consider different pricing options in these times of economic uncertainty.

Do you want to analyze your financials by the numbers, or revenue? Here is a simple equation as a starting point. Calculate dollars per square foot per minute of time. In other words, find out how much you’ll make given your adjusted capacity, per minute/hour of time. Compare that to your overhead to determine what you’ll need on your schedule to be profitable. Doing this exercise will help you evaluate current pricing numbers and how to schedule for profitability.

The process of clients returning to the studio is going to be a slow one. Encourage your clients to continue doing what is best for them. As a studio owner, you will probably continue using a Hybrid Business Model.

Be confident in your policies as you are confident in your teaching and your clients will have confidence and trust in you.

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The post Getting Clients Back to the Studio first appeared on Pilates Method Alliance.

This bill would provide 30 billion dollars of relief funds to fitness studios and facilities between now and December 31, 2020. If you are an exercise professional or health coach who owns a health club or fitness studio, you may be able to benefit from this bill.  Some key facts to understand about this bill:

• Grant funds would be awarded to health club and fitness studio owners and would be capped at actual business losses up to 10 percent of the previous year’s revenue or 10 million dollars (whichever is less).
• Priority will be given to women, veterans and minority-owned businesses during the first 14-days of the grant application window.

Grant funds can be used for:

• Payroll costs;
• Payments of principal or interest on any mortgage obligation;
• Rent payments, including rent under a lease agreement;
• Utilities;
• Maintenance, including construction or reconfiguration to accommodate social distancing requirements;
• Supplies, including protective equipment and cleaning materials;
• Debt obligations to suppliers that were incurred before the covered period;
• Any other expenses that the Secretary of the Treasury determines to be essential to maintaining the eligible entity.

This legislation would establish a Health Club Recovery Fund. If this legislation moves forward it will likely be included in a larger COVID-19 relief (stimulus) package. We do not know at this time if it will go any further, but we are monitoring the legislation’s progress and we will communicate further if and when there are updates.

If the bill is not passed by this 116th Congress which ends on January 3, 2021, it will have to be re-introduced by the next Congress (117th) and follow the same process as described above.

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The post Health and Fitness Recovery Act of 2020 (H.R. 8485) first appeared on Pilates Method Alliance.