3 Things That Happen When A Client is Advanced Too Quickly
When I was a newly certified I remember I wanted to share ALL that I knew with my clients. I was so excited about all of the great exercises that would be so beneficial and challenging for them.
I was often worried that my clients would get bored doing the same exercises so I would add in new exercises each time I saw them. I thought that by giving them more of an exposure the the method of Pilates that I was helping them learn the work faster. What I didn’t realize was that I couldn’t have been anymore mistaken.
By doing this, I wasn’t teaching the true system of Pilates or what was best for the body in front of me. I was thinking about how I could show this client how great Pilates was rather than teaching it to them for them to feel it and retain the work.
If you are a Pilates instructor reading this and this sounds familiar, you are not alone. Through working with many Pilates instructors in my career whether through management or through mentorship I see the same pattern over and over again. This pattern is that instructors advance their clients too soon before a true foundation of the work is laid down.
Here are some of the patterns that I began to notice when a client is advanced too quickly.
Clients lose interest in Pilates because they can’t really “feel” the work.
If you are advancing a client too quickly sometimes they can feel that they have “learned it all” already. These clients attribute Pilates to helping them gain strength and body awareness however, if they are advanced too quickly they never really “feel” the work. These clients may look like they are doing the exercises with ease, but often the client has a lot of compensations occurring because they are not using true foundational skills like they should. This is often why clients may feel that Pilates is “easy” even when doing the tough stuff!
My pro tip?
Scale back and work on the foundational skills and exercises. Look for dysfunctional movement patterns in the basic exercises and work on this first before adding more and more to their workout. These exercises are challenging to do correctly and they will work very hard to execute these skills correctly.
Teachers will have to constantly refine and re-correct over and over again
Since the client did not gain a strong foundation of the basic work there is a lot of room for error when attempting more complex and challenging exercises. This means more work for the instructor! The teacher will need to spend so much time correcting and constantly refining movement patterns that should have already been established during the more basic work. By establishing these foundational movement patterns right off the bat it will create less work for you as a teacher down the road. This will make your job easier and will help you build a bond with your clients that is lasting.
Clients won’t see the results that think they should in their body
By advancing a client too quickly and not setting these strong foundational movement patterns from the beginning the teacher skips over the process of truly assessing the faults in the basic fundamentals. Therefore, never addressing the weaknesses and imbalances in the body in front of them. By not addressing these weaknesses and imbalances in the more fundamental exercises, clients will not see the results in their bodies that they want. Their faulty movement patterns were never addressed. It is hard to see change in a body when there hasn’t been much work addressing the root problem in the first place.
I know you are probably asking to yourself, so how do you advance a client and not too quickly?
There are various ways to do this but first looking at the Key Elements of each exercise is a great step. You want to make sure that these are all on point before adding in more advanced exercises.
The Key Elements are the mini skills that are inherently in each exercise. By breaking down the exercise into bio-mechanical movement “skills” you will be able to notice a pattern in your clients. You will see what movement skills a client is proficient in or where there is a dysfunction and there is room for improvement. Having this information this will allow you to be able to progress your client in a smart way based off of the skills they need to work on rather than just adding in random advanced exercises.
The progression of clients in a systematic way is something that we pride ourselves on at Kinexology. We use Motor Learning and Control concepts that are evidenced based to construct our programming for each individual client. This way we are able to teach the client at whatever stage of learning they are in.
To learn more about how to progress clients utilizing a systematic approach check out the Kinexology Method Courses. All of our online courses are rooted in Motor Learning Research and will provide you with a system that you can easily apply to your teaching and will create lasting results for your clients.