How to Deepen Your Pilates Practice with Repetition and Consistency (with Andrea Maida)

One of the things that I love about running Pilates Bridge is the opportunity to talk to the amazing Pilates instructors, get to know their stories and their tips for success. Some instructors seem to have had a natural path to Pilates: through their dance or sports career, through personal injuries and rehabilitation or as a way to enhance other body work techniques that they were already practicing (Physical Therapy, Massage, Yoga etc.)

But I always love to talk to the instructors who discovered and fell in love with Pilates for no apparent reason. Pilates just came along, they tried it and *BOOM* something happened, and they are head over heels in love with the method and everything that it can do. And they had to work through the same challenges in their bodies as the rest of us, common folks.

They weren’t super flexible as dancers and gymnasts are, they didn’t possess super-human strength of an athlete and they haven’t been dedicating their life to the study of human anatomy and biomechanics.

Andrea Maida is an ordinary person (in the best possible meaning) who became an extraordinary Pilates teacher. She was working as an actor and simply needed to get in shape to prepare for her role. A friend of hers suggested Pilates and she decided to give it a try (without even knowing what it was.)

Here is what Andrea said about her body just a couple of days ago in another article

My body type is toward the tighter end of the spectrum with regard to the back, hips, thighs and shoulders.

I have heard a number of flexible colleagues express the opinion that initially they didn’t like the confinements that learning Pilates placed on their mobility.

Confinements? What are they talking about?? This was not my experience.

But I’ll let Andrea tell her story of how stubbornness led her to fall in love with Pilates. In the meantime let me tell you that Andrea is an excellent classical Pilates teacher who is passionate about deepening her understanding of the method through education and personal practice.

Another unconventional venue that she uses to get deeper into the Work is her blog (visit it here.) Her fun way to describe really difficult or misunderstood Pilates aspects has helped dozens (maybe hundreds?) of Pilates devotees catch a glimpse of Joe himself in their workouts.

Read the interview to learn Andrea’s Pilates story and her down-to-earth definition of Pilates. Andrea teaches classical Pilates and she has been focusing a lot on the importance of repetition and order in her sessions. She wants to tell you exactly why repetition is important and how to use it to deepen your practice.

I also asked Andrea a tricky question but she answered it beautifully. She will talk about the MOST MISUNDERSTOOD Pilates exercise. See if you have this one down right 🙂

1. Andrea, please share your Pilates story. How did you start practicing Pilates and how (why) you became a teacher?

I started Pilates as a client because I had no fitness plan in place. I was working as an actor and got cast in a play where I had to wear black vinyl, bare midriff and prance around. I was very scared of my costume. I had a friend who was also in that play and she suggested that I try Pilates.

I’ve always done Yoga, I enjoyed movement as a child (gymnastics etc.) I didn’t really know what Pilates was but was ready to try it. I thought it was going to be like Yoga (because it was a mat class.)

I got there and started doing the mat exercises and thought to myself “It really IS NOT like Yoga. They seem so specific about what they want me to do be doing and using. They are talking about muscles…”

I tried to do a Roll-Up but nothing happened. I was getting kind of mad (*laugh*) I feel that I stuck with Pilates because I was stubborn enough. After all, Roll-Up was only the second exercise and I should have been able to do it!

I started to take an Apparatus class with some of my friends while working a day job that I wasn’t enjoying much. At one point I was looking for a new job and I came to my Pilates mat class and there was a sign on the door saying “Part-Time Studio Manager Needed.”

I started working at a Pilates studio and I was able to take more classes more affordably. They started a training program at their studio (it was in Washington DC.) The studio owners were trained by Romana and wanted to create a teacher training program that was very close to Romana’s Pilates to have a better chance of staffing their busy studio. They met with several people (me included!) and said “We think you would be great for our training program. Did you ever think about becoming a Pilates instructor?” I said “Oh no, I couldn’t possibly…”

It took me a while to decide because I wasn’t sure if I liked teaching people. But once I started I felt that it was really rewarding. I never had a job where I had to tell people what to do so it felt really weird at first.

Then I just kept trying to make myself a better teacher and feel more comfortable in my job. I was always seeking more education that led me to train with Romana and eventually led me to Jay Grimes in Los Angeles.

I’ve been doing Pilates since 2000 and teaching since 2003.

2. How often do you practice Pilates?

I take a class with Karen Frischmann at Vintage Pilates every Monday. I also try to have an hour-long Pilates session every other day, but even on the days when I don’t have a full workout I do the exercises when I am waiting for somebody.

3. How are you trying to influence the Pilates community through your online presence?

I’ve heard about Romana and I wanted to experience her training. I realized that the only way for me to get continuing education with her was to get certified through their program (and I was fine with that.)

Over time I started noticing that there were a lot of people who wanted to learn about classical Pilates but it was not so accessible to them.

Looking online I saw that there were a lot of technical, anatomy-based, in-depth articles written about Pilates. I really wanted Pilates to be fun since it is really a form of exercise, so you have to have a sense of humor about it. And as you find out more information about your body, it’s often not the information that we want to find out. So you have to laugh it out. (*LAUGH*)

I started my blog (click here) because I wanted to write something that would be light-hearted and help people do good things for themselves. Sometimes it’s hard, especially if you teach Pilates, to make yourself work out.

Since I’ve been writing my blog I found out that it has been helping me articulate and deepen my understanding of the method as well. (I didn’t really think about it as I started.)

4. What is your personal definition of Pilates?

I’ve heard people describe it as “It’s an investment in your quality of life.”

I think that Pilates is instructions on how to take care of you body.

When you get this body it works fine but as it gets older it develops these idiosyncrasies. Pilates helps you to understand what it is that you are doing to yourself that your body eventually says “You know, we don’t like that anymore. And we wish you would stop!”

Pilates gives you information so if something bothers you, you can say “Oh well, I understand this because of my experience in movement.”

5. What is the importance of repetition in Pilates?

Pilates is not the same as traditional exercise. I’ve heard it described as a martial art where you are learning skills that build one upon another and help you to learn even more complicated skills.

In my experience, I really enjoy the repetition because I can really use it as a barometer of how things are going in my body. I feel that you really notice the nuances when you are doing a simpler program.

And there are always the exercises that you put in afterwards, the exercises YOU need, that you check in with to see how the things are going.

I feel that the way you really learn the skills of Pilates is through consistency and repetition.

6. What Pilates exercise do you believe most teachers and students get wrong?

All of the exercises in Pilates theoretically are about the center. And the ones that are hard to make about your stomach are the Side Kick Series (read more of Andrea’s thoughts on this subject here) and the One Leg Circles (more here) on the mat. The movement of the leg is sometimes very distracting.

For years I’ve thought that I was just throwing my leg around (*laugh.*) Once I realized that it was really a stomach exercise, my hip started to feel much better and it changed really a lot of things.

Connect with Andrea Maida and learn from her

1. http://www.pilatesandrea.com/blog/ – Andrea’s Blog and studio website.
2. Pilates Andrea on PilatesBridge.com
3. https://www.facebook.com/pilatesandrea/ – Facebook