Season 3, Episode 7: How do I keep getting better, years in?

Tania Huddart: When I was newly qualified, I walked into my first mat class nervous, but prepared. I had my exercise list. I thought I had it sorted. And I fell over at the first hurdle. I knew which exercise I wanted to teach. But I hadn't thought about how to introduce it. How to get people set up. Or what to say after "hello and welcome".

Host: Welcome to Build Confidence and Purpose with Pilates. I'm here with Tania Huddart: Pilates teacher, teacher trainer and author of Teach Pilates with Confidence and 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 episode was about time and energy. This is the last episode of the season, and it's about growing as a teacher. How do I keep getting better, years in?

Tania Huddart: By staying curious. I think it's the most useful thing a teacher can do, at any stage.

Interest comes first. Once you're interested in something, you go looking. For new information, new experiences, new possibilities. That's how you keep growing. And I learned it the hard way, in that first class.

Host: Take us back to that first class. What happened next?

Tania Huddart: I wanted to leave the room and never come back. But I also knew I had to get through the hour. So I did. And it was a shambles.

Afterwards, I had a choice. I could decide I was a failure. Or I could get curious about what had gone wrong.

Host: And you got curious.

Tania Huddart: I did. And the first thing I noticed surprised me. I already knew how to teach. I'd been a dance teacher for years. I knew how to stand in front of a room.

What I hadn't worked out was how what I already knew applied to teaching Pilates. That's a different problem. It's not "I can't do this." It's "I haven't joined the dots yet." And you can do something about that.

Host: That's a kinder way to read a bad class.

Tania Huddart: It's kinder. And it's more useful. "I'm a failure" gives you nowhere to go. It's a full stop.

"I wonder what happened there" gives you a whole list of places to look. How did I introduce the exercise? How did I set people up? What did I say, and what did they hear? Every one of those questions has an answer. And every answer makes the next class better.

Host: Do newer teachers find that hard? To be curious about a class that went badly?

Tania Huddart: Very. When a class goes badly, it feels personal. You replay it on the drive home. You lie awake with it. And all of that is about you.

Curiosity takes you out of yourself. It turns "what's wrong with me" into "what happened in the room". The room you can do something about.

And curiosity gives you a reason to come back. It turns a bad hour into a problem to solve. Problems to solve are what make you want to learn the next skill.

Host: Is that where your teaching tools came from?

Tania Huddart: That's where they started. Out of that first class came questions. And out of the questions came a set of tools. They're built to answer the things teachers actually ask. How do I teach movement so that clients can grasp what I'm saying?

Later, when I started training teachers, I saw the same gap I'd fallen into. My trainees could do the exercises. But they couldn't explain them so that others could follow. They couldn't teach. So I built my training around teaching tools, not exercises. I ran that school for twenty-one years.

Host: And the tools still change, after all that time?

Tania Huddart: They do. I've honed them over twenty years. Because I keep asking.

I've been helping new and experienced teachers with their teaching for two decades now. In that time, I've been asked thousands of questions. How to teach. How to manage what clients expect. Every one of those questions has made the tools a bit better.

Host: So how does a teacher who's been at it ten years stay curious? It's easy at the start, when everything's new.

Tania Huddart: That's the real question. Years in, you can teach a class half asleep. You know the exercises. You know the order. That's the danger. You stop seeing.

When you're new, you write your class plan down. Years in, it lives in your head. That's a real skill. But it also means you can stop looking at it.

So keep asking the questions you asked at the start. Why did that cue land with her, and not with him? What would happen if I set that exercise up a different way? Where did the class lose its energy today? Ask them as if you'd never taught before.

Host: And outside the studio? What keeps you learning?

Tania Huddart: Keep learning. The Pilates industry keeps changing. There's new research, new ideas, new kinds of clients walking through the door. Stay open to that, and stay grounded in why you teach.

Take workshops. Take another teacher's class now and then, and be the student. Notice what it's like to be on the mat, not in front of it. Listen to feedback. Try new ideas, and see what happens. It keeps your work fresh and meaningful. And you can't know everything anyway. Nobody can. Our knowledge keeps moving. So you may as well enjoy finding out.

Host: You wrote that curiosity might be the most useful business exercise there is. That's a big claim.

Tania Huddart: It is. I asked it as a question in the article, so let me ask you. Did you ever think curiosity might be the most useful business exercise there is? It is. And I stand by it.

Your clients came to you for help. And you can give that help in your own way. Nobody else teaches quite like you do.

If you want to change people's lives with your own way of teaching, there's one thing you have to do. Get your clients curious about movement. And teach them with care, and a genuine interest in how they are.

When a client gets curious, they take ownership of their own movement. They start to notice things in their own bodies. They find ways to move better in their everyday life, without you there. They bring you questions.

And the tools that help you teach with clarity also grow your business. That's not a side effect. It's the same thing.

Host: Of all those thousands of questions teachers have asked you, which one comes up most?

Tania Huddart: Confidence. By a long way. Teachers who feel like impostors. New teachers, and experienced ones too. And until that's resolved, it's hard to teach from the heart.

Host: Does curiosity help with that?

Tania Huddart: I think it's one of the best answers to it. When you're worried about how you're coming across, all your attention is on you. Curiosity turns it round. You start watching the person in front of you. What are they feeling? What did they hear?

And your nerves take a back seat, because they've got nowhere to sit. You're not the expert standing over someone. You're working it out together.

That's what happened to me after that first class. The moment I got curious, I stopped being a failure and started being a teacher with a problem to solve. That's a much better thing to be.

Host: Looking back over this season, is there a thread that runs through it?

Tania Huddart: I think it's this. Feeling ready. How you come across. Cues, and flow. The hard client. Your energy. Every one of those comes back to where you put your attention.

Put it on the people you serve. Get curious about them. And look after yourself well enough to keep doing it, year after year.

Host: So, for the last time this season. Three things to take away?

Tania Huddart: One. A bad class isn't a verdict. It's a question. Swap "I'm a failure" for "I wonder what happened there."

Two. Keep asking the questions you asked at the start. Years in, they're still what make you better.

Three. Get your clients curious too. Teach them with care, and a real interest in how they are.

Host: And the question to sit with?

Tania Huddart: Think of the last class that didn't go the way you wanted. Not the worst one. Just the last one. What are you curious about, now, when you look back at it? Write it down, and take it into your next class.

Host: You'll find Tania's article, How curiosity makes you a better Pilates teacher, in the Journal at taniahuddart.com. And the teaching tools Tania talked about are all in her book, Teach Pilates with Confidence.

That's the end of Season 3, and there's more to come.

Tania, last word?

Tania Huddart: You already know more than you think. Stay curious about the rest. And be kind to the teacher who walked into that first class. That teacher got you here.

Host: That's the season. Thank you for listening, and for everything you bring into the teaching room.