Pilates

Do You Oov?

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Sandy Vojik has been a physical therapist for 2 years and completed her Polestar Pilates training 3 years ago. She is a native of Riverside, IL but currently resides in Salt Lake City, working alongside Amy Broekemeier at Pinnacle Performance. She loves creating positive physical and mental changes in her patients by tailoring her evaluation and treatment techniques to meet every clients’ unique needs. Sandy has found the Oov to benefit clients presenting with impairments ranging from neurologic deficits to athletic injuries. For upcoming Oov courses, click here.

Most of you have probably noticed or at least heard about our newest piece of Pilates equipment, the Oov.  All of us were rather skeptical going into the course.

We thought, “do we really need to learn how to use another piece of equipment?”

I thought I had already allocated enough money and sacrificed weekends towards continuing education but with some encouragement from my peers I, as well as my colleagues decided to embark on the Oov journey.  I’m sure glad I did! The following highlights just some of the benefits and features that the Oov provides. 

Pilates instructor using the Oov

A CRADLE FOR YOUR SPINE

This is the analogy I have been using to describe the Oov. The shape of the Oov is engineered to match the natural spinal curves of your body. Unlike a foam roller, the Oov is made from compliant foam so it is comfortable. Once a client is positioned on the Oov, they are essentially in what we refer to as a “neutral spine.” This is wonderful for us as manual therapists and movement instructors because we no longer need to “clog” the neurologic system with cues about where your spine and pelvis are in space.

Pilates Teacher working with a client on the Oov

BALANCING YOUR STABILITY

The Oov is shaped to be an unstable surface. So while it “cradles your spine,” it also challenges your rotational stability, which is functional for many of our daily activities. Since the shape and material of the Oov keeps the spine in an elongated, neutral position, we can easily train clients out of dysfunctional, habitual movement patterns. More importantly, clients gain new awareness of these patterns, which is a challenging aspect of our treatment paradigms. 

FREE YOUR SHOULDERS

Unfortunately, our modern world promotes unhealthy posture. Freedom and coordination of the muscles around the neck and shoulders are important for a healthy, functioning spine. The Oov was designed to allow the shoulder blades to move freely while laying on it. We can train a client’s head, neck and shoulder alignment while challenging the neuromuscular system to recognize a new, healthy position of the spine. 

The Oov

HOME EXERCISE

Teaching clients how to perform exercises at home can be tricky. One quandary I experience as a physical therapist is when patients report not doing their home exercise program because they were not sure if they were doing it correctly. This is where the Oov comes in handy. Many of the “core strengthening” exercises we prescribe can be performed on the Oov without proprioceptive confusion. Purchasing an Oov for home is an affordable option for physical therapy and fitness clients alike. 

(How to make sure Your Clients do their Homework)

The preceding points only scratch the surface of what the Oov offers, We are constantly finding and creating new ways to use it. We would recommend trying it for yourself!

How Imagery Changes the Way We Move

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Written by Christi Idavoy – Polestar Educator and Polestar Pilates Biscayne Studio Owner  “All that we are is the result of what we have thought.  The mind is everything, what we think, we become.” – Buddha Recalling a happy moment in your life can bring feelings of joy, as reminiscing on a challenging period in your life can bring feelings of pain or suffering.  You can smell something that makes you remember a moment, place or person from you past, while listening to music a song may bring back very intense memories!  Through our senses we experience thoughts that provoke both emotional and physical feelings.  At Polestar Pilates, we spend a lot of time observing what thought-provoking images we use while we help restore and improve movement. There are many schools of thought that have contributed to the field of imagery and what is called ‘Ideokinesis’.  This form of somatic training was first conceived by Mabel Todd in the 1930s and it refers to the use of visual and tactile feedback that is meant to guide students, either during static postures or physical movements.  Many have contributed to this body of work and along with the understanding of neuro-linguistic communication, we at Polestar have developed effective imagery and communication skills as a vehicle to improving movement. If you take a moment and reflect on how you and others physically react to feelings like fear and anger or happiness and love, it will not take long to notice that what we feel is directly reflected in how we hold ourselves physically. When we are afraid we tend to crouch down.  When we feel rage we tend to feel a rise in our body temperature and an accelerated heart beat and breathing pattern.  When in love we feel light and hold our heads up high.  We can use this increased awareness when we are guiding others through movement, especially when we are helping restoring movement after pain or injury, to bring about a positive experience. The thoughts that we hold while we are moving or teaching will make all the difference in how the nervous system responds.  It will also make us better able to communicate and find empathy with clients who are in pain or are having difficulty moving. As we become aware of how our emotions effect our posture and the functioning of our involuntary systems, like our respiratory and circulatory systems, we can really start to appreciate how important our choice of words are as movement teachers and healers. Visualizing the movement within the mind’s eye (either as movement within the body or in space), without any conscious muscular effort, primes neural pathways and reprograms unnecessary and unwanted muscular tension.  We allow our body’s unconscious intelligence to pave the way for the desired movement.  Brent Anderson often speaks about cueing the nervous system rather than the muscles, which makes complete sense when analyzing animals and children in nature, as the ancient yogis and our more contemporary Joseph Pilates did.  When you go about your day, when a child plays in the park, when an animal hunts for its’ prey, it does not solicit conscience muscle activity in order to perform its activities.  These activities in a natural environment occur unconsciously.  With this understanding, if our training is to be ‘functional’ and prepare us for real-life activities, we should train in a way that mimics and promotes what we will need in order to safely and efficiently perform our tasks, namely healthy unconscious movement coordination.  So how do we do this?  We rely heavily on meaningful imagery cues!
Christi Idavoy at Pilates Anytime
Photo credit: Pilates Anytime
“Physical practice combined with mental practice can lead to more improvement in motor performance and strength than either physical or mental practice alone.  Physical practice combined with mental practice can lead to more improvement in motor performance and strength than either physical or mental practice alone.” 1 If you regularly teach and take classes, and even if you tend to practice or work-out on your own, observe your thoughts and the feelings that arise and ask yourself if they are helping or hindering your performance.  Keep a journal on your experience and notice your transformation!

Pilates & Food: A Restorative Recipe

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Pilates & Food… These are 2 of My Favorite things As an owner of a Pilates Studio & a mom, there is not much time in the day to feed oneself. We all know how important feeding our body is; it works so hard teaching our clients, taking care of our family, and sneaking in some Pilates for ourselves in between sessions or after a long day. I used to be so against crock pots and I really didn’t know why, so I decided to explore it a bit… I remember hearing my very Italian New Jersey mother once say “Uck who uses a crockpot! Using one of those is not really cooking! So yeah, I guess that’s it, those words stuck in my head for years and years and I would not use one. The poor thing just sat there staring at me … until life got out of control and a baby joined the family. Alive with juicy veggies and amazing aromas, I now had a healthy and savory meal that was ready when I got home. This recipe is one of my favorites to come home to after a long day; it truly nourishes me from the inside out. The mix of coconut milk, garlic and ginger is just so delicious it will warm you up and make your mindful Pilates body feel great. My 10-month-old son is obsessed with the chicken, so it is a meal that every age can enjoy. It can become a go to for all busy wives, mommas, teachers, leaders and overall bad asses! Enjoying this recipe and a Restorative Pilates class is a perfect way to end the day. Recipe: TheKitchn – Whole Chicken in Coconut Milk – Slow Cooker! Why Restorative? Restorative movements in Pilates or any type of exercise are very important. They help us decompress and find our center. They allow us to focus on our breath, our mobility and our balance by slowing down and really feeling the movements. With restorative movement, you have time to think about how each movement feels in your muscles and in your bones. You become very aware if something feels tight or if it suddenly relaxes; ahhh, we love that feeling. One of the main reasons for this is because it is done at a slower pace.  I love restorative Pilates because it is great for assisting someone recovering from an injury, is a safe and effective class for active agers and pre and post natal women love it. While your crockpot is taking care of dinner, use these moves to take care of yourself. Shake off any holding patterns you may have picked up during the past few days. My go to restorative moves… 1. Diaphragmatic Breathing: Inhale and think about releasing your bottom and your pelvic floor muscles into the floor where you are comfortably sitting. Exhale and feel how the breath narrows your ribs and gently lifts your pelvic basket. 2. Foot Rollout: Grab a spiky ball, a tennis ball, a lacrosse ball or your child’s toy ball and roll out the bottom of your feet. You may find some sticky and painful spots – stay with that for a bit and then move the ball vigorously from toe to heel. Your feet work hard all day everyday. Show them some love and watch how it improves your posture! 3. Neck and Shoulder Release : Lie on your back with your legs long. Reach both arms up to the ceiling and inhale to reach your finger tips long towards the ceiling – feel how your shoulder blades gently separate and open your upper back. Exhale and and allow your shoulder blades to melt into the floor, narrowing towards each other – feel how this allows your collar bones to spread and your ribs to narrow.

To learn more about Joanna Cefaratti and Firehaus Pilates Click Here.

Unconscious Competence & Limitless Potential

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We are creatures of comfort and spend a great deal of our focus and effort to minimize possible discomfort. For example: cushioned shoes, central air conditioning and heating, heated steering wheels, cooled car seats, grocery delivery, etc. It’s fantastic that we have these innovations and conveniences built into our lives, but does it carry over into our physical fitness and mental expectations? – Kate Strozak, NCPT
In movement training sessions, our goals are to expand our movement capabilities whether that be in power, mobility, agility, or complexity. We want to respect our bodies when we receive signals of: “that’s enough,” “that was a little too much too soon,” or “this is causing damage.” The more we move and the more body awareness we cultivate, the better we can listen to these messages while continuing to progress. Early on, a coach or trainer can help a person to recognize these messages while challenging their capabilities. “The four stages of learning” is a model employed across many sectors including business, psychology, education, sports, and others.

This model was created by Noel Burch in 1970 and it includes:

  • Unconscious incompetence (we don’t know what we don’t know)
  • Conscious incompetence (we are aware of what we don’t know)
  • Conscious competence (we are aware and can do)
  • Unconscious competence (we do without thinking- a habit is born)
As a movement professional, do you help your clients get to the phase of unconscious competence? For many trainers, this could be an intimidating tactic because you might wonder what would happen to your business if all of your clients could do without you.

I have two suggestions:

1. Enable your clients to get to the phase of unconscious competence. 2. Help your clients embrace that their potential is limitless and that you are there as a resource. A few simple suggestions to help your clients phase into the state of unconscious competence include fostering exploration and creativity. Phrases might include: “what would happen if you tried…?” and “let’s explore…”
Using cuing judiciously is also helpful in empowering your clients. Do you find yourself having to repeatedly cue the same faulty movement patterns, for example, rib alignment?
If you find you are often repeating the same cues, it’s likely because the client hasn’t experienced what you are trying to convey or they don’t understand. Try changing the task or environment and see if they can execute whichever function you want them to accomplish. Embodying this principle can take time; it can decrease the pressure of feeling like you have to know everything, increase the collaborative nature of your work, and facilitate creativity from both the coach and the client.
Journeying through the limitless potential phase is a soul-satisfying experience that can result in unexpected laughs, plot twists, and spontaneous joy.
For example, the other day I was reviewing footage of a movement flow I did in a park and saw that I did one legged push ups in a complete state of ease and flow. I started laughing and almost crying! After a year of focused practice on mastering a pushup, I had never considered what my next step would be. Who knows what will evolve next, but I know that my own expectations can only limit what I’m capable of accomplishing. Being a resource to your client to help them explore movements that might be challenging now while pushing them further along is the role of a movement coach. Be open to surprises and be willing to explore both with yourself and with your clients.

Are you looking for some ways to take yourself out of your comfort zone?

Here are a few things I incorporate in my day-to-day life: • At the end of a shower, turn your water as cold as you can. Over time increase the duration of time you can tolerate the cold water. • Walk on rocks of variety of shapes, sizes, and smoothness. Your body will thank you! • Turn off the AC or heat in the car and open those windows! You might be do this for small periods of time, and please be safe if you’re living in places with extreme weather patterns. • Practice breathing exercises with sustained pauses. Buteyko breathing and Wim Hof are great resources for this work.

Kate Strozak, NCPT is a Polestar Pilates Educator and Content Contributor

The Journey Within: Movement as Meditation

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Whenever I hear someone say, “that’s not yoga”, I always chuckle inside because they remind me of an earlier version of myself. Yoga, Pilates and GYROTONIC® have become a sort of trinity for me. These mind body techniques have one main thing in common: they all ask you to be present. These practices guide the thinking part of ourselves inward into a space of focused attention that transcends time and space. When we are fully present there are no words, lineages or traditions, there is the lack of all that has been or will be, so that the here and now may reveal itself. The traditions of yoga, Pilates, Qi-Gong, etc are vehicles that transport our psyche out of the time space continuum into the present moment; the eternal now. Nowadays when I hear this type of comment of, ‘that’s not yoga’ or ‘that’s not Pilates’, or my favorite, ‘you teach Pilates like a yoga teacher,’ rather than defending why it is or isn’t a certain thing, I realize that we are all struggling to name and categorize the nameless, which is the experience of being whole and not separate from our source. Through the repetitive practice of visiting this internal space of awareness and communion with source energy, the illusion of separation begins to fall away. This practice of being in the now is like peeling an onion with an infinite center. There is no where to go, the whole point of the practice is just to peel the onion of the Self for the sake of simply being present. As we aspire to align with That which is ideal, optimal, correct and appropriate, we are reminded that we are in constant flux. What felt ‘correct’ one day may not feel that way the next. What was ‘correct’ for one body, may not be for the other. This is absolutely fascinating and humbling if we can let go of our desire to be ‘correct´. The ability to perceive our own physical, mental and emotional daily changes and to develop the sensitivity to see them in others requires the discipline of time. Teachers and practitioners of mind body disciplines hopefully live and teach based on personal sweat, tears and time spent in awareness, as opposed to time spent repeating ideas they have never experienced. As teachers we have the privilege of sharing and guiding others into this sublime experience of being through movement. When we are able to clearly communicate an experience of awareness to our students they, sometimes unknowingly, enter into this space of being here now and become inspired, excited, joyful and grateful… hence, the healing is occurring. As we grow in our practice, we become the practice itself and ideas like, ‘that’s not yoga’ become silly as we realize everything is yoga. Yoga literally means to yoke together, from the yuj, often defined as “to add”, “to join”, “to unite”, or “to attach.” As we cultivate the experience of being in the now, whether it be on a reformer, mat or airplane, we create unity within ourselves and the need to define what it is that makes us feel connected begins to fall away. The world becomes the yoga mat as we grow into the practice, and as we grow into the practice, it becomes us…and it never ends so you’re constantly being given opportunities for conscious change and living! Let’s co-conspire and co-create this summer at the Polestar Life Conference! Keynote speaker, Marilyn Schlitz’s address, “Bridging Consciousness, Science and Society” will explore the science behind subtle energies, bio fields, and mind body practices, so that we may learn to embrace our innate gifts of healing for ourselves, our relationships, and our world. Learn more from Polestar Educator Christi Idavoy by visiting her studio or following her online.

The Power of the Breath in Pilates

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When something is very natural it’s often compared to breathing; an implicit trust in an unconscious process.  17, 000 breaths a day is as natural as it comes. That’s why you’ll be surprised to know there are better breathing techniques than regular breath that Pilates encourages. We sat down with our Director of Curriculum, Shelly Power, to set the record straight on breathing for Pilates. There are many ways the breath is useful and integral to movement. Generally, how does proper breathing help Pilates? Proper breathing’ is such a funny expression – as if there are good and bad breathers. We joke that most ‘bad breathers’ are dead. Seriously though, the main thing to remember, is to breathe. Joseph Pilates is often quoted as saying ‘breathe in the air and out the air’. That is great advice. What Pilates brings is breath awareness and control. Students often ask me ‘what is the right way to breathe?’ ‘Should I be inhaling or exhaling?’ What I really want to say is, ‘yes’. At first breath, however, it’s most comfortable. As a teacher, I observe what comes natural and decide when I can use the breath in a different way to assist or challenge the student. Sometimes we use breathing to help the body move and sometimes we use it to help the body stay stable. And, sometimes we move to help us breathe. So, the breath really depends on what you want. There is a quote from Blandine Calais-Germain about spontaneity, “This, in some activities (even very complex ones) there may be a total lack of breath training because ‘only spontaneous breathing will harmonize well with the movement.’ Is there a certain “intensity of breath” across all Pilates movements? How might an instructor cue on the proper amount? In Polestar we like the intensity of the breath to match the intensity of the movement. You don’t breathe the same way walking as you do when you’re running. It’s the same in Pilates. Certain movements require a stronger breath, some require something softer. It often depends on what your desired outcome is. Is the current style of breathing making the movement better or is it getting in the way? If the student is distracted by too much focus on the breath, let it go and just let them breathe comfortably. Eventually, we should really be able to change the breathing patterns with ease. Dr. Larry Cahalin discussing improved breathing habits with Pilates Which Pilates exercises are closely related to breath control? The most well-known Pilates breathing exercise is The 100. It consists of breathing in for 5 counts, then out 5 counts 10 times, all the while maintaining the torso in a rolled up position with the legs outstretched. It’s a challenging exercise, to say the least. There are others but this is the one most everyone knows. Why is too much of a focus on breath a negative? Focusing on exactly when to inhale and exhale often gets in the way of the movement being performed. Especially when a student is new to Pilates. Having students breathe comfortably is sometimes a better approach at first, so as not to overwhelm them. Too much or little of anything isn’t great. Find a happy medium until the student can coordinate the movement and the breath. Can breath for Pilates be applied to other movement disciplines (high-intensity workouts/meditation)? Pilates movements help to create mobility throughout the body which is crucial for good and efficient air exchange. During high-intensity workouts, there is a lot of air that is exchanged. The better our ribs, spine, shoulder girdle and trunk muscles function, the easier it is to breathe. Conversely, resting breath should be efficient and should really just use the diaphragm, the primary muscle in breathing. No need to use a lot of other muscles. Can it improve daily functions around breath or movement? Absolutely. Practicing different styles of breathing can help to both improve mobility in the thorax and strengthen the muscles associated with breathing. If our torso is rigid, it makes it difficult to expand the ribs when inhaling and to narrow the ribs when exhaling. The latter is often associated with people who are obese, women who have just given birth, and in addition to the changes in the lung tissue, COPD. They often lack the mobility and strength to close the rib cage and squeeze the air out of the lungs. Many Pilates movements can assist in restoring better function What are the consequences of poor breathing habits? One of the biggest consequences of poor breathing habits is a lack of energy. The first goal of breathing is gas exchange – to rid the body and CO2 and take in O2. In addition to the physiological needs, we also improve posture with better breathing techniques and can change our mood or state with more energetic or quiet breath styles. Long, slow breaths can bring us toward a more calm state. This is often the goal of meditation and relaxation techniques. A more vigorous breath gives us energy and can make us more aware and alert. Breath should be natural and spontaneous. Shelly and Brent delve deeper into breath in their video on diaphragmatic breathing. It’s always good to take a step back and reevaluate the basics, even if you feel you mastered it centuries ago. Become Polestar trained and study with Senior Polestar Pilates educator Shelly Power at the upcoming Transition Intensive.Transition (Bridging) Pilates Teacher Training