Episode Show Notes
Welcome to the Pilates Diaries Podcast.
Our guest on this episode is Anthony Lett. Anthony is a long-term Pilates teacher with a fascinating array of interests across philosophy, evolutionary biology, exercise and health, body work, Buddhism, stress, and physiology. Anthony is extremely well-traveled delivering his highly sought after education programs across the globe. He’s the author of a library of Pilates and related resources across many mediums available in multiple languages through Amazon and he’s the creator the brands: Innovation in Pilates, YIN Pilates, STRETCHFIT, and Pilates Kinesiology, and has even gone as far as designing and producing a range of custom made apparatus that support all of these methodologies. With qualifications and post-graduate studies to back all of this up, Anthony has completed studies in Philosophy, Sports Science, Exercise Medicine, Clinical Anatomy, Mind- Body Medicine and Health in Buddhism. I’m interested to see where the conversation takes us from the beginning because in 1995, Anthony was named the Victorian and Australian coach of the year by Tennis Australia.
The mission of this podcast is to share the stories of the impact of Pilates to help you live and move with more joy, physical vitality, and renewed vigor.
Pilates was a somewhat unknown word until it started creeping into conversation somewhere around the 2000s- maybe even before then depending on who you asked and amongst which circles, and has largely remained and enigma for many reasons- one of which perhaps is that Pilates really has to be experienced to be understood.
There are now a wide range of Pilates styles available when you attend a Pilates class, perhaps borne from the variation of interpretations of how Pilates was originally taught by its founder, Joseph Pilates.
With The Pilates Diaries Podcast we’re inviting Pilates enthusiasts around the globe to share with us what they’ve noted down in their Pilates Diary. Our hope is that the Pilates Diaries Podcast goes some way to answering the question ” What is it that makes Pilates so special?”
We’ll take a privileged peek into the Pilates Diaries of our guests to gain a greater insight into the impact Pilates can have in all of our lives and contribute to the health and wellbeing of the community at large.
I welcome you along for the journey and welcome your comments and discussions through the links found on your favorite podcast platform. Enjoy.
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Episode Transcript
In the spirit of respect, The Pilates Diaries Podcast acknowledges the people and elders of the Bunurong people, members of the Kulin Nation, who have traditional connections and responsibilities for the land on which this podcast is produced.
Hi, I’m Bruce Hildebrand and this is The Pilates Diaries Podcast.
The mission of this podcast is to share the stories of the impact of Pilates. We’re inviting Pilates enthusiasts to share with us the notes they’ve taken down in their Pilates journey as we seek out the answers to the intrigue Pilates has been able to ignite inside millions all over the world. Our hope is that The Pilates Diaries Podcast goes some way to answering the question " What is it that makes Pilates so special?" Join me for privileged peek into this episodes Pilates Diary.
Our guest on this episode is Anthony Lett. Anthony is a long-term Pilates teacher with a fascinating array of interests across philosophy, evolutionary biology, exercise and health, body work, Buddhism, stress, and physiology. Anthony is extremely well-traveled delivering his highly sought after education programs across the globe. He’s the author of a library of Pilates and related resources across many mediums available in multiple languages through Amazon and he’s the creator the brands: Innovation in Pilates, YIN Pilates, STRETCHFIT, and Pilates Kinesiology, and has even gone as far as designing and producing a range of custom made apparatus that support all of these methodologies. With qualifications and post-graduate studies to back all of this up, Anthony has completed studies in Philosophy, Sports Science, Exercise Medicine, Clinical Anatomy, Mind- Body Medicine and Health in Buddhism. I’m interested to see where the conversation takes us from the beginning because in 1995, Anthony was named the Victorian and Australian coach of the year by Tennis Australia. Anthony, I’m very much looking forward to our conversation. Welcome to the show.
Thanks Bruce, for inviting me on, I’m honored to be on your podcast.
Anthony, we’ll begin by taking you look back. Can you tell me about life before Pilates? What were your pursuits? Where did you see yourself heading at the time? And in hindsight, what do you now see were some little threads that might’ve led you to discover Pilates?
When I started Pilates, I’d finished a degree in philosophy and I was just finishing the Sports Science Graduate Diploma. I was coaching a lot of tennis, I’d stopped playing competitively, and that was about 1995. Thinking back, there were only probably two studios in Melbourne at the time- no one had ever heard of Pilates. I saw it on one of those Today/ Tonight shows, they had Ian Moss on there from Cold Chisel- he’d had sore back from playing guitar, and he was going to a studio in Sydney and I thought all this looks interesting. I wasn’t really looking to become a teacher or wasn’t really looking for rehab, but I was very interested in what it seemed to offer and I was always really stiff. I’d tried yoga and hadn’t been attracted to it- there was too much guru ism and mysticism and all that- I wasn’t really interested in that. I’ve said this lots of times publicly, too- I wasn’t interested in learning Indian metaphysics- I just wanted to become more flexible! Not that I’m against that, but that wasn’t what I was after. I found a Pilates studio in Melbourne and started off as a client.
Fascinating history- you were based in Melbourne I’m gathering at this point in time you’ve travelled around the world- Pilates has it taken you lots of places from humble beginnings in very early stage of Pilates in Melbourne by the sound of it?
That’s right- I think there were two studios, both dance related and so I went to one in South Melbourne- I think it’s still there Body Concepts Studio and it was linked to the Australian Ballet School as well. So it was interesting because a lot of the people there were dancers either professional in the company or dance students, so I was one of the odd ones who wasn’t and I felt pretty average compared to them in terms of what they could do and their general body awareness and control. That’s one of the things that appealed to me, I think, because, in the areas that I’d been , which was in sport science, it was very much, running and gym based, but there wasn’t that sort of deep embodied work that Pilates involved and that’s what attracted me to it in the beginning.
It’s an interesting combination of arriving with a philosophy degree under your belt and also a sports science degree- it’s a pretty good merger to arrive to Pilates at that point.
Yeah it was and, I’d studied Greek philosophy and I could see that Joseph Pilates had a bit too- he referred a lot to cultivating mind, body and spirit. Everyone talks about it now, but back in the nineties, that was fairly radical to be thinking about mind, body exercise. It appealed to me because in sports science, the body is regarded mostly as a machine that you just panel-beat into doing what you need it to do for your competition. But Pilates was more about becoming embodied and being connected to your body rather than crashing it about as a machine. So it was an interesting time to find that form of exercise certainly for me. Yoga offered a bit of that, but Pilates seemed to offer that without the other semi religious stuff, which I was more inclined towards that.
And did you feel like you could find your sports science in your Pilates sufficiently, or did you feel like it was too much of a shift from that? Having come through a sports science degree myself, it was very much the jock mentality, the traditional run, jump and throw kind of thing, and can you do a PB versus this real shift into a mind body awareness side of it?
Yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. At first the teachers that I had didn’t really have any background in sports science, they were ex-dancers, and so they’d learned a method, not that I just followed it black and white, but they had learned a method and I was trying to understand it through a sports science background, I guess, like you and thinking is this a form of resistance training or on the jump board are we doing plyometrics? And core strength training back then was really just starting to become a discipline or- people were becoming aware of it with the Physiotherapy studies- I think they came out of Queensland Uni- all about segmental stabilization. So there was a bit of that thrown in, so I was trying to look at it from that perspective, which was interesting. And then the teachers that I had I’m not really sure they had a defined philosophy about what they were doing- they were thinking more about just developing a method, which I liked, but also I had some problems with that too, because probably like you, I had a scientific background and I wanted to understand it from a scientific perspective as well. And that just wasn’t a consideration for them and I think a lot of the Pilates world at that time, really.
I’m curious to chat further with that how you’ve continued to expand on your in-depth knowledge and study to apply all those scientific approaches or principles to your Pilates.
Yeah. I’ve thought a lot about that and, there’s really two ways of looking at it- there’s the scientific perspective and then there’s the mind body perspective and maybe they’re not even that different, but they’re just ways of looking at Pilates and seeing how it works and what it’s about.
It’s amazing a methodology can traverse those two is what I’ve always been fascinated by with Pilates.
Yeah, and there are teachers that are probably more inclined to one direction or the other. But then when you start to look at ‘ mind body medicine’, you start to realize there’s a lot more than just biomechanics too- in terms of health.
Anthony, can you tell me a story of when you first arrived at Pilates? You mentioned there wasn’t many of your kind in the class
Yeah, I think I was probably one of the few guys- there was a couple of male actors- but I was one of the few guys there. I can remember it because it was in South Melbourne, it was the other side of town I used to have a 7am class, I’d go over twice a week and I really enjoyed it because it was such a different environment. I enjoyed that because I wasn’t a huge fan of the gym environment and the clanking weight and the posing and all that stuff, it’s never really appealed to me. So this was a nice way of working that wasn’t so obsessed with looking in mirrors, it was more embodied rather than about physical appearances to some extent.
I do remember the teacher got me to do a whole lot of mat work first. I had really no idea what I was doing, but we did a lot of mat work. There was no program, it was about an hour and a half of Mat work and then another hour of Reformer work. So all up and it’d take about two and a half hours. They didn’t have a Cadillac or a Wunda Chair so it was just Mat and Reformer work. We did everything- it was a long workout- which I really enjoyed as well. Of course, I felt fantastic.
You can go into a real depth in that period of time and really immerse yourself in it.
Yeah and she had eight students starting every hour and a half or so. I think that was the original way that Joseph Pilates ran his studio, which I visited in New York years later and watched them do they work out. So they worked that way as well- from what I could gather. You weren’t allowed to speak in that studio so I didn’t get to ask many questions!
It sounds very like Joseph Pilates walking around with a cane to keep you quiet and focus on your workout.
Yeah, it was pretty strict! And even the way that they got on the Reformer- it was with a half forward roll onto the carriage to start the workout so that was interesting. It wasn’t quite that strict in the studio that I went to, but there certainly wasn’t any talking or anything like that- it was pretty focused.
Fascinating. You’ve talked about your first impressions of Pilates and your teacher- what about the other people in the class and even some of the perceptions of other people in your life, Anthony, when you tell them that you’d begun this thing called Pilates.
Yeah, most of the other clients were dancers. I remember Sigrid Thornton was there, the actress, couple of other actors and actresses- dancers mostly. People had no idea what I was talking about when I’d say I’m going to do Pilates. I remember them saying what is it? And I had no idea about what it was, so I had trouble explaining it as well. I’d say I was on these machines and, we go back and forth and there’s some resistance. It was very hard at that point to put it into words- and try and understand it. I remember looking around for some books and I could only get one book and I ordered it from the UK the foreword was from Pat Cash- I think it was called The Pilates Body. Then I ordered all the manuals from Stott Pilates because I was really keen to learn more about it. There was just nothing- I remember ordering all their videos and all their teaching manuals, which you could buy so that I could understand what it was all about. There was another place- The Physical Mind Institute in the U S and they had some materials and videos so I bought some VHS videos and shipped them over as well. You couldn’t buy any equipment or anything like that so it was very new to Australia!
Fascinating. Can you share with us Anthony, some of your earliest progress in Pilates? What was your experience when you first started to notice that Pilates was starting to have an impact on your life?
Yeah it’s a subtle thing I think at first and it still is- people still come in and say "how many weeks is it going to take me?" I always say, for what, what are you expecting in a month? You won’t look very different- it takes a bit longer than that to change your body shape but if you’ve got some form of self-awareness you will start to feel that your function’s better, you can bend a bit more, you can move with a bit more ease, you’ve got a bit more energy, your joints don’t feel as stiff- they’re the sort of physical things. There’s also a a feeling I always found a sense of calmness and relaxation after a workout. The breathing, the quietness and the focus helps with that – we know now that there’s a chemical response to those sorts of exercises that make you feel like that and if you engage the parasympathetic nervous system- depending on what you do in the studio- but if you do that relaxed type of work it’ll help you to be more relaxed. Then the idea is to carry that over- as Joe always said- into the activities of daily life.
It’s fascinating to hear you speak so I richly given the breadth of study and the topics you’ve explored over the years, Anthony, it just comes through loud and clear in your descriptions.
Joseph Pilates said a lot in his books too, about, bringing his work into our daily life and I think that’s something that we tend to forget with Pilates. It’s not just a matter of being good at Pilates for an hour or two a week on the Reformer in your Reformer class- it’s supposed to permeate your daily life. Sometimes I think we forget that now with our emphasis just on being good at whatever it is, leg work, or, doing the a hundred or whatever, there’s more to it than that!
That’s one of the intentions of The Pilates Diaries Podcast to articulate that in a range of different ways, Anthony and, to have that be a conversation. So thank you.
Yeah. That’s great. I think it’s important because I always say to clients " It’s no good being good here for two hours a week- it’s the rest of your life. And you get that principle from sports science, the principle of transference- talking about in that sense how does exercise transfer from the gym to your sporting ability? But here in Pilates it’s also important how do we transfer what we learn in the studio to our activities of daily life? That’s always been an important question for me.
Anthony, was there part of the experience that you didn’t like at any point that he didn’t want to accept or parts of Pilates that you found challenging in your pursuit of wanting to improve?
Not really, I think I was pretty open to it- the only thing I was a bit disappointed with was the reluctance to look at Pilates from a sports scientific framework. It wasn’t particularly open to that- it was like this is what we do, this is our method and there’s a series of exercises and we just do them. We’re not going to question what it is that we’re doing or why. Not that I caused any trouble, I just went to class and did what I was taught to do basically, but I always wanted to understand it more deeply and there was a bit of resistance to analyzing it from a sports science perspective. In some studios, not necessarily the one that I went to, there was an assumption that if you did Pilates, there was something wrong with you- you had pathologies or you were going to be medicalized and fixed. I think that’s something that’s developed further with the Physiotherapy influence that Pilates is for broken people and that you’re going to be fixed by doing Pilates. So there was that aspect- I’ve likened it in the past to positive psychology- when you go and see a psychologist, the assumption is there’s something wrong with you. The positive psychologists say not necessarily, maybe you just want to get better as a functioning person. I think that’s what Pilates can do for you as well- you don’t necessarily have to have something wrong with you or have the teachers say " Oh, you’ve got all these issues that now I’m going to fix for you." And we all know that’s not as simple as doing a bunch of exercises anyway usually- it’s more complex than that. So that’s my thoughts on that, but otherwise I loved learning it all and I really enjoyed the whole experience.
Anthony, who were some of the people that you met along the way at this point that really helped shape your Pilates experience?
Well, there wasn’t anyone because there were no one else doing it really- there were no other teachers- so there was no one really that influenced me other than the two teachers that I had who were great. Then there was the Stott Pilates videos which were really useful. There was no internet, so I couldn’t really look anything up. So I just went to the studio. I tried to buy a reformer and I couldn’t get one. I ended up buying one from the studio that I was a student at, and then built my own. When I opened the studio, we built our own because we couldn’t get any. But really there wasn’t anyone I can think of. In later years, I’ve travelled and met lots of interesting people but in those first five years I didn’t know anyone else who did Pilates really.
Fascinating! Just coming back to the earlier point a moment ago, Anthony the whole adoption of sport science by the Pilates conversation- do you feel like that’s changed more so over the years through the time that you’ve been involved and maybe the same question is, do you think if that was available to Joseph Pilates at the time, would that be adopted or do you feel like he would have stuck to his guns more so of what he developed and stayed truer to what we now know as that core level of thinking?
Yeah. I’m not sure what Joe Pilates would have done- he seemed to be very creative and he did borrow from other methodology- you can see it in Swedish gymnastics there were even machines that looked a bit like Reformers I’ve got some old pictures of, so I think he borrowed from that. You can see similarities in yoga. So he probably would have been open to incorporating whatever it was around him that was useful for his method. I guess that’s all I can speculate not knowing what he was like or how open-minded he was.
In terms of has sports science permeated into Pilates, I think it has, to some extent it depends on which schools you study with. I think Polestar is certainly much more science-based, and BASI is pretty science-based. Same with Stott to me the differences between them are not all that pronounced really, they’re just minor often aesthetic differences rather than big biomechanical differences.
But I don’t know about all the other schools and I don’t know about the Australian ones, but I think so, and certainly with the dance medicine and the training that Physios have got there’s certainly more integration of sport and science into Pilates, which is great. On the other hand I had some Physios who came to train with me who didn’t know that Pilates was actually a person- they thought it was just a name like yoga and they’d finished their course in clinical Pilates and didn’t know that Pilates was a person. So I think that’s a shame too, because they’ve lost the background and the essence of what it was. I think there should be some study of that too- no matter which course you do- so you can see its development and where it’s come from. And I guess that’s why there’s this movement- what do they call it? Authentic Pilates or True Pilates that they’re going back to using the metal machines and very traditional technique and then there’s the Contemporary Pilates. I’m not involved to that extent, but it seems like there’s a bit of a split between those two groups. But I would have to say that I don’t think it matters what Reformer you use! My tennis coach used to say most rackets are much better than the people using them, and I think it’s the same with Reformers- it doesn’t matter if it’s timber or wood!
Anthony, can you reflect on the time when you knew you were getting hooked on Pilates? Was there some hidden gems that were beginning to find their way into your Pilates practice that you couldn’t ignore perhaps had crept on the skin and wear itches that you couldn’t resist scratching?
Yeah. I think pretty soon after I started because I was getting fairly tired of teaching tennis and I was not sure what to do with myself in terms of a career. And loving doing the Pilates work I was already a teacher, I had a teaching background so pretty early on, I thought running a studio would be something that would really appeal to me. So I set about doing that pretty soon after I started as a student, but I didn’t open a studio probably for five years- I did a lot of training as a student and then some apprenticing and when I opened which was in 2001, I still was very rough as a teacher. I can’t say that I was hugely wise- I was jumping in the deep end to some extent, but you have to start somewhere.
Can you share with us what that initial setup was for you- that early setup of the studio in Melbourne?
Yeah. There wasn’t any equipment, so I bought one Reformer from the studio that I was training at, and then I copied it basically. And I think we built six and it was a beautiful place in Clifton Hill- there was a health shop on the ground floor. On the second floor, there were about 10 beautiful practitioner rooms. It was an old Victorian house that had been converted to a shop. I leased out the top floor and it was stunning- I was very lucky to get it at the time. So I set up there and then three months after I opened, the whole building burnt down! And it was the morning of September 11th when the twin towers went down as well- so that was a great morning!
That’s an incredible story- what a setback!
Yeah. waking up to the twin towers and the studio burning to the ground! And of course I was pretty young and I had checked I remember asking the studio have we got insurance here and they said yeah, we’ve got building insurance and me thinking oh, that’s good, that’s all I need. So I hadn’t insured the content, so that was the end of everything- all my equipment gone. That was not a great start, but in that three months, I’d been successful enough to think that it had a future because I had quite, a lot of people come in who were interested and quite a lot of clients already.
So I thought I’m not going to give up here- we built equipment again and in four weeks we opened in Brunswick Street.
You found another location in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy- it’s well known straight in Melbourne for those from out of town
I was very lucky to find that it was a beautiful old building- similar to the one that I’d been in and it was pretty cheap at that stage because that end of Brunswick Street was still a bit sleazy so it wasn’t the best location, but it was already starting to change. it was becoming gentrified and now it’s very expensive. When I started the rent was 250 a week and when I left it was about 1500 a week- that was over 15 years- it certainly increased a lot during that time!
Fifteen years, a long time in a well established studio- that was an interesting journey?
It was, it was fantastic. At the start there was no competition, so it was easy. We had a lot of people come in and the studio was very busy for a long time, I even rented the top floor for a while as well- we had some classes up there- Reformer classes and stretch classes, studio classes downstairs. It was great, and I learned a lot during that time, I kept studying lots of things, integrating the things that I’d learned into whatever I was teaching, which was great because I wasn’t bound by anything, I was just able to experiment. I had a lot of clients and I was able to integrate all the things that I was learning, trying them out. So it was a te sting lab as well as the studio, which was a great opportunity to grow.
I think it takes a certain approach or a certain individual to be driven to that pathway of discovery Anthony, I think that speaks volumes of the leadership that you took in navigating your way in that early stage of Pilates without, by the sound of it, a huge amount of available information. You very much navigated your way on the basis of this early understanding that you had of it.
Yeah. I’ve always been driven by things that I’m interested in, irrespective of whether they are going to make me any money. I thought Pilates was fantastic so many benefits physically and mentally so I wanted to share with people and I wanted to understand it in depth- that’s just how I am- I just kept exploring different ways of teaching it, different ways of looking at it and different ways of developing my studio and my classes and my training and so that was my life really. And it was very fulfilling because the studio was successful financially- you don’t make millions from Pilates studios- nobody does, but it was profitable, and it gave me the freedom to explore my interests, which were bodywork really. It was a great time.
And you developed your brand to become courseworks in Innovations in Pilates. I gather from that early time, it was very much a innovative time for you and you were shaping together all these different modalities and different ranges of studies to bring it together with Pilates.
That’s right, I was learning a lot of stretching and I did massage therapy and studied some clinical anatomy and different things where I felt Pilates was lacking so that I could integrate these things into the system that I was teaching. So then I started to think about how I could record them and share them with other people, really, that was the intention. So that became Innovations in Pilates, which then became a book and then a couple of books and then teacher training so it all just developed slowly with the intention of showing people what I was doing- not necessarily saying it’s the best thing that you can do, but just sharing what I was doing and the results that I was getting and offering it to other people.
I think the standout bit there is from the in-depth study of Pilates that you’d done you obviously saw opportunities to fill in the gaps that you saw that weren’t being satisfied by strictly sticking to the ‘ so-called’ one approach?
Yeah. Look, there’s a huge volume of work in the Pilates Method and you can certainly get a lot out of it. I felt though that I wasn’t getting as flexible as I wanted to, and I’ve said this in my books I think one of the reasons was that the teachers didn’t really know how to break things down. They were ballet teachers, they were teaching ballet students and they were already flexible. So there wasn’t the understanding of well, how do I make it accessible to Anthony who’s stiff? What’s he going to do? Well, what I did was for years, not do it very well. And then I guess, their thinking was if he just follows the method long enough, he’ll get better at it! But to me, I felt like there must be a better way than just sticking it out and doing it pretty badly for a long period of time. Certain repertoire that I couldn’t do because I was too stiff and I’d started Pilates, one of the reasons was, to become more flexible, which is why I’d done yoga. I wanted to be able to improve that aspect of the work. The other thing was that a lot of exercises were dynamic in form and that’s not always the best or safest way to become flexible, I believe. There’s nothing wrong with dynamic stretching, at a certain point, but when you’re beginning and you’re stiff, I don’t think it’s the best way. So that informed my work to integrate some more static, contract-relax, PNF type stretching into Pilates, both in the mat work and on the Reformer, which I felt was a great tool for stretching on. A lot of the work that I did was just slowing down the dynamic work on the Reformer and integrating some PNF stretching into it, which I felt broadened the work and offered people a bit more- and offered stiff people, an opportunity to be able to do Pilates more successfully and more safely.
It’s safe to say that your approach has been well received all around the world with the success of many of your courses internationally- there’s a lot of need for that being patient with the stretching approach.
Yeah, I think so- and the feedback I get when I teach everywhere is "Oh, we didn’t do any stretching in our courses" which is a shame considering that Joseph said " My method is stretch with strength and control" and he talked a lot about being a supple as a cat and so on. But, I think that was partly because it was taken over by the idea of core strength and inner range stability. Nothing wrong with any of that but it’s only one way of working and one way of developing a human. Outer range flexibility and outer range strength and dynamic flexibility is also important depending on the person, but Pilates teachers were telling me they didn’t have those tools. If you look through any of the coursework there’s not much stretching in any of it as far as I can see in Stott, BASI, Polestar- there isn’t much stretching in any of their workbooks as far as I can see. That was a way that I could contribute and teachers were free to choose. I wasn’t telling them how to teach, I was saying "Look, here’s a whole bunch of stretches for all of the muscle groups of the body. Feel free to integrate them into the work as you see fit". That’s what I’ve been teaching for a long time. When I went to the U S at first, someone wanted to use my courses for professional development and I approached the PMA and they said "No this is not Pilates, this is stretching". I sent them a whole bunch of pictures of my work and Joseph Pilates’ work- like a collage of the similarities and it was basically the same, except that mine was done statically. So they came back and said " Fair enough, okay, we’ll accredit your courses", which was good- but it shows you how far away they’d moved from his traditional work in a way.
The same thing happened in Australia, I must add, with the Pilates Alliance- they came back and said the same thing the first year they accredited my course for 12 points, then the second year was dropped to one because it wasn’t Pilates! That was about 10 years ago now, but I sound like I’m bitter, but I’m not, I’m just saying that this is the course that Pilates has travelled- it became something quite different! That’s great that it became more science focused and focused on specific techniques for stability but it lost I think some of the original intention, which was flexibility. There’s been a lot of movement in different directions, I guess.
I think it’s fascinating with your breadth of experience over the years to have seen that landscape change numerous times.
Yeah, it has- It was interesting when I went in 2015 I talked with Lolita San Miguel- who was one of two people to ever have been trained by Joseph Pilates as a teacher, she wrote the foreword in my book- and she said it’s great to see you doing the stretching part again, because she felt like it had vanished as well, so that was interesting.
I think that’s a strong vote of confidence for you.
Yes, was nice,
In your leadership role, Anthony, early days in Melbourne in amongst a gradually growing industry by the sound of it- leadership sometimes is met with objections, what are you doing with the method? lots of different interpretations no doubt! Where there’s some hidden issues or hidden conversations going on all around you or in various conversations that you’re in, or the industry at large that you didn’t feel aligned with?
I’ve never actually taken much notice- I don’t care to be honest, Bruce, I’m happy doing my work and I’ve never wanted to get involved in arguments about who’s right or which approach to Pilates is right, which is wrong. I know that there were conversations at various associations about my work and how it was all based on flexibility and it was rubbish. I couldn’t care less to be honest- I just do what I’m interested in. I don’t get involved and I try to take a balanced approach. When I was studying sports science- this is one of the things I always say in my introduction- one of the lecturers always said you’re training one of five qualities when you’re doing physical training- you probably heard this too- the five S’s. There was strength, speed, stamina, suppleness, and skill. I’ve always said Pilates can pretty much try and all of them! You can do speed with your jump board stuff. You can do skill to some extent- something like scapular stability or scapular rhythm. You can train strength – put all the Springs on and train for hypertrophy. You can train for stamina if you want to work on submaximal strength and endurance, and if you want to work on suppleness you can that’s the area that I’m interested in. We’re all applying different stresses to the body for different outcomes so to me, the whole argument about who’s wrong and right is unsophisticated and a bit petty. It’s more about what are you trying to do for your client, which of these five S’s are you trying to bring about? That’s what I’m more interested in. I think you should be able to justify every exercise that you prescribe against one of those qualities- is a for strength, skill, speed, stamina, suppleness?. Why are you prescribing this set of exercises for that person? There could be a traditional one could be spinal rolls it could be a contract-relax hip flexor stretch, whatever it is you need to think about why it is, you’re doing what you’re doing, and that’s where I’m coming from.
If we could dig a little deeper Anthony into the evolution and the development that you’ve gone to huge lengths with not only your different methodologies and you’ll apparatus design, and so forth. Can you tell us more about Yin Pilates? more about StretchFit? More about Pilates Kinesiology and also your apparatus, design and development?
I’ll start with Yin Pilates- that’s probably more interesting for most people. I’ve always been interested in Yin yoga and a lot of the things that I’ve learned in the last five years really have been from yoga teachers like Paul Greeley, who is probably the person that created Yin yoga. And then Bernie Clark he’s written three incredible books on a scientific approach to yoga, but focusing more on skeletal variations, and how they impact upon your ability to do physical work like yoga or Pilates- so it’s fascinating. I was interested in a lot of their work, and I felt that Innovations in Pilates, nobody really knew what it meant. So I changed the name to Yin Pilates because a lot of people had heard of Yin yoga, and even if they hadn’t, the way that I promoted Yin Pilates was that it’s an alternative form of Pilates that focuses more on relaxation, stress management stretching, slow, deep breathing, as opposed to some of them more thoracic type breathing that you might do in a conventional class.
So there’s more emphasis on relaxation and mind- body techniques, if you want to call it that- parasympathetic development of the nervous system. The word that I learned about in mind-body medicine and the whole model of health care was really what I wanted to embody in that word Yin Pilates, rather than the biomechanical approach. The course that I put together, it’s still got all the original stretches in it, but there’s also an emphasis on stress management, understanding what stress is, how it affects the body, and we integrate visualizations for the five minutes at the end of class, things like checking in for the first five minutes so that we consciously transitioning into a more relaxed mode and being more present in the studio rather than just starting with a bunch of exercises. It’s a more holistic approach to what we do so that’s what Yin Pilates is. We’re teaching courses- we haven’t done one for a while because of the studio in Bali, I haven’t visited for two and a half years where we’ve got 10 Reformers there- they’re just sitting idle! I managed to get one course in last year in Brisbane and I’m doing some online level one courses. There’s a couple of teachers who are coming next month to Brisbane to do their level three and then they’re going to start teaching Yin Pilates courses themselves- one in South Korea, one in Singapore- that’s the idea that other people can then start teaching their own teacher training when they’re ready.
Can you expand on how those courses have been received all around the world?- people are finding it. It’s a nice blend and compliment to the so-called mainstream Pilates approach and it’s a compliment to that you’re finding?
We are- there are some teachers who just integrate the work into what they’re already doing and that’s fine, and then other teachers are running specific Yin Pilates classes on their timetable. There’s quite a few in the UK- everywhere really- I’ve taught these courses in about 27 or 28 countries. So there are Yin Pilates classes on their timetable and they’re usually pretty much full because people love coming to the studio and doing a more relaxed stretching class with a bit of visualization. I used to have people who would come to my studio and then go to yoga to do their stretching and relaxation and I used to think why are we losing people to yoga when part of the initial goal of Joseph Pilates was to become as "supple as a cat". Why can’t we offer them that here? That’s what they’re doing- they’re offering Yin Pilates sessions and their classes are usually very popular. So that’s been great.
Twenty-seven countries around the world- is that multiple languages that you’re speaking the training into?
Yes. I can remember some funny instances where I’d say " this is a stretch for the hamstrings" is everyone clear on hamstring anatomy? And someone had come back and say "yeah, it’s here"- and I’d say to the translator " Hang on, what did you just say?" because they definitely not up here. So there were some funny moments, but generally the translation and the practice is good- There’s people in Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Brazil, the UK, U.S., – all over the place there’s a lot- it’s been fantastic! I’ve loved going everywhere of course. It’s great to have Pilates teachers embrace this particular style of work.
Well done! I think that’s important to acknowledge the length of gone to to spread this education where I’m sure parts of the world don’t have access to that level of knowledge and expertise.
Thank you, and I think it depends how you approach it- if you say to people "Your method’s wrong, here’s the right one"- you’ll get opposition- but I’ve always said this is an addition to what you already do. Of course there are some people say "No, it’s not- I already do all this and I’ve had people review my books that say this has offered me nothing than I already do- that’s fine. You can’t teach something to someone who feels like they already know it all- so I just say "Well that’s great- go for it! But there are a lot of teachers who say, this is great- I really appreciate being able to integrate or add this to my work- and that’s the intention of it- so it’s been fantastic.
It’s water off a duck’s back, I’m sure, to someone who’s done as much ego neutralizing work as you have over the years, Anthony.
As I said, I’m not interested in arguing with someone about who knows more. It’s just if you can’t use it, then that’s great- you already know it all!
I saw on your program many years ago in Melbourne the class type called StretchFit
Yeah, it was such a popular class in Melbourne that I kept teaching it. I always enjoyed it because, you get a bunch of men in- I still do in my StretchFit now one of the main focuses is on classes for men. It’s actually sad to hear their stories because they’re so stiff, in so much pain, they’ve done the rounds, they’ve tried Physio, Chiro, Osteo- not that there’s anything wrong with them, but they’re not set up to offer exercise programs for people in chronic pain- they’re a more acute care programs. We have a lot of guys that come in who are at their ‘wit’s end’- they’re depressed, they’re drinking because they’re just in so much pain and discomfort. So the StretchFit classes it’s a good way to get them in- because it’s not too serious, but once they get there, they really enjoy it and they find it really profoundly effective for them- a lot of them! It’s been something that I enjoy and a lot of people have found benefit from.
I think that’s an important message for us as guys in the industry to keep up- because like you had to step outside the norm at 7am in the early days in the mid nineties to go and do something that you were interested in and obviously we’re benefiting from, to be able to offer that now, to guys who actually need that support and help and are keen to take up that sort of pursuit to get the results is super important, I think.
Yeah, I think it is and if I got these guys who come into the studio to do a Mat or Reformer Pilates class, it’d be impossible for them- it’d be just another failure for them which they don’t need and it doesn’t do any good for anyone or Pilates in general, to have men dropping out saying "Oh, I tried that it wasn’t much good!" So I think we have to be, pardon the pun, flexible for those people so that we can actually help them. And talking about StretchFit that’s why I built the equipment too, because it makes the whole process much more simple for them. Stretching on the floor is very hard- even for me, I found it very hard and on the Reformer, it’s good, but it can be complicated, and you’ve got this moving carriage and springs and for guys that are stiff to lie down and put their foot in a strap and so on- it’s can be pretty challenging. So the StretchFit equipment we isolate muscle groups compartmentally. We move around the body from the calf group to the hamstring group, to the anterior thigh that the medial thigh- we work through it that way- so it’s very scientific in a sense, but we don’t talk science to them, but it makes it very simple because it’s like bodybuilding they’re isolating a muscle group, they’re stretching it, then they move on to the next one. It’s simple for men to understand that concept and it’s easier for them to do it.
And I think getting the message out through running courses, it’s important otherwise there’s this little cottage industry that only happens in your local area!
Yeah, and it’s half the population! I don’t know what percentage of men you would consider flexible, but it probably isn’t many, so you’ve got probably 45% of the population who need to stretch and who don’t really know where to do it or how to do it! It’s a big demographic- probably 60 -70% of my studio is men.
And I would echo that same statistic when I’m teaching Pilates- as a guy I attract guys to come along and do Pilates and normalize it largely, which I’m really proud of being able to offer that.
It is, it’s great- and guys probably find it easier to be taught by a guy- we’re simple as well, so we can explain it simply. I actually did a workshop with the Italian Pilates Federation a few months ago on how to attract men to do Pilates and I interviewed quite a few of my male clients for that presentation. And some of them said they don’t want to learn how to finesse movements- they want to just get to the guts of it. You can finesse things later, but you’ve got to simplify it. And I think, we understand that. Maybe there are differences in how men and women learn- I think there probably is- and we don’t necessarily want the in-depth stuff straight off. We make it fun that helps and also make the environment less ballet-like. All those things make a difference and get more men into doing the things that we’re advocating.
And I think it’s a genuine career path for guys, obviously the pair of us early days and Joseph Pilates- the guy himself- from the early days as well.
Yeah, it’s great for guys who are interested- if they’re PTs or massage therapists or whatever it is they’re doing, this is a great opportunity for them to get into a really rewarding career.
It’s not an uncommon question at all, but I was recently asked by a client- why do you think Bruce, that there seems to be a gravitation to Pilates of more women than men? I was curious on your thoughts on that, Anthony?
I think originally it was very dance oriented and so there were many more female dancers. I think that’s mainly why, and the original studio was next to a dance studio so they adopted it as their training method. And then all the original teachers seemed to be females. I guess the repertoire is a little bit complex and mimics dance moves to some extent. So I guess men would look at that and think, no, that’s not for me. And as I said, the studio environment has always been a bit feminine, and men are probably more competitive, more macho and they don’t think this sort of movement is going to enhance their machismo- they’re are more interested in bulking up and looking great in front of the mirror rather than feeling better. I know that’s a generalization, but I think to some extent it’s probably true, especially in our culture. And I know the Italians agreed with that when I say that, they said the same- the Italian men are more macho and they think Pilates is girly and won’t change their physique. And their ideal male physique is one of bulky, muscular type so Pilates is not really aimed at that. Truth be told it, won’t give you that physique anyway- that’s not why you do Pilates. If that’s what you want, you’re better off going to a gym! I think it’s important to be truthful about that. People would come in and want to put all five springs on and feel the burn well that’s not what I do and I don’t think it’s what you do either- there’s a million Reformer studios that do that. Whether or not that’s a good thing is another issue, but that’s not what we do.
My thought was Anthony, that the amount of care that men tend to take it themselves is lacking- the self care, the self consideration- but I feel like there’s quite a significant shift in the conversation, particularly around mental health and bringing that forward and making sure that’s considered, because I am very blessed to have many, many great and very touching conversations with many of my male clients around how different they experienced their body as a result of participating in Pilates and it’s creates a real shift for them.
I think that’s true and you can say that even in my children’s friends in their boyfriends, when they see their friends- I’m always amazed, they hug each other now we’d never have done that when we were 20 year olds. Even in the guys that are coming to my studio they’re certainly more open and you know, comments like one of them always says when he does a backbend "Ah, this is a really emotional stretch for me!" You’d never have heard that when we were starting out at a studio and there’s men’s groups around here that meet, and I did a talk at one of those men’s shed meetings where men go and talk about their issues. There’s a whole lot of things like that popping up, which are fantastic. Somehow we’ve got to try and tap into that! There’s a men’s health week as well, which I tried to get involved in last year and push the fact that we’re offering these sorts of classes for men as a way of feeling well without the pressure of having to look pumped up and bulked up. It’s certainly part of a movement I hope.
Anthony the portion of your innovations in regard to Pilates Kinesiology- a lot of resources that you’ve generated over the years is that the essence of Pilates Kinesiology?
There’s really two things. When I was in lockdown not last year but the year before I thought what am I going to do?- I was writing this book Pilates Kinesiology and then I thought really, you need a good understanding of anatomy first before you start talking about kinesiology. So I divided it up into two and I made a course I didn’t want to call it Pilates Anatomy not only because Rael Isacowitz had written a book, Pilates Anatomy, but I wanted it to be more general so that it could be used for anything- Pilates teachers, stretch teachers, whatever. So I made a course called a certificate in musculoskeletal anatomy. It goes through the entire body in sections, like muscle compartments. You work through each compartment, you get a 3D app and the workbook links to the app- you can click on it and then watch a lecture on that muscle compartment. Then as part of the course you construct each muscle compartment- you see a lecture on it, you look at each muscle group then you make those muscles put them on your skeleton. Then you do an assessment and a multiple choice then you’ve finished that module. That goes through the whole body. I’ve put that course online and people can do it via distance and that’s part of my StretchFit course as well and Pilates teachers can do it- it’s certified with the PMA. So that’s that certificate in anatomy.
Then Pilates Kinesiology follows from that because it looks at, for example, each muscle group or each major joint and how it functions during Pilates exercises from the osteology to the arthrology, to the muscle function. I’ve got the guy who did all my diagrams in my books who owns ‘ Muscle and Motion’- fantastic graphic 3D app he’s doing all the 3D graphics. That’s going to be a book called Pilates Anatomy and Kinesiology. It’s great because I’ve learned so much through doing it because I didn’t have a huge background in biomechanics or osteology but I’ve always been curious about what’s happening at the level of our joints when we’re doing Pilates and how’s it interact with our muscles and how do we cue all that accurately? That’s really important, I think, because if you don’t understand that you’re cueing is not necessarily accurate to what you’re hoping to achieve.
It’s amazing to have your level of knowledge applied to that for many generations of Pilates teachers, Anthony- it’s incredible to develop those resources.
Thank you,
Anthony, what are some of the changes both in your body mind, and even in your spirit as Joseph Pilates liked to put it that I’m now second nature to you in the way that you’re doing Pilates, and then you’ve even managed to carry over into your daily life- as we talked about earlier, that you couldn’t ever imagine where either possible before you ever started doing Pilates or imagined were possible during the times when you were still finding your way with some of the things we talked about earlier.
I guess bodily I always keep up my practice because once you felt a certain level of wellness and, good function, you don’t want to lose that. It’s been fantastic to be able to keep this practice up for so long and feel so well. I’ll be mid-50’s soon, so I’m really grateful to be still moving and teaching and doing all the things that I do. Of course you get a bit sore but we’re always trying to keep our body at that level. As my coach used to say- once you’ve driven a Rolls Royce, it’s hard to go back to a Corolla! Not that my body was a Rolls Royce- it was a Corolla with bad suspension- but if it’s been functioning and feeling well, you don’t want to let it slip. I used to be pretty stiff- I’m glad not to be like that anymore, that’s just for me a horrible way to exist- not being able to move freely. And it’s tied up in your wellbeing, I think, if you feel constricted and sore and in pain you tend to become depressed and lazy and a bit grumpy because it carries over into your wellbeing. So I wouldn’t call that spiritual, but that’s the way that it can affect your mental health.
Anthony, you’ve got a lot going on- it’s fascinating to walk through it. Where do you now sit with your Pilates? What does the future hold for you with Pilates in your life and what plans have you got in store for your Pilates involvement?
I don’t know, really of course I’m going to keep doing my Yin Pilates work that’s always interesting and that’ll keep growing, and the things that I’m learning I’ll always try and integrate them into the Yin Pilates material. I don’t actually teach it much anymore because I’m focusing on my StretchFit work- I enjoy that because it’s something that I’ve developed on my own- it’s my sort of baby, as they say. Also, where I am in Brisbane within one kilometer of my studio, there are 10 Pilates studios. There’s one across the road with 30 Reformers- it’s like $8 a class- there’s several like that. So I’m at a bit of a crossroads as to what I do- there’s no way you can compete with that and you’re not going to compete on price- that’s for sure. So you’ve got to decide are you going to try and educate people about what- I’m reluctant to say real Pilates is because there are lots of different forms and those people doing those classes are doing a version of Pilates- and I’m not saying it’s no good- it’s just, not what I do. So I’m not sure, whether I try and compete with that and say, look, I do this type of Pilates and it’s different but it’s 10 times the price. Is it 10 times better? How do you know? I don’t know where I’m going to go with that at the moment. It’s tricky. There’s a lot of franchises here- there’s Club Pilates, there’s Studio Pilates, there’s KX Pilates- they’re all within a kilometer of my studio. And then there’s all the Physio based Pilates, so where we stand in that is a tricky one and how it will evolve I’m not sure!
It’s fascinating to hear you arrive at that point after all these years, that in many ways Pilates is starting to be commoditized’. Like you say- those price points are hard to argue with! What the teacher brings to the transaction, to the conversation as a point of difference isn’t really shining through and I think it’s fascinating that it’s gotten to this point of competing on price.
Yeah. I think that’s a good way of putting it- I’ve called it the ‘Lulu- lemon- ization’ of Pilates, because it is! I posted last week something about what are we becoming a soft porn profession, because this is all I see is half naked pictures of young people on their Reformers. And it probably is a bit judgy, but what it comes down to is- is that what you want your profession to be known as this sort of lying down aerobics that shapes the perfect bum! I mean, is that how you want us to be regarded- because I think we’re better than that! Now that he’s a bit judgmental, because I guess you could say what’s wrong with that, why is what we do better? But it’s a complicated question.
A conversation for another episode, perhaps?
Yeah
Anthony, it’s been phenomenal chatting with you today. Thank you so much for your time on the call What’s the best way for listeners to get in touch with you?
Probably just through email- it’s easiest- or on my website which is anthonylett.com.au
Fantastic. It’s been amazing having you on Anthony. Thanks again for your time!
Thanks.
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