Discover Your Pilates Practice Rhythm
Have you ever wondered what the pace of your Pilates practice should actually be? Is a class going too slow or it’s going too fast? Are you going too fast or too slow? Well, we’re gonna talk about the best pace for Pilates for your practice in this video and help you have more independence and autonomy in your own Pilates practice while we’re at it.
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Hello, I’m Lesley Logan, co-founder of onlinepilatesclasses.com. I’ve been doing Pilates since 2005 and teaching Pilates since 2008 and I actually like to move fast. It’s something I’m an activator by nature. I just like to take action as quickly as I can, and knowing that about myself, sometimes I find like, am I going too fast in a Pilates practice? In fact, sometimes I can’t even handle a yoga class because it just feels so… right? And so I had to really dig into what is the best pace for Pilates exercise, what is the rhythm of these Pilates exercises? I got to nerd out as much as possible with one of Joseph Pilates’ clients, but also amazing teachers who studied with him. And so one of the things I hear the most when I’m out traveling the world is Pilates teachers and practitioners going “I need to go slowly, because if I go slowly I keep on my connections”, and I’m going to honestly say that sometimes too slow, that micromanagement of movement is not allowing your body to show you what it’s capable of, and oftentimes it can just be torture. In fact, one of my teachers shout out, Ken Krech. He and I were talking about, if you’re going too slow, is it just someone like you’re a control freak, or you’re micromanaging? He said, “I think you’re just torturing yourself”. A lot of times the zest of the movement, adding that pace in, forces your body to have connections. you need to get to the exercise.
Find Your Pilates Workout Speed
I’m going to shout out to another teacher I love to study with, her name is Carrie Shanafelt and she quoted John Wooden and he said, “Be quick. Don’t hurry.” And what I like about this quote, about Carrie bringing it up, is it made me really think about how Jay Grimes would teach, and how he would talk about Joseph Pilates work, and so you want to be quick. Or if you look at how I talk about exercises in my tutorials or my flashcards, I say, have zest. Add some zest to it, but not in a hurry. And so to be honest, we’ll get more into it in this video, every exercise does have its own rhythm, and then you applying your life experiences and your practice will change how quick an exercise goes. So we could be working at the exact same time and adding our own connections to it and our own rhythms to it, and have our own zest, and we might be two seconds in front of each other and then two seconds behind each other. So let’s get into the nitty gritty about how to understand the pace so that you’re not going too slow and torturing yourself, but also not so fast that you’re missing all the good stuff.
Right Pilates Speed for Results
Why pace matters in Pilates is because if you treat every single exercise with the same pace, some exercises will be done exactly the way they’re supposed to, and some exercises are actually going to be a struggle or too easy, right? And there won’t be a challenge at all. And so the pace at which you approach the practice allows you to bring in the most muscles to the task at hand. Here’s the deal. In our body, we have postural muscles and phasic muscles. Postural muscles are the big muscles that are actually created to have so much endurance. Think about your legs, for example, or the muscles around your upper back. They are here to be on all the time because they have to be ready for us to walk as long as possible. And our back muscles can’t stop holding our spine up if we’re walking to this down the road, right? So those postural muscles are always working to have much more endurance. But our phasic muscles are smaller muscles, the muscles that Pilates is known for utilizing, they actually only have bursts of energy. And so if we go too slow, then we only use those postural muscles, because the phasic ones are gonna be like, “peace out. I can’t do this.”And so yes, you’re gonna hear it, feel your hip flexors a lot, or have hip clicks a lot, or feel like you’re bracing, but if you actually have a good pace, be quick. Don’t hurry. Your phasic muscles will be like, “Oh, I could join this party. It’s only for a few reps. It’s only for this pace.” And so that’s why pace really matters. It allows us in our Pilates practice to bring the most muscles to the party and get the most out of things, so we can strengthen those phasic muscles, those muscles that actually fine tune the movements, that make us more agile, more mobile, have the longevity we’re looking for, while also incorporating our postural muscles.
Adjust Pilates Flow for Skill Level
Factors that determine your pace, there’s a few. One of them is going to be your skill level and and that’s really just where you are in your practice and also where you are that day. So I don’t really love beginner, intermediate, advanced, but that is a common title that is used for things. If you are a beginner or new to Pilates or new to an exercise, let’s even dive even more nuanced. You are going to move slower to break the exercise down. I caution the idea of thinking that you’re going to focus on form by moving slower because. Again, you go too slow, the phasic muscles have a hard time joining in. And so you’re not actually getting the form that you need. You’re getting the choreography that you’re trying to learn. And so when you’re new to an exercise or new to the practice, going slower to understand what’s moving, when and where is absolutely essential and integral. But if you’ve been coming a while, you want to pick that pace up and use your breath to help you understand so in Pilates, breath is one of the most important things, and if you can maintain your inhales and exhales, that means you actually can level up in your practice, and therefore pick up the pace of your practice.
Boost Pilates Pace for Workout Goals
Another factor that can determine your pace is your workout goals. You might even be wondering, “How fast should a Pilates workout be?” Well, if you only have 15 or 20 minutes a day to do your Pilates practice, I would much rather you have zest to your practice, because, believe it or not, 15-20 minutes could mean 25 to 30 Pilates exercises. I mean, we’re only doing three reps, sometimes of some of these exercises, and so actually having a zestier pace to your Pilates practice can mean getting a full Pilates workout in a full body Pilates workout in, in a short amount of time. The other thing is, is that if you’re wanting to have more cardio in your life, but you’re not wanting to do cardio work like running and walking, for example, I at my age, I don’t do a ton of actual straight up cardio work. One, I don’t have the time. Two, I can actually have a zestier pace in my Pilates practice, and I can get this HIIT style workout. Because some exercises the pace is gonna be faster, some exercises to keep my breath going, it’s gonna be a little slower. And so my heart rate is gonna go up and down based on the rhythm of the movement. And so that actually is going to determine how fast I go and also what I’m going to get out of it. So it’s kind of cool that in your Pilates practice, you can actually have the workout goal of having a HIIT practice in your life and use your Pilates practice to support it.
Listening to Your Body in Pilates
Another factor that determines your ideal pace for pilates exercises is going to be listening to your body. This is very important. In fact, I would argue that you’re not doing Pilates if you’re not listening to your body, you can do the exercises, but you’re not really adding the Pilates to it, because you and your body and listening to it is actually how you know if you’re connected or not. So a story is, I was on tour for 33 days, 36 days away from my consistent practice. Yes, Pilates was still happening. Yes, I was able to do it, but I didn’t have my full studio access all the time. So when I came back to doing my first full Pilates workout 50 minutes, I was moving a bit slower now, not so slow that I tortured myself, because that’s not fun and not going to make me go into my workout, but I had a slower pace than I normally did, something that would take me 45 minutes was actually taking me 55 minutes, right? And so listening to my body allowed me to move at a little bit of a pace that allowed me to get back into it without forcing myself or punishing myself, right?
Another thing is, and you start to feel like, wow, I’m really unstoppable. I have a lot of energy today. Well, we don’t want to slow you down because that would not be listening to your body. We want you to go at a pace that allows you to utilize that extra energy. Use it to find parts of your body you’ve never felt before. Use it to try exercises that require a bit more zest, a bit more energy, a bit more stamina, right? And so the more you can listen to your body, the more you’ll know what pace you should go at. And here’s the thing that might mean like but Lesley, how do I take a class where I might need to go slow but the class is going fast? Well, you should be in a place where you’re allowed to skip an exercise, and so what you could do is go a little slower. That’s what we tell our OPC members. If we’re going a little fast and you need to go a little slow, just skip the exercise we’re moving on to and enjoy the one you’re on and meet us on the next one. It’s totally fine to do that.
Tips for Finding the Best Pace for Pilates
Some tips to finding your best pace are going to be first, you need a personal Pilates practice. I know you love going to a class. I know you love the autonomy. But something that’s really nice about being at home, even if you’re watching one of my classes here on YouTube or as an OPC member, is you have the autonomy without distracting others, to go at a different pace, to go faster and do extra reps, or to go slower. And so I highly recommend taking some time each week to be with yourself so you can see what feels really good, right? Having the autonomy. Next is going to be using your breath. If you are holding your breath or out of breath, it is a sign you are not going at pace. Now, some people hold their breath because they’re going too slow. Some people are going too fast that they can’t breathe. So I can’t say which one is going on with you, but I think if you can make sure that you’re inhaling and exhaling, inhaling, exhaling, and you’re not stopping on either one of those parts, your pace is really great. If you can use the exhales on the exertion and the inhales on the extension, you found a really good pace for yourself.
The next thing I want you to do is really, actually take some time to understand if you feel like the exercise is too easy or too hard. So it should feel possible, which is an interesting way of saying challenging, but you can do it. If an exercise feels challenging, but you can do it, the pace is pretty great. If you’re loving this discussion and you want to do more, I have another video about how fast should I be moving my Pilates practice. It’s from a few years ago, and I’m gonna be honest, you’re gonna love the intro. I think it’s great. So even if you think you’ve had all you need on this topic, I highly recommend a good laugh over there.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Some mistakes I want you to avoid in your Pilates pacing practice are moving at the exact same pace as the person next to you. Now look, maybe they move with zest, and you need to borrow some zest. That’s fine. That’s a different story. But if you are trying to keep up with the next person at their slow pace or their fast pace, that’s not you listening to your body. If your teacher happens to be wanting everyone to be synchronized Pilates swimmers, that might be helpful if you are new and you are trying to learn the choreography, but ideally, you are finding someone who lets you go at your own pace. Something that we pride ourselves at OPC is that while it’s an on demand workout, and we are counting and doing it with you, we constantly remind you to go at your pace, to skip an exercise, or to give yourself more reps if you need it. Holding your breath is going to screw up your pace. If you are not flowing from one exercise to the next, that could screw up your pace. You know, if you’re like, I gotta take a video of myself over here, and I gotta drink some water over here. Absolutely hydrate, but try to make sure that you’re using the transitions from one exercise to the next to actually keep your pace up, keeps your heart rate going, keeps your connections going.
So giving all of these if you have questions or you’re starting to feel like, oh, maybe I’m going too slow. I’m going too fast. If you’d like some feedback on your pace, you can send a video to you doing an exercise or two, if you’re an OPC member. Yes! OPC members get my feedback on their form, personalized. So no more guessing, no more wondering. No, I’m not going to write out the count of a pace of an exercise, because that would be impossible for me to know without knowing your body. So while there is a general rule of a zest or a pace or rhythm of an exercise, then there is you and your level and your connections, and so make sure you join us at OPC so that I can give you feedback on your pacing. If you’d like to discover more about how to make the most of your Pilates practice, we have a great video about mistakes to avoid if you’re new to Pilates classes.
Enjoy Stronger, Injury-Free Pilates Workouts
If you have the right pace in your Pilates practice, for each exercise, you are going to enjoy some amazing benefits. First of all, you might actually get more out of each exercise, meaning you’re not only going to get stronger and more mobile and agile and have more longevity, but it’s just more pleasurable all around you. Also can reduce or avoid injury. Sometimes when we go too slow, we actually can cause things to strain or stress when we’re not going for that, and that’s not what Pilates wants. And also, it’s kind of nice to have an enjoyable workout. It’s really cool when you have a good rhythm going and a good pace for your practice to feel how strong and capable you are. At the end, you get this amazing dopamine high from having a great workout, and you feel really strong doing it.
The Power of Pace in Pilates
I’m gonna have a little anecdotal story for you, and then we’ll end today in my Pilates practice, I was doing an exercise. It’s an exercise that I get a little in my head about. And Jay would always tell me that I’m really excellent at panic Pilates. And so sometimes I get my head about an exercise and I kind of rush through it, and in some of my times of rushing through it and go, Okay, well, I don’t want to rush through it. So then I’m like, well, I gotta find this here and find this here, and even I can micromanage myself, right? So my teacher was like, hey, Lesley, what if you just move your arms some more? And in doing that and just moving my arms and control push ups on the reformer, moving my arms a little faster and a little bit bigger, it forced me that zest, that pace, forced me to keep the connections I needed in my center to make the exercise better. So by panicking, I was making the exercise worse. By trying to slow it down and stretch it out, I was making the exercise worse, but by adding more pace, by adding more zest, I got more of the exercise and I’m that means I’m eating all the benefits of Pilates. I’m getting the strength that I need to have. I’m getting the mobility that I need to have. I’m getting the confidence that I can do hard things.
Strengthen Your Practice with OPC
So if this video is helpful for you, thank you so much for watching. I hope you subscribe to our channel. If you want to nerd out more about Pilates with us, please make sure you join us at Online Pilates Classes. The teachers and I really love to dive into your exercises. And one thing we also love to do is create classes based on the exercises you struggle with, and then we use the other exercises to help build up the strength stamina and help you find your rhythm that you need. So join us at OPC YouTube you have any questions, drop in the comments below. We go live on Sundays at 9am Pacific time. Have an amazing day.