To Cue or Not To Cue?!
Not enough change in our book!
But at least this fine Pilates instructor is headed in the right direction! If it were up to us there would be no cueing at all! NONE! Nada! (For why we feel so strongly about this go here!)
Do we use cueing to learn how to play basketball, soccer, or any other sport? Did Joseph Pilates use cueing to teach his method?
The resounding answer to both of these questions is no! (Our sources about Joe come from our study of the films that show Joe teaching, and our interview with a ‘Pilates Elder’).
Incidentally, this is another fine and provocative article from PilatesIntel which gets our vote for the best Pilates blog. It’s brought to you by Brett Miller who is himself a fine instructor, as well as a sharp, intelligent, and witty voice in the Pilates world. We highly recommend signing up for his once-a-week and advertisement-free blog.
Now, have a look at an intelligent call for improvement in our cueing!
by Brent Anderson PhD, PT, OCS, PMA®-CPT The topic of cueing movement and coaching has been of deep interest to me for years. Many years ago, coming from a fitness and sport background, we thought of all movement coming from the muscles. So, we taught movement by teaching muscles to contract. We tried to be smarter than the muscle and the nervous system, telling muscles when and how much to contract. I realized a long time ago that this method of teaching movement was not effective and definitely not efficient….a child does not think about recruiting their abdominal wall and pelvic floor every time they pick up a toy, actually never. So where did we make the switch between spontaneous movement and isolated muscle training?………… I am a big fan of cueing with imagery that allows the client to identify with familiar images and qualities of movement. I have realized how efficient the neuromuscular system is at solving the movement strategy efficiently. I have removed almost all of the old muscle cueing from my vocabulary, things like: squeeze the gluteal muscles, lift the pelvic floor, draw in your abdominal wall, and pull up on your inner thigh muscles and many more………
For the rest of this article go to PilatesIntel.com.