Stop Hating on the 100

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​I m tired of people bashing a singular exercise. 


The Pilates Hundred or 100 is one of them.
​Mr. Pilates’ singular signature exercise of static and dynamic stabilization. 


There is nothing wrong with most movements IF the body performing it is READY and biomechanically ORGANIZED: In simple terms, the right parts are organized to stabilize whilst the right parts are organized to mobilize. Like a door frame, and a door and the hinges. With proper timing of muscular activation and firing sequence, bone rhythms, good diaphragmatic breathing control to further support the structure. 


🌟Truth: It may take someone with no prior experience of intrinsic muscular training (dancers, gymnasts) about 3-7 years to properly approach the 100 with proper instruction and personal readiness. 


🌟Truth: Prescribing exercises requiring a high level of intrinsic muscular organization to an unready student can encourage compensatory strategies leading to pain and injury. 


🌟Truth: The client’s immediate goals are priority. For example, someone coming in for back pain relief simply wanting to achieve better locomotion. The majority of my clients! There’s so much to get the body organized before they can produce a “vertical rib cage supported by a horizontal pelvis, with a head on plumb c3 and up”, the position of the 100 as described by my mentor, Karen H. Carlson. Time is a huge factor. And if I cannot produce results so that they can feel better right away, I ll never see that potential far away day of teaching them the 100. 


🌟Truth: You can have lineage and great trainings and teach good pilates. You can have lineage and great trainings and teach 💩 pilates even if you are teaching good stuff— how? When you are too blinded by repertoire or your own agenda or too scared to look at the 🔥WHOLE🔥 client in front of you. (Yes. It can be scary. Because taking full inventory of their strengths and limitations now makes you the trainer ACCOUNTABLE. You can no longer with good conscience just teach them what the training gave you. Now you have to apply strategically.) OR, When you trust the book more than you trust your gut. 


🌟If you want to heal, you cannot hide behind repertoire. You must know the repertoire to teach the method with discernment, but you cannot hide behind it to heal others with movement. For young teachers reading this, I encourage you to please make that decision sooner than later. Do you want to heal others with movement, or simply teach Pilates? Both are worthy goals, and clarity now will go a long way. 


If healing is your path, then I offer you two simple steps to step 3. 

1. First, it is important DO YOUR BEST to understand every exercise in the repertoire if you intend to teach Pilates. Even ones you have no use for.  This can be a lifelong project, because you can see things differently as time passes. 
2.  Then, think  critically 💡

And that trusting your gut part— step 3- it just happens when you do 1 and 2 long enough. I had to start with my life outside of Pilates to access that intuition. Then, it seeped into my practice. It took me a LONG time to start, and it is still a work in progress. 


Unless there is specific contraindication or pathology, in the back of my mind I do not throw  the 100 away for a client as a “maybe one day” goal. Usually to be able to do 100 right 🌟just happens🌟after years of working on form and function. 




#pilates #painfree