Five Ways Redcord Suspension Gets Better Results for Your Pilates Clients

Pilates instructors spend years cultivating their craft. Finding exactly the right words, images, hands-on cues and props for each client to best understand how to improve the mechanics of their movement. 

Some clients need to understand exactly what is happening in their body anatomically - which part is moving when. Why? How? 

Other clients need complex imagery to imagine an altogether different way of moving. 

And still others are simply not connected enough to change their movement through the words their instructor chooses. Those clients might need just the right hands-on cue or feedback from a prop to activate a muscle chain. 

As a teacher, this process of fine-tuning your communication and hands-on cueing can be fun, creative and empowering. When it is going well and your client is making big strides in their movement, teaching is a blast! 

But, truth be told, it can also become frustrating when you just can’t get your client where you want them to go. Or when you’ve been teaching all day and your creative brain is starting to get tired. (It really does happen to all of us!)

What if you had a way to bypass your client’s conscious effort, save some of your words, and just get their bodies working more efficiently at the neuromuscular level? What if you could get your clients where they want to be, faster?

This is what adding Redcord Suspension to my teaching tool kit did for me. I was introduced to Redcord in 2009, about seven years into my career as a Pilates instructor. The system had been in limited use with physical therapists (PTs) for only a short time in the US and was relatively unknown outside of a small group of PTs. 

Redcord saw an opportunity to expand beyond the physical therapy world by training Pilates instructors, whose expertise in movement instruction and body mechanics would introduce the benefits of Redcord to a wider audience . 

My first day in the slings, my mind was blown. How could something providing me so much support be so difficult? Why could I not figure out where my body was in space? How could I be soooooo sore? After all, I’d been practicing Pilates in my own body for a decade!

The answer of course was simple. Instability. Pilates training and practice provides a solid base of support. We have the mat, the reformer carriage, the wunda chair. Even in an exercise like pelvic lift on the reformer, your feet are grounded on the foot bar. You feel grounded in Pilates from the proprioceptive input of the springs and the apparatus. 

Suspension training’s foundation turns grounding on its head.  The foundation of Redcord is instability. Redcord does this through a system of bungees, ropes and slings. Through instability the body and more specifically the neuromuscular system is challenged to find stability. 

And though they seem so different, Pilates and Redcord are extremely complementary of each other. Redcord is the missing link for so many clients to better understand their Pilates practice, or any other exercise practice or sport they might play. And just like Pilates, Redcord is safe and accessible to everyone. 

Here are five examples of how Redcord can help with exercises and movement skills Pilates clients often struggle with:

1. Popping up in both the Roll Up and Teaser. By working on offloaded prone planks, clients are better able to find that deep abdominal connection that oftentimes limits their articulation in these exercises. I have seen these exercises improve after just a few Redcord sessions.
2. Shifting out of the quads and into the pelvic girdle in footwork. Through both supine planks and abducting side planks clients, begin to better understand how to engage the backline of the body.
3. Improving pelvic floor engagement. Lumbo-pelvic activation is a great exercise for clients who might not understand how to activate their pelvic floor muscles. Both abducting and adducting side planks as well as exercises like standing forward leans bring more awareness and strength to the pelvic floor.
4. Improving thoracic mobility and decreasing neck pain. TYI/snow angels(one of my personal favorites), thoracic mobility exercise, and push ups in the slings are all excellent exercises to increase mobility in the thoracic spine, get more mobility in scapular muscles and decrease overall neck pain.
5. Balance. So many of our older clients struggle with balance and exercises like balancing on the silly pillows is a great challenge to their neuromuscular system. 

In addition to its profound benefits for my clients, Redcord has made me a more effective teacher. It has provided me with a different perspective for looking at the body I have more clarity about the function of specific muscles and relationships up and down the kinetic and fascial chains. And it’s given me choices.

I often use both Pilates and Redcord in one session. Redcord helps my client get the neuromuscular activation they need to maximize the benefits of their Pilates workout. It’s become an invaluable tool I am grateful to have in my toolkit. And just like Pilates, 13 years later I’m still discovering and learning new things about the Redcord system. 

Through CORE Suspension teacher training, movement teachers will learn not only the suspension exercises and how to teach them but how to relate them to a better Pilates practice. We’ll talk about why you might want to teach a client Redcord over Pilates. You’ll learn how to choose specific exercises to reach specific goals or improve upon specific weaknesses. And, most importantly, you’ll come away from the weekends with another tool in your toolkit to better serve your clients needs and sustain your energy. 

Register Now