Join Christina and Allison as they chat about opening a studio and how to make the Pilates environment inclusive of larger bodies.
Alison shares her experience living in and doing and teaching Pilates. She began teaching out of a need to learn how to move better for herself, because she was struggling in group classes. As a new teacher, she experienced bias for being in a larger body and she frequently would get once overs when she met new clients. Later she began doing equipment maintenance at one of the studios and became proficient in machine safety and the ins and outs of the Pilates equipment.
Allison is an advocate for fair and equitable pay for Pilates teachers, after having experienced unfair treatment herself. She describes how some teacher’s pay structures are set-up and how such structures penalize the teachers who teach at unpopular times.
Opening a Pilates Studio
After having subpar experiences working at other studios Allison, has decided to open her own space. The thought of opening a studio and working for herself gave her comfort. There are weight limits on the equipment and this impacts people’s movement experience.
She is making special considerations to ensure that her space is comfortable for all people. This includes knowing weight limits for all the furniture in the studio as well as making sure that this furniture can make someone’s life easier when it comes to removing shoes etc.... Other considerations she included were natural light, main floor access or elevator, a restroom.
Teacher Training
All teacher training programs seem to ignore larger sized bodies and how to teach effectively. Despite Pilates allowing Allison to connect so deeply with her, she saw a gap in her learning. She quickly saw the issues when she had larger bodies on the reformer and they didn’t fit. So she had to change spring weights to accommodate her clients.
She began doing the research to run a workshop called Making Pilates Accessible for Larger Bodies and she took a sociocultural perspective. Allison shares about the challenges of running a workshop and the growing pains. She did eventually run it and will be doing it again when her studio is up and running, with friends in larger bodies so that she can show different things.
Allison shares how some cueing is ineffective for larger bodies. Negative space is the idea that the low back will be lifted away from the floor, so eliminating that all together. Change the motivation, so eliminate the idea of the ‘summer body’, which is not accessible for everyone. Fat bodies are not a monolith, which means that all fat bodies are different and should be treated as such. Larger breasted women and smaller breasted women have different needs. Many people are not proportional.
REACH OUT TO ALLISON
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