Repetition, pace, doing the same exercise on different apparatus, figuring out the physics of an exercise (what energy is going down and what energy is going up to make this exercise possible), visualizing the lines of two way stretch in a particular exercise, understanding my body’s relation to space and gravity and the pull of the springs in a particular exercise are all what helps me ‘crack the code’ in my own body.
With my clients, I find it is most often doing the same exercise on different apparatus that ‘cracks the code’ for them. When a client doesn’t “get” an exercise I don’t make a big deal of it, “I say let’s not harp on it, you’ve done enough, let’s move on.” Then I will make sure we do it again somewhere else in the studio on a different piece of equipment and I will relate it back to where they were stuck before. Depending on the client and the particular pace and structure of the session, I will either leave it there or I will say, ‘let’s pop back and try that other exercise again and see if you can connect to it a little differently now’. I will then point out to them that it’s the same thing as the one they were stuck on, just upside down or sitting up straight, and I will say, ‘just how you pulled back with your belly first and you stayed rounded, I want you to do that here too’. The client usually has an ‘aha’ moment then. They will usually say to me, ‘oh that is what you mean when you always say…’, (a particular cue I have said to them time and time again), as if I said it for the first time 😊. That will usually get them where they need and unstuck. It also provides the opportunity for the client to make those connections in their body with relation to space and the equipment.
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