How To Give Hands On Corrections

This week's episode looks at the various ways we can offer corrections to our clients during group classes. We explore the importance of consent, the purpose of a hands on correction, and how you may be able to achieve the same outcome with a hands off correction. Tune in!

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Transcript

[00:00:08] Hello. Hello everybody. Welcome and welcome back to Pilates Teachers' Manual, your guide to Becoming a Great Pilates teacher. I'm Olivia. You'll get the latest updates when you join my community at buymeacoffee.com/OliviaPodcasts or follow along on Instagram at @PilatesTeachersManual.

[00:00:25] Pilates Teachers' Manual. The book is available now. You can purchase it and other podcast merch at shop. OliviaBioni.com. You can also purchase my book on Amazon in Kindle format, but it is more expensive because of the cut Amazon takes. But there's an easy workaround. You can convert any file, including my book and either epub or P format to a Kindle friendly file by going to amazon.com/sendtoKindle.

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[00:01:11] Today's episode is all about hands on and hands off assists because hands-on corrections especially can be a really big part of Pilates and it can be intimidating as a teacher to get comfortable with giving them and also intimidating as a student to know what to expect when it comes to hands-on corrections. So today's episode is gonna look at strategies that as a teacher to help you give really awesome corrections to your clients, and also make sure that your clients are 100% on board.

[00:01:44] Often teachers will say kind of cryptically, that if you just look at the person in front of you, then the correction you need to give will reveal itself. And while that is true and you can train your eye to see those corrections As [00:02:00] kind of a skill, but when you're just getting started giving hands-on adjustments, it can seem kind of scary and vague and strange.It definitely gets less scary the more you practice doing it. But how do you start? 

[00:02:15] You always need to get permission from your clients before you touch them. The people in our class are autonomous adults, and we need their consent before we are touching them in any way. Even if you think that your clients want or expect a hands-on correction, you don't know until you ask them.You always need to ask them for their consent. 

[00:02:39] You can bake asking for consent into what you say at the start of every class. Like I like to start my classes with some version of hello, introducing myself, introducing the class they're taking, asking about injuries and letting them know that I do offer hands-on corrections.

[00:02:54] And when I say it, and I know it sounds really silly out of context, but just so that you have an example, I always [00:03:00] say something like, Hey, howdy. Hey party people. What's hip hop happening? I'm Olivia and I'm gonna be taking you through your reformer flow 1.0 class today. If there's anything new, interesting or exciting going on in your body and you wanna tell me about it, give me a wave.I'll check in with you individually. I do offer hands-on assists while I am teaching, if you would prefer not to be touched, please rest a hand on your belly during footwork and I'll respect your space. 

[00:03:24] So that's kind of what my intro speech is like. I may not say hand on belly, I might say, give me a little wave.Or I might say, I'll ask before I give a hands on assist. And you are always welcome to say, no thank you. I will always respect your space. Something along those lines. 

[00:03:41] And even before that little introduction speech that I give at the start of every group class I teach even before the class starts, I might introduce myself to new people as they're coming in before the class starts, and I usually say something along the lines of, "I offer [00:04:00] touch cues when I teach. Is it okay if I tap your shoulder or scoot your knee a little bit during class?" And then if they say, yes, I follow up with, "thank you so much. I'll always ask before I give a touch cue, and you can always say, no thanks." 

[00:04:13] I like to give that example of tapping a shoulder or scooting a knee because new people to Pilates especially may not know what a touch cue entails, like touch cues or hands-on assists or hands-on adjustments. All of these interchangeable terms are really big and emphasized in some schools of Pilates, and you may go into a class and assume that the teacher is going to touch you.

[00:04:37] I have colleagues from the dance world who share that teachers in dance will often give touch cues and that that's very normal. But whether or not it's the norm, whether or not the client expects it. It doesn't really matter. if you have someone and you don't know them and you don't know if they wanna touch cue, you have to ask them if it's okay to touch them.You just do. [00:05:00] 

[00:05:00] I also ask clients before I give a touch cue. Like I said, I'll tell them and I also tell them what I am going to do, like what that touch is going to be. Because there's a really big spectrum of what a hands-on cue could be, right? It could be a little tap on the shoulder, it could be a hand on the lower belly.And a person who says, yeah, you can tap my shoulder, may not want a hand on their lower belly. And we don't know if they're okay with it. So we ask them. 

[00:05:27] And I know it takes time and it also is a skill to Ask before you touch, say what you're going to do before you touch, and then wait for that confirmation before you touch.But in my opinion, it's worth it to ensure that you're offering something to your clients that they want, that they appreciate and that they're on board with it.

[00:05:48] I also think that not all hands-on cues are the same. And what I mean by that is there's a type of hands-on queuing that I don't personally love, [00:06:00] where the teacher is pushing me into a shape or pulling me into position in a way that I'm not doing the exercise. It's their effort that's putting me in that shape, and I kind of feel like a puppet that's being operated by an instructor. 

[00:06:16] And I also come from a yoga background, and that is another space where instructors can give hands-on assist to help you get into a shape. And I also know people who were injured by instructors who pushed them into a place that their body really didn't wanna go.

[00:06:31] In my opinion, touch cues should help the client find the shape for themselves, help them find the feeling, help them find the movement, the choreography for themselves, but not do the exercise for them. I want any hands-on assist that I give to enhance and refine what they're doing, but not do the exercise for them.

[00:06:53] So if you're hoping to add touch cues into your classes or get more comfortable with it, I recommend setting a little goal for [00:07:00] yourself starting with maybe three touch cues in your class naturally. Eventually, you wanna be able to give at least one touch cue and that individual attention to everyone in your class and ideally evenly.You're not just correcting one person over and over again. That can make them feel really self-conscious. But if you start with three and say, okay, in this class I'm gonna give three touch cues, you can kind of build from there. You'll feel successful when you do them, and then you'll feel more empowered to do them more, if that's what you'd like.

[00:07:33] And you might even start with what I call easy hands-on cues. And by easy, I mean less invasive, easier to see, and easier to give. So adjusting someone's foot in footwork if they're, if you're cuing parallel and they're in a turnout, you know, bringing their feet back into that parallel position.Or sometimes I use my hands as a wall when I'm asking them to flex their feet and I'll say, "Hey, can you [00:08:00] press the ball of your foot into my hand and keep your foot touching my hand as you press out and as you come in," to feel what toes over heels feels like when they're on the heels. It could be something like the little tug on the heels that teachers give in tendon stretch, where you get that really deep stretch or in running or prancing where you pull one heel to just give them a little bit more leverage into that stretch.

[00:08:25] So things like that. Things like tapping shoulders in swan press. If they're doing swan on the long box with their hands on the foot bar, giving a shoulder tap. There's a bunch of things with knees and lunges that you can kind of help them, the client with the positioning there. Those kind of things where it seems like a really clear opportunity to give a touch cue. Start with those and then you can kind of build from there. 

[00:08:52] I also recognize that hands on cuing may not be your jam, and that is also okay. It is not a [00:09:00] requirement to give hands on cues. I think individual attention, whether it's verbal or physical, is important, and that's what our clients are really looking for. They're looking for us to look at them and give them refinements, whether it's with a touch or whether it's with words. 

[00:09:19] So I also wanna share the art of the hands-off assist because I love a hands-off assist. A verbal correction is a hands-off assist. You didn't touch the person, but you gave them a task and a refinement and let them do it for themselves. I think verbal corrections and hands-off corrections are just as valuable as hands-on corrections. Because the correction is what's valuable. How you deliver it is just like the medium. So just like we might verbally cue a muscle name, we might use imagery in our cues, we might connect clients to their breath because different [00:10:00] people in the class understand our cues differently. A touch cue and a non-touch cue is just another type of feedback that we can give our clients to help them understand or refine their movements. 

[00:10:14] I like hands off cues because they're driven by the client and t he client can decide whether or not they touch you. So I like that the client is in control.

[00:10:27] So a hands-off cue turns your hand, you, the teacher's hand, into an external target for your client. So an example of that would be if someone was doing a plank and they were kind of collapsing in their chest, their chest was sinking towards the mat, I might take my hand. And place it above the client's upper back and ask them to press the mat away and push their upper back into my hand so I'm not touching them. They're coming to me. 

[00:10:58] I might use my [00:11:00] hand as a target for a client in feet and straps. If they're doing frog kicks, their heels are together, toes are apart, bending their knees towards their shoulders and then pushing their legs long towards the foot bar. I might put my hand at where the 45 is and say, to reach to my hands.

[00:11:16] Like I said, I like being the wall for clients when they're on their heels and their feet are flexed in footwork so they can feel what toes over heels feels like when their knees are bent and when their legs are straight. I might do a hands off cue, like if you were seated on the long box doing arm series, you're doing like a bicep, curl, tricep press kind of thing, especially in bicep curls. We see that clients like to lean back as they lift their arms to like get better leverage, but it takes the work outta the bicep. So I might ask the client to first stack their shoulder over their hips, and then I would use maybe my forearm as a boundary that say, "okay, I don't want you to [00:12:00] touch my forearm. I don't want you to lean back at all. Can you stay seated tall and now do your bicep curl?" And then they'll bump into your forearm if they start to lean back. So it's hands off, but they're the one who's touching me, if that makes sense.

[00:12:13] Now every movement in Pilates, every exercise lends itself to different corrections. And sometimes what you see, and also the corrections that you kind of have in your toolbox will impact how you give a correction. 

[00:12:29] Let me give you an example of an exercise and something that you want to correct, and then how you might verbally correct them, how you might do a hands-on correction, and then how you could do a hands off correction. In this example, let's say a client is doing a lunge on the reformer facing the foot bar, their outside foot is on the ground next to the foot bar. Their inside foot is against the shoulder block and their knee is lifted off of the carriage. When they press the carriage out to lunge, you notice that they're keeping [00:13:00] their standing leg, the foot that's on the floor, that leg is straightening as they're lunging. So it's looking a little bit more front split and a little bit less lunge. 

[00:13:11] In this example, we want them to bend into their front knee and they are not bending into their front knee, like we want it to stay over their ankle or we want it to go towards their toes, something like that. And they're not doing it.

[00:13:23] So how would we correct it? Verbally, you could say, and often I'll say to the group, you know, can you bend your standing leg, knee even deeper as you push the carriage out? I may also give them an individual verbal correction, and say, Hey friend, could you bend your knee even more as you press the carriage out? Can you reach that knee towards the foot bar, reach it towards the center aisle, whatever. But I could say it directly to that person verbally.

[00:13:49] I could give them a hands-on correction here. Like I could stand beside the client when the carriage is closed at like the top of the lunge movement and take [00:14:00] my index finger or my hand behind their knee so that as they press the carriage out. I'm pushing their knee so that it stays bent as they're sending the carriage out kind of thing.

[00:14:14] You could also do the opposite of that and kind of pull their knee if you were standing in front of them, that would also work. So then they get that hands-on correction like you want their knee to go this place, but then you could also do a hands-off correction.

[00:14:29] So instead of pushing or pulling their knee. You could use your hand again as that external target and say, "Hey, as you lunge, can you reach your knee to my hand?" Or "Can you keep your knee touching my hand?" Or "Can you come towards my hand as you lunge?" Something like that. 

[00:14:48] Each of those corrections are great. They all work, and you may notice that some people pick up verbal cues really quickly. You may notice that some people really respond to that [00:15:00] hands-on correction, and you may notice that people really like the hands-off correction. You may find that you as an instructor, like offering one type of correction more than another, and again, totally valid, totally fine. Many roads lead to Rome, as they say.

[00:15:15] I know that even though I gave an example, it can be difficult to visualize what all is happening and what all the moving parts are in an exercise, and then what you're seeing and then how you could correct it. So I'm actually in the process of developing a workshop about this into the art of giving corrections verbally with a hands on cue, with a hands off cue, so that when you see common things in your classes, you can feel really confident and feel like you have a lot of ways to approach it. I'm gonna be submitting that workshop to the National Pilates Certification Program so that I can also offer CECs for this workshop, and I hope to run it in September and October.

[00:15:58] But more to come on that, that's an [00:16:00] early stages, but just as I was brainstorming for this episode, I thought that this would be a really great thing to do a even deeper dive into.

[00:16:09] Corrections are part of Pilates, whether they're hands on, hands off, verbal, nonverbal. One of the things that we offer as an instructor is our eyes and the fact that we are outside of the person who's doing the exercise and we can see what they're doing and give them some feedback about what they're doing so that they can get better at what they're doing or they can better understand what we're asking them to do. Giving corrections is part of it. How you give corrections, lots of ways to do that. Most important thing is consent and then everything else is negotiable like everything else is, depending on the movement, depending on the exercise. Not all corrections fit all exercises and that's okay.

[00:16:55] Huge thank you to all my supporters on Buy Me A Coffee, including the newest member. [00:17:00] Jessica, I'm really looking forward to connecting for a coffee chat. I hope you have a great week and I will talk to you again soon.