Coaching for teachers

For Pilates teachers and studio owners

Most of the teachers who come to me have been doing this a while. Eight years, ten, twenty. Often coming back to it, or stepping it up again, after children. They know the work. What they have lost is not the knowledge — it is the sense of being good at it.

Coaching is also a good fit if you are working towards certification and want someone experienced in your corner.

You probably do not need more confidence

This is the thing I end up saying most often, and it is the opposite of what people expect to hear.

Confidence does not arrive by working harder on yourself. It arrives when you stop watching yourself and start watching the person in front of you — when you get clear about who you love to teach and what you are actually good at solving for them. That is where teaching gets easier, and it is where clients start staying. I wrote about this here.

So coaching does not start with a list of what might be wrong with your teaching. You already know what is bothering you, and if you do not, one conversation usually finds it.

Why I wrote Teach Pilates with Confidence

Teacher training programmes teach you the exercises. They rarely teach you how to teach them. I kept meeting teachers who had been thoroughly trained and still felt as though they were guessing in the room, and the book came out of having that same conversation over and over.

Coaching takes what is in the book and applies it to you: your clients, your classes, the bit you are stuck on this month.

What changes

• Your language gets shorter. Fewer words, better timed, and clients move differently because of it.
• You see more. What to look at first, and what to leave alone for now.
• Classes hold together. A shape you can rely on, that still bends around whoever turns up.
• You stop performing. Teaching to the people in front of you rather than to the version of yourself watching from the corner.
• You know who you are for. Which makes almost everything else — what to offer, what to charge, what to say — a great deal simpler.

How it works

• A free 20-minute conversation. Where you are, what you want, and whether I am the right person. If I am not, I will say so.
• Four one-hour sessions on Zoom. Weekly, fortnightly or monthly, so there is time to try things in between.
• Notes after every session. What we discussed, what you decided, what you are trying next.
• Support in between. If it is more than a fortnight, I check in.

[Booking for the four-session pack will appear here once Acuity is set up.]

What teachers say

I ran a Pilates teacher-training school for fifteen years, and the teachers I trained and certified are now working in seven countries. Coaching is where that work continues, one teacher at a time.

Tania has a gift for breaking down even the most complex exercises into bite-size elements with descriptions and imagery that become seared into the memory of the mind as well as the muscle. I leave her training feeling confident in my knowledge, proficient in the exercises and excited to help others.

Josh, teacher training graduate

The methodology behind Tania's teaching is particularly valuable to me. She guides us to use a mixture of learning media: reading, observation, physical practice and teaching practice. The ease with which she communicates makes it easy to ask questions at any time.

Karen, teacher training graduate

Tania is approachable, friendly, welcoming and respectful. I love the way she uses examples from sports, clients and life, and applies knowledge to individual needs.

Anna, teacher training graduate

The values I learned from Tania were kindness, authenticity and being yourself when teaching or running my business.

Liz C.

Running a studio, or about to open one? See coaching for studio owners.