Season 2, Episode 1: I can do the exercises, so why can’t I teach them?

Tania Huddart: The first time I did Pilates, I walked out of the studio in a daze. I was shaking like a leaf. I'd been dancing and teaching dance for years. Movement was the one thing I could always remember. And that day, for the first time in my life, I couldn't. The only thing I remembered was lying on the floor with my feet on the wall, doing bridging. All I knew was that I had to go back.

Host: Welcome to Build Confidence and Purpose with Pilates. I'm here with Tania Huddart: Pilates teacher, teacher trainer and author of Pilates & Purpose. Both voices you'll hear are made with AI. Every word Tania says is her own, and she's approved each one.

Last season was about running a studio. This season is about the room itself: the teaching. And we're starting with a question a lot of newer teachers carry around quietly. I can do the exercises. So why can't I teach them?

Tania Huddart: Because they're two different skills. And hardly anyone tells you that.

Host: Not even your training course?

Tania Huddart: Very few teacher training courses talk about how to teach. If they do, you might get two or three ideas. Most of the time goes on the exercises. You learn them. You learn to do them well, often to a very high standard.

And that's lovely. It feels good to master something. It teaches you a lot about the method. But it has very little to do with passing it on to someone else. Being in a class and teaching a class are not the same job. The difference is the teaching. So the real question is, how do you teach movement?

And it matters, because we lose good teachers over this. Some leave because they feel like an imposter. Some can't see where their career goes next. But for most of them, the root of it is frustration. They know so much, and they can't get it across. I don't want that to be you.

Host: Let's go back to that first class of yours. You'd been dancing for years. Why did Pilates throw you so much?

Tania Huddart: I'd moved to London in 1995. I was teaching dance, and I kept getting injured. A couple of years before, I'd read an article about Pilates and what it did for dancers. So I went looking. I ended up at Lesley Ackland's studio at Pineapple Dance Studios. It was down the end of a corridor, stuck between two little studios.

I had no idea what Pilates was. There was a trademark lawsuit going on in the States at the time. We weren't even allowed to say we were going to a Pilates class. I didn't know the names of the exercises, because we couldn't use them.

And my body didn't know them either. That was the shock. Suddenly the one thing I was good at, I couldn't do. It was a puzzle. And I've always loved a puzzle. So I went back. Twice a week. Three months later, I had a whole new body. Joseph Pilates said that within thirty sessions you'd have a whole new body, and that was my experience.

By then I was hooked. I asked about training, but there were no formal courses yet. So I worked in the studio in the mornings and taught dance in the afternoons.

Host: Why does that first class matter to a newer teacher listening now?

Tania Huddart: Because I remember being the person on the mat who couldn't follow. You forget that, once you're good at something. And that's the first trap for a new teacher. You've done these exercises hundreds of times. They live in your body. So it's hard to remember what it was like not to know them. And if you can't remember not knowing, it's very hard to explain it to someone who doesn't.

Host: Was there a moment when you realised doing and teaching were different things?

Tania Huddart: There was. In those early London days, I was working with a man in his mid to late thirties. I asked him to roll down and touch his toes. Simple. Something I'd asked dancers to do a thousand times.

He got about halfway, and he stopped. He was stuck. He couldn't go any further.

And I remember thinking, oh. He wasn't a dancer. It sounds obvious now. But I'd spent my whole life teaching people whose bodies did what mine did. He wasn't one of them. And my way of teaching didn't work for him.

So that was the start of learning to put myself in other people's bodies. To try to feel what might be stopping him. To figure out the restriction, and how to work around it, rather than just asking again.

And I realised my language had to change too. The words I used with dancers meant nothing to him. So Pilates gave me another puzzle. Not the exercise this time. How I talk to the person doing it.

Host: That sounds like a humbling moment.

Tania Huddart: It is. And it's the best thing that can happen to you early on. Every teacher meets that person. The client who does what you asked, and it looks nothing like what you meant. You can decide they're doing it wrong. Or you can get curious about what's going on in their body. The second one is where teaching starts.

Host: I think a lot of newer teachers hear that and just think, well, I'm not very good at this.

Tania Huddart: I know. And I want to say this clearly. If you can do the exercises and you can't yet teach them, that's not a failure. That's just where you are. You were trained to do. Nobody trained you to teach. That's a gap in the training. It isn't a gap in you.

And a gap can be filled. That's the good news. Teaching is a set of skills, and skills can be learnt. Nobody is born knowing how to explain a roll down.

Host: You ended up training teachers yourself. How did that start?

Tania Huddart: After London I went to New Zealand, then to the States to finish my training, then back to New Zealand. I opened my own studio there. Eighteen months later, I started training teachers.

At first I taught the course I'd trained in. And I soon noticed something. My trainees could do the exercises. Beautifully, a lot of them. But they couldn't explain it so that others could follow. They couldn't teach.

So I started designing my own programme. I put the weight on teaching tools rather than exercises. How do you show something? How do you explain it? When do you ask a question? When do you use an image, or your hands? I ran that school for twenty-one years.

Because the people in your class don't need you to know one more exercise. They need you to help them understand the one they're doing.

Host: How did you know it was working?

Tania Huddart: By where my students came from. Most of them came to me because they'd been to classes with one or more of my trainees. Something about how they learnt Pilates from those teachers lit a spark in them. They wanted to teach like that. That told me more than anything else could.

Host: There's a common idea that a good teacher is someone who can do every exercise perfectly. What do you make of that?

Tania Huddart: I think it's back to front. If you judge a teacher on how well they do the exercises, you're judging a performer. Not a teacher.

Lots of us have restrictions in our own bodies. Some exercises may never be possible for you. That doesn't stop you teaching them well. And think about it from the client's side. As a client, I'd want someone who understood what I was going through. I'd feel intimidated by a teacher who did every movement perfectly but didn't know how to help me get where I wanted to go.

Host: So, the teacher who walks into a class on Monday morning. What's the first thing to change?

Tania Huddart: Stop demonstrating everything. That's the one almost everyone does.

When you start out, you show every exercise. It feels safe. Your body knows it, so you let your body do the talking. But if you teach many hours a day and show every movement, your body will soon complain. It can lead to injuries. And one day you won't be able to show it. Then you need words, and other tools.

Showing still has its place. Show it when an exercise is new. Show it again next class, as a reminder. And sometimes at the end, as a last picture to take home. But showing is one tool. It isn't the whole box.

Host: And words are easier?

Tania Huddart: Not always. Words can let you down too. Here's one. How do most of us cue an ab curl? You're lying on your back, and you curl your head and shoulders up off the mat. And we say, "Lift your head."

Now, think about this for a moment. Where do your abdominals attach to your head? They don't. So why do we say it?

The head is the weight the abdominals have to work against. The ribcage and the spine curl, and the head comes along for the ride. It's the end of the movement, not the start of it. So if you tell someone to lift their head, they'll often do just that, with their neck. And their abdominals stay where they were.

Host: So what do you say instead?

Tania Huddart: That's the work. You find another way to explain it. An image, or your hands, or a question. Most people need a few different ways to explore it. It takes time and repetition for them to make sense of what you're saying. That's normal. It isn't you getting it wrong. So you need a toolkit, not one cue you keep saying louder.

Host: If someone only changes one thing this week, what should it be?

Tania Huddart: Show it without talking. Then give one cue. Just one.

When you show an exercise and talk at the same time, people try to watch you and listen to you at once. They can't do both well. So show it in silence, and let them take in the shape. Then give them one thing to focus on as they start. Let them move. Watch them from a couple of different angles. Then you can add the next thing.

Keep your explanations short. One idea at a time. And let them practise before you move on to the next idea.

It sounds simple, and it's hard to do. Silence feels uncomfortable when you're new. You want to fill it, to prove you know things. But the people on the mat don't need you to prove anything. They need room to try.

Host: And how do you know if it's landed?

Tania Huddart: Ask them. Not "Did you understand?" because everyone says yes. Ask them something real. Where did you feel that? What position is your pelvis in? Their answer tells you whether your words worked. If they didn't, that's useful too. Now you know to try a different way.

Host: So if someone's driving home with three things in their head, what are they?

Tania Huddart: One. Doing the exercises and teaching them are two different skills. If nobody taught you the second one, that isn't your failure. You can learn it.

Two. The person who gets stuck halfway is your best teacher. Get curious about their body, and change your words.

Three. Show it without talking, then give one cue. Then leave them room to move.

Host: And a question to sit with?

Tania Huddart: Pick an exercise you love teaching. Now imagine you couldn't show it, not even once. How would you teach it?

Host: If you want the whole toolkit, it's in Tania's book, Teach Pilates with Confidence. Showing, explaining, asking questions, imagery, touch and cueing, all laid out with examples you can use in your next class.

Next episode, we go back a step. Before the how, there's the why. Why am I really doing this?

Tania, last word?

Tania Huddart: You already know the exercises. That part's done. Now you get to learn how to hand them to someone else. I'm a teacher at heart, and that's still the part I love most.