Speed, Tempo, & Flow in Pilates

What are the benefits of having your clients move slowly when you teach Pilates? Are there benefits to encouraging them to move faster? Tune in to this week's episode to learn more about speed, tempo, and embodying the Pilates principle of flow in the exercises.

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Show Notes:

My favorite research article: Enhanced Therapeutic Alliance Modulates Pain Intensity and Muscle Pain Sensitivity in Patients With Chronic Low Back Pain: An Experimental Controlled Study by Fuentes et al.  

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Episode Music:

Tracks: Tobu - Good Times, Tobu & Itro - Sunburst 
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Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to Pilates Teachers' Manual, your guide to becoming a great Pilates teacher. I'm Olivia, and I'll be your host. Join the conversation and the Pilates community on Instagram at @pilatesteachersmanual and visit buymeacoffee.com/OliviaPodcasts to support the show. Today's chapter starts now.

[00:00:55] Hello. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. [00:01:00] Today we will be exploring the component of speed in our Pilates practice. We'll look at the pros and cons of moving slowly and quickly. We'll look at how speed relates to the Pilates principle of flow, how we learn things and how speed factors into where we are in the

[00:01:24] overall proficiency of a movement. And as always coming back to what our goal is for our Pilates practice and how speed might factor in to that. 

[00:01:37] So what is speed? Speed is the rate at which we are moving, how quickly or slowly we are doing something. And every exercise in Pilates has a speed component, kind of an internal tempo to it.

[00:01:55] If there wasn't a speed component in the exercise, we would be [00:02:00] still and Pilates is a movement practice. So we are going to be at some rate, and that is our speed. 

[00:02:08] There are many ways to approach the Pilates exercises, many ways to approach Pilates in general, and a common way that our Pilates journey starts, how a lot of us are introduced to Pilates is by moving in a smaller range of movement, often in a slower and more controlled way that the emphasis is on the control and the, uh, slow, methodical execution of a movement.

[00:02:40] So that might be where a lot of us start in our Pilates practice, but is moving slower better? Let's talk about it. Let's see. 

[00:02:48] It is great when you're learning something to move slowly. We have to learn how to walk before we can run. We have to understand how to do something or even what [00:03:00] we're doing before we can do anything quickly.

[00:03:04] And that goes for literally learning all things, whether it's a musical instrument or a Pilates exercise or, uh, learning a language. 

[00:03:13] Moving slowly can be a good thing. It can increase the challenge of an exercise because the slower we move, the more time under tension we have for our muscles. So imagine doing a pushup at a regular speed, you're lowering down, you're pressing back up. If we were to move slowly, maybe it takes 10 seconds to bend our elbows when we lower ourselves down, and it takes 10 seconds to straighten our arms again. That's obviously more time under tension for the muscles involved in that movement. And that's clearly more difficult than moving at a regular speed. Not even quickly, just like a regular speed pushup. 

[00:03:55] And because it's more difficult to do them slowly, it doesn't [00:04:00] mean that we should only do them slowly or that we should only do them quickly. It's just, this is what happens when we move slower. We're under tension for longer. 

[00:04:09] As I mentioned, slow is great when you're learning something

[00:04:14] or when you're changing the choreography slightly in a way that's adding challenge, you want to go slowly so that you can figure it out. Like, what are we going to do here? How are we going to do this before you add in an increase in speed? So a lot of us start moving slowly when we do Pilates. Do we want to move slowly when we do Pilates forever?

[00:04:39] If we move very slowly, we're actually hindering our ability to embody the Pilates principle of flow. Part of flow, this graceful coordinated effort of our body to execute a piece of choreography is being able to [00:05:00] execute that choreography smoothly. and things get smooth when you pick up a little bit of speed.

[00:05:07] It doesn't have to be super fast, but we start putting things together. It's not little baby steps or little stop and starts. It's about the continuous movement and that controlled, graceful execution of that movement. So it doesn't mean that we're moving so fast that we're losing control, but we're also not moving so slowly that we are inhibiting the flow either. Like what is this sweet spot we're talking about? 

[00:05:40] Because moving slowly also has detriments that you may not have thought of. Like our time is an element. Like it might be more time under tension to do something slowly, but the slower you perform each exercise, the fewer exercises you're able to do. So [00:06:00] sure, maybe rolling up and rolling down to a 10 count or a 20 count or a million count, whatever is going to be difficult and it also is just going to take up more time, which is going to eat up time that we could be doing other things, or maybe um, what we can fit into a class or what we could fit into a workout for ourselves. 

[00:06:22] I've talked about this, you know, spot that is not a set in stone spot, but I think for everyone where moving artificially slowly is kind of slowing us down because Pilates exercises have a little bit of a tempo built into them. Like think of the hundred you're breathing slowly, but you're pumping your arms quickly or even something like the roll up or crab or adding a mountain climber in when you're doing a plank or you're doing pikes on the chair. Like the fact that we move a little bit faster for some parts of movements is like interesting and engaging and challenging in its own right.

[00:06:59] [00:07:00] And I think if we choose to do every exercise at a same slow speed, we miss out on some of the pros of moving at a faster tempo. This isn't to say that moving faster is better, because there is definitely a speed accuracy trade off and there's other pros and cons to moving quickly. So coming up after the break, we'll dive into that.

[00:07:30] Hi there. I hope you're enjoying today's chapter so far. There's great stuff coming up after the break too. Be sure to subscribe wherever you're listening and visit buymeacoffee.com/OliviaPodcasts to support the show there. You can make a one time donation or become a member for as little as $5 a month. Membership comes with some awesome perks, including a shout out in the next episode, a monthly newsletter, a monthly zoom call with me and more. You can also visit [00:08:00] links.OliviaBioni.com/affiliates to check out some sweet deals on products I use and love. Now back to the show.

[00:08:27] As always, a caveat. Speed is a spectrum and I don't want you to think that when I say moving quickly, you think it's moving recklessly or moving without control because there is fast and then there's, you know, uncontrollably fast. We're obviously not trying to do that. And there is a trade off that we experience that the faster we do something, the less accurate we can be as we do it.

[00:08:56] But is accuracy [00:09:00] the highest goal of Pilates? I don't know, but it is just a thing that happens that the faster you go, the less accurate you are. Um, but going faster doesn't mean being rushed, right? 

[00:09:15] So I like to think of Pilates exercises as a sentence. I'm learning to speak Korean, and this is an analogy that makes sense in my brain and my experience as I'm learning a language as well as a movement language like Pilates.

[00:09:32] So when you first learn a language, whether it's your first language or a second language, you start learning sounds and like, what sounds do letters make? What sounds do characters make? And then you start learning words and you start building a vocabulary of words, which are a bunch of sounds put together. And then you start putting those words together to express ideas like a sentence, where you aren't sounding out every character in the sentence. You're [00:10:00] putting it together in a way that flows, that allows you to express yourself at a rate that people are also able to comprehend it. Oh my gosh. I just had the thought.

[00:10:10] Remember when you used to add numbers or you'd have to click numbers on the phone, like enter this number and you'd have to enter them fast enough that the computer didn't cut them off. Like it had to recognize that you were typing all of these numbers together, but if you typed them too slowly, it would like lose it and you would get cut off and kicked off the phone. Is that aging myself? Um, but it's the same thing. Like there has to be some flow to the sentence and a complex Pilates exercise is just like that. 

[00:10:45] You can't pause in the middle of it. You have to move through it. Like you have to put all of it together so something like back rowing where there's multiple steps or front splits or coordination on the reformer or control [00:11:00] balance or crab or boomerang on the mat, teaser, wherever you're doing teaser, like there's so much that has to happen nearly simultaneously to make that exercise happen. You can't just do little pieces of it. It has to happen together or it doesn't happen at all. 

[00:11:17] That doesn't mean that as you're learning it, you don't learn the pieces. Like teaser on the reformer is a great one because you have to think about lifting your legs. You have to think about pushing through the spring resistance and the straps. You have to think about doing a roll up while you're lifting your legs, and you can practice all of those pieces, certainly, but to do teaser, you have to do all of those things together at the same time, nearly. And once you learn how things go together, not saying that there isn't value in breaking things down again, but there's also a point that when you know how things go together, when you've put in the work and you've learned the exercise that you can just do it all together. You don't [00:12:00] have to do the little breakdown anymore once you get past the breakdown. 

[00:12:04] I think this happens with our clients as well, especially clients who've been with us for quite a while. We've broken it down for them. They've understood it, they've learned it, they've mastered it and now they can put it all together. Like we don't need to do every single step once we've figured out how it goes. Just like if you're teaching beginners on the reformer and you're queuing feet and straps, and you're got to get people to get their straps on the feet. You might be very detailed when you're teaching someone how to do it.

[00:12:38] Feet on the foot bar, reach back next to your ears, take the straps off of the pegs, hold them in your hands, press the carriage out with your feet, bend your right knee into your chest, put the long loop over your right foot. Keep tension in that right strap as you bend your left knee into your chest, put the left strap on your left foot.

[00:12:54] Like you would break it down into very, very specific directions, [00:13:00] but eventually you should be able to tell people to put their feet in the long straps and they know how to do that. They don't need that walkthrough again. 

[00:13:10] Moving quickly also brings some challenges, which again, not good or bad, but they do bring challenges like you can do more in each class, which means you're doing more in each class, um, which can challenge your endurance and your stamina. Moving faster, makes your heart work harder. So there's some cardiovascular benefits as well. Moving faster can challenge your control. Think about moving faster when you do sidekick on the mat. Controlling the momentum of your leg is difficult, especially when it's moving quickly. That can challenge your muscle memory when you move faster and your understanding of the exercise to have to put everything together, to not break it down, to just go.

[00:13:56] Baby steps are helpful, but I don't think baby steps are going to be [00:14:00] the end game for either our personal practice or when we're teaching Pilates to our clients. And I don't mean this to be a hot take, but I do think that tempo is something that can be really fun to play with. And if we restrain ourselves and only move slowly, we miss out on a lot of fun things that we can do moving quickly.

[00:14:19] Also, I totally recognize that I might be projecting here because I do have a pet peeve in my yoga practice where teachers will spend a lot of time breaking down the movement of a vinyasa, and a vinyasa in this context is like in a flow class when you do the yoga push up, and then you go to upward facing dog, which is a backbend like swan, and then downward facing dog, which looks kind of like elephant, but with a flat back.

[00:14:43] It happens on a breath and a half, which is faster than most teachers can talk through it. Like, it is a very smooth movement, um, that happens really quickly. And when instructors and we're instructors, like when we slow [00:15:00] down our clients to the point where they can't enjoy the flow because we're moving slowly, I think that's kind of a downer. I think we're missing out on something there. Like I've done thousands and thousands of vinyasas in my life and I don't need to walk through how to do it anymore. I just want to do it and then do the next thing. So when you're working with clients who maybe have done a Pilates exercise a million and a half times, because they've been working with you for years and years and years, let them do the thing that they know how to do is my advice, and use tempo as a tool, use moving slowly as a way to learn something new, but don't villainize moving quickly because when people know how to do a thing, let them do it.

[00:15:52] And I don't think that you should only move quickly or that quickly is the goal. And I don't think you should only move slowly or that slowly is the goal, [00:16:00] but I think there is something to be offered in doing every exercise each way. If you can especially share with your clients, the concept, like, why are we moving at the speed we're moving? Why are we doing this fast today? Why are we doing this slower? What's going on? I think there's great things about both and lots to explore. 

[00:16:20] I think it always comes down to what your goal is for Pilates. And for me, I teach in a way that hopefully makes my teaching obsolete in the long run. I want my clients to internalize and understand the choreography and move at the right pace for them without my micromanagement of their movements and my cues and my corrections slowing them down.

[00:16:50] I want my clients to know the exercise and be able to execute the exercise for themselves. And my job as a teacher, the way I see it, is to [00:17:00] offer refinements, offer new challenges and offer little changes to things to help them engage with the exercises more, but never to hold them back. I want to talk less over time, so when I'm teaching my clients, I want them to know more and kind of fill in blanks for themselves. Not because I'm being mysterious but just because they know, and give my clients more autonomy to make those choices for themselves. This happens a lot in a private training context when you're doing one on one sessions. With clients in group classes, if you're teaching a beginner class, like there isn't really an evolution, like they would just take a more advanced class where you would cue slightly differently. But I think for the clients I work with one on one, this is a goal that I have for them. And that might be also why I approach speed and flow and Pilates the way I do.[00:18:00] 

[00:18:01] Speed is an interesting variable that we can play with and exercises, whether it's super slow molasses hundreds, or whether it's the fastest teaser, like a V up style teaser, that we want to do. And I think it's something that especially the more you teach something you can really play with to keep Pilates interesting for yourself. So whether you choose to move slowly or quickly, there's always something to gain. 

[00:18:30] Huge thank you to all my supporters on Buy Me a Coffee. Thank you so much for supporting this project and these podcasts. I look forward to our September coffee chats. Have a great couple of weeks, and I'll talk to you again soon.

[00:18:53] Thanks for listening to this week's chapter of Pilates Teachers' Manual, your guide to becoming a great Pilates teacher. [00:19:00] Check out the podcast Instagram at @pilatesteachersmanual, and be sure to subscribe wherever you listen. For more Pilates goodness, check out my other podcast, Pilates Students' Manual, available everywhere you listen to podcasts. The adventure continues. Until next time.