Puzzle Piece vs Flow?

I had the good fortune to work in the same studio as Jennifer Stacey MS for over 10 years. She worked with Pilates elders Kathy Grant, Carola Trier, Ron Fletcher, and so many others. She was one of the smartest and most dedicated teachers you will ever meet. She shared with me so many gems about teaching Pilates, and one of them is that there are two types of 1:1 classes, the puzzle piece class and the flow class, and we need to toggle back and forth between both.

A flow class will, well, flow. It will include teaching transitions, the order of the exercises and while cueing will happen, it wouldn’t necessarily stop the movement. We let the body in front of us just keep moving and trust that it is enough. A flow class will have flexion, extension, side bending and rotation. It might have supine, prone, kneeling and standing. As teachers, we might see a lot of stuff we could correct, but we choose not to, because we are helping the client practice a different skill, keeping going. Flow. Maybe even endurance? During this type of class I like to train my eye to see all that is working well. “What’s strong with this body? Instead of what’s wrong?”

A puzzle piece class will have a different pace, there will be a central skill that is being explored. The client will be doing motor learning, they will be practicing new movement patterns, they will be paying a lot of attention to what is happening on the inside. As a teacher a puzzle piece class is so fun, a deep exploration of how the various pieces of information and the chosen exercises will support the skill the client is learning. It is super gratifying! During this type of class I am routinely blown away by how resilient and intelligent bodies are, and by my client’s dedication.

I’ve found that each client has a tendency towards either flow or puzzle piece. I also have biases towards puzzle piece or flow!! I try to find balance, which is at it’s core, just falling on and off a central balance point with more and more finesse.