What is Quality Movement in Pilates?
What is quality movement anyway? Quality of movement, over quantity of repetitions is something we often talk about in Pilates. But what does it mean? The definition of quality from the Google dictionary is 'the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something.’ My interpretation of quality movement is movement measured against your own movement. Not the movement of others, but your own best movement.
When I teach Pilates, I let the student find their way to the movement that works best for them. I use my cues as a guide. I make sure I leave space for them to be safe. I try to use simple language to guide them to the movements I'm looking for. Pilates can be confusing when you first start. I give my students the space to take the words in and figure out what that means in their body. If they don’t get it right away that’s ok, as long as they aren’t hurting themselves. I give them time to see what that might mean for them. I want them to think and get their brain into the process. I love to see the progress in their brains and bodies. Patience pays off when it clicks and they come to understand what it is, through their own process. I learned that usually gets the movement to stay in their body better. There is less forgetfulness of what an exercise is, when you take the time to understand and learn it on your own time. As a recovering perfectionist, getting to this place in my teaching was a challenge. But I’ve found it works best for me and the students I love to teach.
Pilates is a process. You do not have to show up on the mat and get it perfect the first time or ever! Sometimes students apologize when they don’t get the movement right away. That is never what I want. It’s not necessary to apologize for not not understanding the movement. Understanding the movement takes time. That is the moment when it’s up to me to find a new way to explain what I am looking for. This is when I get to be creative and find new images and ways of inspiring the movement. I like the challenge of finding a new way to guide students through movement. Sometimes I come up with the most absurd images. But the absurdity is often what gets the student to think about it a little less and move a little more. This is often when it clicks. When they take the time to get out of their head and into a story. They think more about how they would react with their body in that situation and they find the movement.
As a dancer, we studied movement. There are different qualities, different ways of moving to convey emotion or tell a story. The different qualities of movement in Pilates come in different ways. There is less about emotion and more about how slow the movement happens or the opposite, finding the flow. Pilates juxtaposes itself with slow deliberate movement and then faster more flowing exercises. Sometimes this all happens within eight repetitions of one exercise.
Some Pilates exercises only have a few repetitions. Within the Pilates method, I believe it is more about how the exercises are executed than how many you do. Joseph Pilates said in his book Return to Life, “Contrology is not a system of haphazard exercises designed to produce only bulging muscles.” He carefully designed this system of exercises to help us lead a more quality life, where we don’t have to think about our movement so much. Because we practice things like sitting down, sitting up, standing up, rocking back and forth to standing, we can do those things better.
Quality of movement for me is doing the best you can do. Fitting into your own mold but also expanding your view of what is possible for you. Pilates asks us for a lot. Pilates asks us for control, consistency and dedication among many other things. When you are willing to give your all in that moment and do your best, that is quality of movement to me. I no longer ask for perfection. Perfection doesn’t exist. I don’t care if movement is pretty. There is plenty of pretty movement in the world that has little to do with quality. I want you to challenge yourself. I want you to take the time to learn what works for you. I want you to find the path to feeling good within the movement. I want your body to feel like quality movement was achieved within your Pilates session. I want you to leave your Pilates session feeling strong, accomplished and having learned something new. Over time I want you to feel like you have made progress, whatever that looks like for you. Maybe it means you feel stronger or you have more stamina in everyday activities. Maybe you learn new exercises. Or you do the same exercises but without stopping. I will give you the opportunity to find what quality movement is for you. What is quality movement for you? I would love to see your response in the comments.
