Pilates Tips from the Pros | FusionPilatesEDU.com

Attracting Your Ideal Pilates Client

By Lacy Fabian, PhD Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could identify our ideal Pilates clients? Imagine the regularity and the ease of the session! There are a few practices to increase your chances of attracting that ideal client. 1) What’s your Pilates style? Part of knowing who you want to attract is knowing what […]…

Hip Trigger Points

Our bodies have an innate intelligence and will always organize around tightness. This sometimes creates more tightness in the process. When we find a trigger point in a certain area, it can be a complete surprise because we very often have not felt any previous tension or pain in this area. These are hidden puckers […]…

Mary Bowen

See our interview with Mary here… A number of first-generation Pilates teachers that Joseph Pilates passed the work onto are still with us. These teachers are full of wisdom and give us real insight into how and why the work developed like it did. I have gotten to work with a number of these individuals, […]…

Healthy Boundaries: How to Stay Professional

Being professional with your clients is a must if you want to build a steady, solid practice. Your reputation is of the utmost importance. The reality of this business is that word of mouth is your best marketing asset. Without gleaming recommendations from your clients, it is impossible to reach the many people it takes […]…

Footwork with Springs on Risers

Watch an innovative way to wake up the back body during footwork. By adding a spring above the knee, we add another way to find contrast inside the exercise. The extra spring also helps decompress the knees, feeds the femur head deeper into the socket, and aids in the rotation of the femur bone in […]…

Opening & Lengthening with the Foam Roller

Now that you have a little bit of experience with the passive releases we did on the foam roller in the last post, let’s continue to layer on. You want to remember that you are always trying to find or keep your mid-line while you are performing these foam roller exercises. You are trying to […]…

Plank

You can focus on many areas in the same exercise. Watch a focus on buoyant, easy, neutral scapula placement in Plank on the Reformer. Learn how to create the awareness of easy shoulder blades on the ribcage and to keep that focus during Plank. Just holding the position without the glide out and in of […]…

Stability Ball to Stretch & Open the Upper Body

In a previous post, we learned to strengthen our upper bodies using Pilates stability ball exercises. Now it is time to create mobility and fluidity in the upper body. The stability ball lends itself magnificently to opening exercises because it is round and pliable so we can move the energy in a fluid manner. During […]…

Yoga Block Foot Work

Most of us have one side of the body and especially one leg that overpowers the other. See a simple exercise that can help balance the strength on both hips, legs, and feet as well as create better joint mobilization. All of this equates to easier, more functional movement! Thanks for watching! Leave us your […]…

Upper Body Strength with Magic Circle

The Magic Circle can be used to tone, strengthen, and lengthen the whole body. In this post, I am concentrating on the upper body using the Magic Circle. The Magic Circle helps us connect to our mid-back, creates proper joint mechanics, and helps us create strength around our shoulder cuff, shoulder girdle, arm, upper chest, […]…

Initiation of the Mermaid on the Reformer

The initiation movement of an exercise such as the Mermaid is a coordinated dance of the humerus, scapula, and upper spine. This key movement is essential for the exercise as a whole and it assures that the work is happening in the upper and mid back and not just pushed into the upper traps or […]…

Shoulder Strength & Flexibility: Classical Pilates Exercises

Shoulder strength and flexibility are important in and of themselves, but it is also imperative to have a real coordination and balance of the two in the shoulder girdle because many of the tasks we perform require a flow of mobility and brute strength that we must tap into on a second’s notice. If there […]…

Static vs. Moving Posture Check

Watching clients move when they think no one is looking can tell you so much about why some of their issues remain unresolved. How they stand, sit, get up, or even put on their shoes can give you clues about their habitual movement patterns in a way that not even equipment can tell you. The […]…

FFO Hits the Road! Sylvia Byrd-Leitner Instructor Showcase and Video

One of our biggest missions here at FFO is to foster community. In that spirit, we occasionally load some video gear into the FusionMobile and hit the road to go meet Instructors and Studio Owners in order to get to know them. A few months ago, we did a brief tour of the East Coast […]…

Overball Under the Head

Many of us hold a great amount of tension in our first two cervical vertebrae. The suboccipitals are small deep muscles that connect the occiput, C1, and C2. Watch a simple exercise on the Overball that will help clients to balance these muscles that nod the head forward and back, and rotate the head side […]…

5 Creative Ways to Find Time for Personal Pilates Practice

Please enjoy this guest post by Anastasiya Goers. If you’d like to post your own article or short video on FusionPilatesEDU.com, please let us know! 5 Creative Ways to Find Time for Personal Pilates Practice How many hours a week do you teach Pilates? How many hours a week do you do Pilates yourself? How […]…

We Have a Winner!

When we launched this site 6 months ago, we decided to celebrate by holding a MASSIVE contest with amazing prizes from incredible companies like SmartSpine™, Balanced Body, WAGs, ToeSox, Correct Toes, Be Present, Fusion DVDs, and of course FusionPilatesEDU.com! The lucky winner was drawn on September 1, 2013 using Random.org. And the winner is…. Shari […]…

Standing Splits

Learn to use the spring weight to balance your “Up the Mountain” muscles and your “Down the Mountain” muscles, and everything in between. The Reformer is a phenomenal strength and stability builder if used in the right way. See a very simple standing sequence on the Reformer and how just a change of the spring […]…

Romana Kryzanowska & Julian Littleford

We recently lost two Pilates greats. Legendary first generation teacher Romana Kryzanowska died on August 30, 2013. She is an inspiration to all of us and will be greatly missed. Julian Littleford of J.L. Body Conditioning in Del Mar, CA died on August 31, 2013. He was an amazing, creative teacher and human being. I […]…

Lesley Powell from Movements Afoot Studio in NYC

We had a few minutes to chat with the immensely talented Lesley Powell during a break from shooting her new online Posterial Lateral Hip workshop. Take a moment to get a brief overview of her history and work.…