My Pilates Instructor Journey
as a Master Instructor & Head Trainer of The SO Academy
how did i get here…
10 years into my Pilates Instructing career, and if you would have told me 10 years ago that I would be running my own Pilates brand & teaching Pilates Training Courses & more, I would have laughed at you. Hard.
Because that would have been deemed impossible, as I was not very good at all at the start of my Pilates Instructing career.
SO, how did I go from being so bad at teaching group classes that I didn’t teach another one for 2 years, to owning my own studio and teaching all of The SO Academy courses including our sold out 150+ hours Reformer Teacher Training programme.
Step 1
I sucked as a new grad, even with my physiotherapy background, I was terrible. At both. I traded up savings and took a low paying new grad salary job about 1 hour away from Auckland cbd in peak traffic, so I could have the opportunity to learn from my boss, who helped with all I needed with my basic physiotherapy skills. I also paid A LOT in course fee to upskill in anatomy, physiotherapy, movement and pilates. My first year & second year I did on average 6 courses each year. My third year I did 2 more courses and my first physiotherapy post graduate. Every time I came back from a course (most of them were overseas), I would waltz back into the clinic/studio, and immediately put what I’ve learned into practice. It was rough, and a lot of it came with trial and error, but I persevered. I paid for online study groups, and asked my mentors/lecturers for advice all the time.
I knew I wasn’t good. So I invested in myself to be better. I spent countless $$ and time on my education, so many unpaid hours in pursue of being better. I would fly overseas, to be an unpaid Teaching Assistant, to sit in and redo the course I’ve already done before, all so I could pick up little gems my brain was too overloaded to process the first time around. One thing my parents always drilled into me, is that you should never save on education, and boy they are right. From my stack of course certifications and degrees, did I put all of the skills I learnt to use? No. Did I learn something from all of them that have benefited me in so many ways during my career? Yes.
By the start of my third year, I started my own Physiotherapy clinic, and built my client base from scratch. By the end of my third year, I met Vivian, and SO Fitness was born.
upskill with courses.
Step 2
practice makes perfect.
Remember how I said I was so bad I didn’t properly teach a group class for the next two years? Sure, I subbed a few classes but it was pretty obvious I wasn’t that great so my bosses decided my physiotherapy skills were more valued. It didn’t phase me, I had enough self reflection skills to acknowledge I was not the best instructor, so I practiced my skills on my private clients. I started deciphering the moves, and spent my less busy days playing around in the Pilates studio attached to the clinic. It was more fun doing Feet in Straps on the Reformer than doing my paperwork.
During the sessions I had with my clients, I listened to their feedback. They couldn’t do this, why? They felt it here, why? How do I make it achievable for them? If they had an injury, how do I accommodate for that? While they were working on their physical body, I was getting a mental workout.
Eventually I’ve practiced enough, and had enough clients to understand the concepts better, and understand how the client feels, to be able to predict it. It’s all about statistics really. We think we’re special, but honestly, we’re more similar as human beings than people think.
Step 3
find a mentor.
Why struggle? Many people seem to think getting a mentor is a scam. It might be (I can’t give you advice there), but the mentors I had were not. I also hope our graduates from our SO Mentorship Programme can also tell you that it’s not. I had one mentor in my entire career, that changed my entire career. She wasn’t my official mentor, but I did most of her courses, paid for many of her study groups, she said the same sentence to me multiple times we met, and during the last time, it clicked. She said ‘Nicole, people like us are meant to go and craft a path for ourselves. If you are good, people will come’ . For someone who truly sucked for the first few years of her career, I didn’t believe her, until one day I did, and I tendered in my resignation the next day, and the week after I started my own Physiotherapy clinic.
It was nuts, but here I am now.
I struggled throughout my entire Physiotherapy degree (a story for another day), struggled through the first few years of my career, to be able to build SO & guide countless instructors through their teaching journey. You’ll find that in our courses and mentorship programme, I’ll drop a lot of hacks and gems, because why struggle, when I’ve already hacked the best way to do it?
Step 4
self reflection & doing it for YOU.
They say you need to truly love what you do, to be able to do it for long. Pilates started as a skill to complement my Physiotherapy skill set, and it did, however, I had to truly love, live and breathe Pilates to be able to have done it for the last 10 years, and I can truly say that I do. With every job and career, you can choose to be average at it, or you can choose to be freaking fantastic at it. I believe that there is so much potential in all of us, and we only live that one life, that we really shouldn’t settle for mediocre. So how do you continue to get better if you don’t have a mentor? I self reflect after every class or private session I did.
Did I do my best? What could have I done better? Was that the best class plan? How could I have made that even better? What was the issue?
Most of the time I’ve achieved what I planned the session to be, but we’re all humans, and there are always factors you can’t account for (clients). So how could I have better managed that situation? Remember what I said before about how we’re not all that special? Learn to deal with one situation, and you can deal with many of the similar situation that pops up.
10 years later I still class plan and prepare before every session. Do I really need to? Probably not, but then it could have been 120% better with prep, compared to the 100% without prep.
You might say that I had the advantage of my Physiotherapy degree and career, sure I did. I’m not going to deny it, but you don’t need a Physiotherapy degree to be a good Pilates Instructor. I’ve met many great Instructors that are not physios. Sure, the anatomy & movement background, along with treating a 36 hour caseload of patients for many years helped, so would be teaching 25+ hours of Pilates group classes & privates for years.
Moral of the story -
No one starts out good. To be good, you have to commit & make sacrifices for it. When you’re good, people will come & your investments will pay off. Just don’t expect them to pay off without working for it. As my malaysian chinese mom always says ‘Do you think money grows on trees?’
(love you mum)
Journal written by Nicole