On Tuesday, I taught Pilates at a social club here in Singapore. It was pretty exciting to visit, and I could imagine Emily Gilmore strolling in to a similar country club in Hartford. So rich, so privileged. There weren’t a lot of young people in the club, and I didn’t look like I belonged when I was standing at the gym’s reception.
It was fairly packed for a Tuesday afternoon, so you can imagine that these people were indeed the Emily Gilmore-types.
Several things didn’t go too well – and I realise now that I have specific requirements for my Pilates group classes to happen.
1. The placements of the group’s mats need to be vertical to my horizontal mat for them to be facing me. This is how I’m used to teaching, but because everyone started laying their mats horizontal, I decided I’d go with the flow and how different could it be anyway?
It was a mess. The people on the left faced one way, the people on the right faced the other. My cues became slightly messy and confusing.
2. I did not start off the class finding out about their bodies well enough – which came back to me after the class when one lady told me to please let them know if I was going to be doing a lot of exercises that would be strenuous to the knees. Which, of course was a valid point considering that the majority of the people in the class were of an older age.
3. Their age. I was/and am not yet experienced with teaching older people.
I made some modifications and we had yoga blocks to help out, but looking back now I would have done everything differently. There was a lady who had asked for a good, challenging workout but I should have arranged it so that I offered it as an option to her and not made it too demanding on the whole group.
I was feeling awful after the class, but after a really good one today at a corporate class today..I’m a lot happier. You can really tell if a class is good if people are groaning just the right amount but are also given enough time to rest and occasions to actually learn about their own bodies.
I shall ask the PBT team about teaching older people to get ready for my next class at the club. I’ll also need to improve on executing progressions and modifications while I’m teaching. I can only get better.
(I’m experimenting with this journal-style entry to make sure I record these little mundane things in my life. I wonder if it throws things off balance on here, but I would hate to post anywhere else and leave this blog dry and insipid. That said, I shall try to make less edits on these posts.)
