Your skills gap might be a result of your education
Raise your hand if you have heard the term “evidence-based practice” and found yourself wondering what it really means. More importantly, why should you care?
Let’s start from the beginning.
On the surface, we all know that excellence in our work goes beyond our opinions, habits, or old beliefs. In fact, excellence often means that we have a framework and standards for doing our work. The framework and standards we are talking about in this article is evidence-based practice (EBP) and the ways in which it should inform how we practice and conduct Pilates education and practice in our field.
If you’re a Pilates practitioner chances are you’ve heard of evidence-based practice (EBP) - a widely used approach in the fields of education, science, and healthcare which implies that a practice, concept, or strategy you are using has been derived or informed by objective evidence using rigorous scientific study, review, and analysis. The goal of EBP is to incorporate the best available research, clinical guidelines, and standards for care into your respective field and area of expertise.
Perhaps the best and most practical description of EBP is from the Oxford Review:
“decision-making by using clear, well-researched and evidenced justifications for why we do things in certain ways, with the ultimate goal of delivering continual improvements/innovations, learning and excellence in our organisation or business. In short, it is about developing and fostering best practice and thinking by looking at and critically considering the real evidence and data about an issue rather than just using personal subjective opinions or gut feel.”
It is a practice for what is defensible and trustworthy. Using EBP is fundamental to the credibility of any field. Hence we should consider how it is possible to ensure that we use EBP in Pilates, in the field in general and in our Pilates education specifically.
A case in point: scientific literacy as the basis for standards of practice.
One of the primary skill sets any Pilates professional needs in order to pursue EBP within their own scope of practice is scientific literacy. Scientific literacy is a very specific skill set that involves the capacity to understand empirical knowledge to draw evidence-based conclusions.
As Pilates professionals, because of our work with the human body, our knowledge base should take into account advances in fields like exercise science, health care, and motivational psychology. Each of these fields has the capacity to directly inform what and how we teach, making us more effective as instructors and educators. Using EBP as a guiding framework to help us integrate these ever-evolving scientific advances into our everyday practice should be the hallmark of our field. We have a responsibility to bring Pilates as an industry into the 21st century. A big piece of achieving this feat includes bridging the gap between the practices that accelerated the value of Pilates in the early 1940s and beyond, to a new vision for the practice of Pilates in 2024: that is informed by EBP and supported by an appropriate level of scientific rigor.
To illustrate this point, here is a summary of skills that most leading big brand name comprehensive Pilates teacher training programs are currently focused on delivering as illustrated by the National Pilates Certification Program (NPCT):
● A minimum 450 hours of training covering: mat, reformer, Trapeze Table (i.e., Cadillac), Wunda Chair, Ladder Barrel, Spine Corrector, Magic Circle
● Lectures: on the history of Pilates, anatomy, special populations
● Observation hours (i.e. a student observing an experienced teacher)
● Practice teaching (under the guidance of an experienced teacher)
● Self-practice hours
To be clear, none of these skills are inherently “undesirable,” however the majority of them are not comprehensively informed by EBP either. By comparison here is a list of additional EBP skill sets that most Pilates professionals would also benefit from being exposed to through teacher training and continuing education in an effort to support the development of more scientific literacy within the field:
● Understanding activity and clinical guidelines, as dictated by science-based, data-driven service organisations such as the Center for Disease Control, World Health Organisation (WHO), American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), and The American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (ACOG).
● A basic understanding of motor learning, understanding how people acquire movement skills
● Motivational psychology, i.e. what prompts people to engage in goal-oriented behaviours
● Pain science, understanding that a person's experience of pain is multifactorial and complex
● Where and how to seek out relevant scientific journal articles and systematic reviews as it relates to specific pathologies, exercise science, and pain science.
Ok, deep breath.
If these suggestions feel overwhelming, it’s ok you’re not alone. To be clear this is not to suggest that all Pilates professionals now need to also become medical professionals or scientists in order to teach Pilates. That is most certainly not our scope of practice. However, because Pilates as a field is arguably adjacent to that of physical therapy, exercise science, and sports medicine it would make sense if more of our education centered around current best care practices.
For example, the fact that so many leading Pilates education institutions are still teaching transverse abdominis activation and neutral spine as a prerequisite for clients with low back pain is unhelpful and outdated. * Or for comparison the idea that static postural assessments can give us any real data about what is happening inside of a person's body without an MRI or X-Ray is absurd. I could go on but we would need an entirely separate article to cover this list.
It’s do-able.
Learning to identify our skills gaps, and then working to improve them is the hallmark of consummate professionalism and leadership. It goes without saying that presumably no Pilates instructor, studio owner, or educator shows up to work every day aiming to be merely “adequate” at our jobs. The desire to be excellent is widespread in our industry; most of us simply need the tools to achieve it. This journey starts with the overhauling of educational programs that can genuinely equip students and continuing education seekers with the necessary tools to comprehend and apply advances in related fields like exercise science, motor learning, and pain science to the field of Pilates more comprehensively.
Naturally this begs the question: what can we as individual instructors and small business owners do to ask more of our leading industry institutions? While the answer to this question may be nuanced, it begins with the courage to question what we think we know. To look outside of our industry at related fields and ask ourselves what are they doing better that could apply to us also?
The simple act of reflecting on how we can improve the services we offer individually as Pilates professionals and collectively as a field does not have to be approached from a deficit mindset. There is strength in being humble and nibble enough to change, adapt, and update information as we evolve. The process of learning to question the things that we think we know, in an effort to update our beliefs and understanding can feel extremely uncomfortable. But asking ourselves and our institutions the question, “how can I/we do better?” does not have to imply that we are either inept at our jobs or morally deficient. Rather, making a point to ask ourselves these types of questions is constructive and can help support us in learning more in the pursuit of excellence.
Kyle Georgina Mash, is an NYC-based Pilates instructor and movement coach who caters to a select group of private and corporate clients. She’s the founder of the online fitness platform, True II Form Pilates & Wellness. As a dedicated trainer and educator, Kyle is known for her ability to empower clients to move powerfully and more fearlessly, both on and off of their mats.
References
American College of Sports Medicine. "Low Back Pain." ACSM's Health & Fitness Journal, vol. 17, no. 2, 2013, pp. 5-8. https://journals.lww.com/acsm-healthfitness/fulltext/2013/03000/low_back_pain.4.aspx
American College of Sports Medicine. "Physical Activity Guidelines." n.d. American College of Sports Medicine, https://www.acsm.org/education-resources/trending-topics-resources/physical-activity-guidelines.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Physical Activity for Adults." n.d. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, https://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/basics/adults/index.htm.
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. "Exercise During Pregnancy." American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, https://www.acog.org/womens-health/faqs/exercise-during-pregnancy#:~:text=How%20much%20should%20I%20exercise,arms)%20in%20a%20rhythmic%20way.
National Pilates Certification Program. "Pilates Comprehensive Eligibility Requirements." National Pilates Certification Program, https://nationalpilatescertificationprogram.org/NPCP/NPCP/Get_Certified/Requirements.aspx.
Roy, Brad A. Ph.D., FACSM, FACHE; Vanichkachorn, Greg M.D. "Low Back Pain." ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal, vol. 17, no. 2, 2013, p. 5. DOI: 10.1249/FIT.0b013e3182829609.
The Oxford Review. "The Essential Guide to Evidence-based Practice." Updated May 2023. The Oxford Review, https://oxford-review.com/evidence-based-practice-essential-guide/#tab-con-23.
World Health Organization. "Physical Activity." n.d. World Health Organization, https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/physical-activity.
* See this ACSM Article on low back pain for reference.