Friday, February 7, 2025, 3-6

Kristen Davis

The Pilates Lab (St. Louis)

Pilates as a Concept: Enhancing Your Teaching with Eve and Kathy (3 CECs)

“Pilates is not just a series of exercises,” Eve Gentry famously said in 1991. “Pilates is a concept. It’s a philosophy. Now, you can learn every exercise on every piece of equipment, and you don’t know Pilates… If you just teach exercises, then I have to ask you: are you a teacher or are you a conveyor belt?”

What could it mean to teach Pilates as a concept rather than a series of exercises? Exploring the work conceptually might account for why two of Mr Pilates’s original students, Eve Gentry and Kathy Grant, contemporaneously developed similar repertoires while living on opposite sides of the country. Eve Gentry’s Movement Fundamentals and Kathy Grant’s Before the Hundred protocol are preparatory series of movements– sometimes dismissed as warm-ups or pre-Pilates– and yet they also offer a lens into how Mr Pilates taught each of them after injury and surgery.

This workshop will explore the Gentry Movement Fundamentals and Before the Hundred through the lens of teaching Pilates as a concept, seeking to answer how we, as teachers, can think about the work conceptually to avoid conveyor belt syndrome. How can we use work from different lineages not just to add depth and challenge, but also to teach conceptual skills that set up our clients for success?

 

Saturday, February 8, 2025, 9:30-12:30

Karen Sanzo and Melanie Garlinger

Pilates Unlimited

Exploration of the Pilates Apparatus; Strategies for the challenging client (3 CEC’s)

Grounded in strong mat fundamentals, this apparatus exploration will cover a wide variety of exercises for the Reformer, Cadillac and Chair.  We will address four areas:

  1. Flexion Connection
  2. Hip Strength, Mobility, and Awareness
  3. Spinal Side Bending and Rotation
  4. Axial Lengthening and Spinal Extension

 

Saturday, February 8, 2025, 1:30-6:30

Jennifer Milner, Owner Bodies in Motion

Pilates and the Hypermobile Population (5 CEC’s)

This workshop will examine hypermobility through a Pilates-based movement lens, supporting people of all fitness levels, and leave participants equipped to recognize common hypermobility issues, modify safely, and move a client through a healthy, effective workout.

Working with hypermobile clients can be daunting. Instructors may have questions about ways to properly strengthen a hypermobile joint, concerns over subluxations and dislocations, or worries about ways to modify exercises efficiently in a group setting. Hypermobility disorders can also be accompanied by co-morbidities which may require modifications for clients.

The prevalence of generalized joint hypermobility has been reported between 10 and 30 percent.

In this workshop we will dive deep exploring:

  • Hypermobility 101: What are the different types of hypermobility? How does it affect the body? How might it present?
  • Training needs: What are common areas of weakness or compensatory strategies in the hypermobile population?
  • Contraindications: What types of exercises or positions should be avoided?
  • Exercises: How might traditional Pilates equipment and exercises be used or modified for the hypermobile population?
  • Support: When and how do you refer people out to a specialist?

 

Sunday, February 9, 2025, 10-1

Kristen Davis

The Pilates Lab (St. Louis)

Hands, Feet, Seat: Pilates Programming for Aging in Place (3 CECs)

Americans are living longer than ever, and they overwhelmingly want to live independently in their own homes– or age in place– as long as possible. How can we, as Pilates instructors, adapt to the changing needs of our aging clients? How can we help them age in place successfully while teaching them with dignity and care– even when their repertoire may be getting narrower and shallower?

This workshop examines three metrics for successful aging in place–  grip strength, gait speed, and ability to squat– and how they integrate into the Pilates system. Participants will leave this workshop able to identify how and when to focus on each of these skills within the repertoire they already know and teach. Participants will also learn archival and lesser-known exercises that speak to grip strength, gait, and squatting, as well as ideas for simple homework assignments using everyday household objects

 

KRISTEN DAVIS

In 2005, while (somewhat miserably) pursuing a PhD in Chicago, Kristen Davis booked a lesson at the Pilates studio across the street from her apartment. It was love at first Hundred. By 2007, she’d started her comprehensive teacher training with Balanced Body Pilates. In 2009, she’d said good-bye to academia to teach Pilates full time.

Since then, Kristen has studied extensively in the lineages of three of Mr Pilates’s students: Eve Gentry through Core Dynamics Pilates and with second-generation instructor Debora Kolwey, Romana Kryzanowzka through Real Pilates Teacher Training and with second-generation instructor Alycea Ungaro, and Kathy Grant through Cara Reeser’s Kathy Grant Heritage Training and with second-generation instructor Blossom Leilani Crawford.

Kristen’s education is unique in that it has given her the skills and depth of knowledge to apply the work of three Pilates elders to clients of all ages and experience levels. Because Pilates is an unregulated industry, she believes it is critical to understand where and from whom exercise modifications and variations come, as well as when and why to teach them.

Her work is playful, precise and patient, and she enjoys working with clients who are returning to fitness after surgery or injury. She believes Pilates is a lifelong pursuit suitable for all bodies, and in any given week she works with clients with scoliosis, osteoporosis, joint replacements, spinal stenosis, chronic pain, and autoimmune conditions. She is particularly passionate about helping older populations maintain strength and fitness with dignity.

In 2021, Kristen and her business partner, Susan Bange, opened The Pilates Lab, St Louis’s first fully classical Pilates studio and host studio for Real Pilates Teacher Training. The Pilates Lab is a trusted host and partner of Alycea Ungaro and Real Pilates NYC, and together Kristen and Susan oversee and mentor the future generation of Classical Pilates teachers.

 

JENNIFER MILNER

Jennifer Milner is a ballet coach and certified Pilates trainer specializing in athletes, dancers and post-injury recoveries.  As a classical ballet dancer, Jennifer danced with several companies across the United  States before moving to New York to do musical theatre, most notably playing Meg Giry in The Phantom of the Opera.  After a knee injury ended a successful performing career, Jennifer became certified in the Pilates method of exercise, graduating from the Kane School of Core Integration under the renowned Kelly Kane, then mentored under the dance medicine pioneer Marika Molnar and certified in dance medicine through Ms. Molnar. Jennifer taught as a teacher trainer for the Kane School for several years, specializing in biomechanics and special populations. She worked for Westside Dance Physical Therapy (the official physical therapists for New York City Ballet and the School of American Ballet), and has trained a wide variety of clients, including Oscar winners, Olympic medalists, and dancers from New York City Ballet, the Kirov Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, San Francisco Ballet, Royal Ballet, and more. Jennifer has also studied with Lisa Howell, Marie-Jose Blom, and Eric Franklin.

Jennifer is a co-host of Bendy Bodies, a podcast devoted to hypermobility issues founded by Dr. Linda Bluestein. She is a member of the International Association of Dance Medicine and Science and presented at the world conference in Houston in 2017, Montreal in 2019, at the virtual 2021 conference,  in Columbus in 2023, and in Italy in 2024. She is a board member of The Pointe Shop Plus as well as a member of Doctors for Dancers and serves on the advisory board of Minding the Gap, an organization dedicated to improving mental health support in the dance world. Jennifer is also a regular contributor to The Library Aesthetic, an online streaming platform for dance medicine and science information.

Jennifer’s ability to move between ballet studios and cross-training venues, addressing biomechanical imbalances and technique dysfunctions in a practical strength-training way, has made her a sought-after guest speaker for dance schools and companies, and her many years of training dancers across the hypermobility spectrum have made her passionate about educating dancers and teachers on how to train hypermobility in a healthy and efficient way. Her website is www.jennifer-milner.com or you can find her on Instagram @jennifer.milner.