I’m so excited to announce that I have founded my own physical therapy, Pilates, wellness and sports performance business. Performance Rehabilitation and Integrative Sports Medicine, also known as PRISM (see what I did there?) is my new fun adventure and I’m having a blast so far. I’m seeing not only young athletes but also active families–which means “big kids” or “grown ups” too! I’ll be integrating physical therapy, Pilates, wellness consultations and sports performance sessions — both in my clinic locations and on-site (IE, I can come to you). I’ll also be offering a wealth of workshops and classes for professionals and for the community. You can check out more about PRISM Wellness Center on my website here.
“Hey, do you know of any places where my daughter can do Pilates after she is finished with PT?”
“Should my 6 year old do Pilates classes?”
“She has a stress fracture in her back and the doctor said she needs to strengthen her core. I heard Pilates is good for that so I bought her a DVD. Is that ok?”
“I need to do Pilates as conditioning for dance. What should I do?”
I get these questions all the time from parents and young patients. My answer to them has often been “Well it depends.” That is, until recently!
One month ago I had the absolute joy of attending the Pilates Method Alliance® Pilates 4 Youth teacher training in Berkeley, California. What a fabulous 2-day course in the most beautiful setting with the most interesting and brilliantly creative minds!!! It was perhaps one of the most inspiring courses I have taken in my entire PT and Pilates career thus far. It helped that we had a nice view of the San Francisco Bay, San Francisco, the fog, and the Golden Gate Bridge the whole time. I called it my #nerdcation.
Claremont Hotel & Spa in Berkeley.
I’m not sure if I spent more time learning or more time gazing out the window from my seat
The course was full of 60 or so instructors from all over the USA and the world who work with children and adolescents in all different settings: schools, clubs and camps, inner city wellness initiatives, health care/PT clinics and private practices, girl scout troops, and private Pilates studios.
The course was led by Celeste Zopich, Brett Howard, and Dawn-Marie Ickes, who co-authored the course manual and textbook Pilates for Children and Adolescents. These three brilliantly creative master teachers spearheaded the Pilates in the Schools movement, an initiative begun in the early 2000’s in the wake of decreased physical education time in public and private schools. You can read more about Pilates in the Schools and the research project they did with the kids here.
Watch a video about Pilates 4 Youth & Pilates in the Schools here:
I can’t say enough good things about the instructors. Celeste has a wealth of experience teaching in a parochial school. Brett teaches classes for children of all ages and brought a wealth of research and creative cueing and activity design perspective to the group. Dawn-Marie, the PT & Pilates teacher of the book, seems to be leading a life rather parallel to mine on the west coast. She works not only with young clients and incorporates Pilates into PT with them, but also has a special interest in women’s health and is a Redcord Neurac teacher trainer. I can’t wait to continue following these three as the Pilates 4 Youth initiative continues to take off.
See interviews from the book’s authors & course instructors here:
Too often children (especially girls) drop out of sports by age 13 due to burn out from early specialization, self esteem and body image issues, lack of success and fear of failure, or lack of funding from parents or other guardians. Or—on the other hand, children do not become active in the first place for so many cultural and societal reasons (that I don’t have time to discuss in this blog post) and we have even bigger problems of childhood obesity, low self esteem and body awareness, and low exercise interest or confidence.
Perhaps most interestingly, the course taught us about the “magic window” age of 9-13. This is when kids and teens are at the most vulnerable for both physical and psychological injury. The mind-body approach of Pilates targets these problems in a very kid & teen-friendly way. This is the best stage to intervene from an injury prevention standpoint in PT, too.
Favorite video quote from videos above (from a 13ish year old):
“Well I’m a swimmer and doing regular Pilates has helped me a lot with having regular breathing and opening up my shoulders and using my back muscles to move my arms.”
If that quote doesn’t sum up my personal and professional vision for helping my most beloved target clientele, I don’t know what does.
In the course, we learned how to design classes or private sessions for children of all ages and ability levels, from 5-6 year old girl scouts to 18 year old elite Olympians,. We had a great segment taught by Dawn-Marie on program design for children with special needs, or “special opportunities” as she liked to call it. She reminded us that all children and teens have challenges that vary on a long, diverse scale, regardless of the diagnosis or “category” in which they are placed. For youth of all ages and ability levels, it is our duty to determine how best to tap into each of their movement systems, regardless of the challenges and opportunities they face each day.
Superhero themed Pilates! It’s not hard work when you’re having fun while learning! I bet I know a few adults who would probably want to come to a class like this one…
The Pilates 4 Youth initiative is in a pretty grassroots stage now. So far the course has been put on twice to a total of about 150 people thanks to a grant from a generous donor. Hopefully it will continue to grow in popularity so that we can improve access for children of all ages to Pilates in a non-competitive environment. But we’re not exclusive to Pilates. And we are all over social media!
#hashtags are everywhere Follow the PMA on twitter at @PMATWEETER
Stay tuned! I’ve already been incorporating Pilates into my clinical practice for several years, but I’m anxious to start incorporating many of the new concepts I learned into practice and hopefully into group classes in the community soon. I’m excited to exercise my creative juices and have already invested in some fun tools to help me do so:
That’s a scooter board
Fabulous imagery and kid-friendly Pilates terms
To learn more about the Pilates 4 Youth initiative, check out the information on facebook.
Just ran across this great whiteboard video from an NPR post about low back pain. It’s a video by a Canadian primary care physician. It’s the best patient-friendly explanation I’ve seen of low back pain, what to know, and what to do about it.
While low back pain in the young athlete is not always the same as in adults and there are other kid- and teen-specific diagnoses AND PT treatments to consider, I still find this video very helpful for all ages. Though there are some very rare reasons they may have it, kids and teens almost never have problems like neurogenic claudication due to spinal column narrowing mentioned in the video. Discogenic pain is also more rare in kids and teens..
Given that low back pain is one of my favorite conditions to treat, particularly in the young athlete, I’d say this video hit the nail on the head for the most part. I love the physiotherapy, manual therapy, and Pilates shout-outs in the video. It’s important before beginning something like Pilates or yoga that you start slowly and ensure that your instructor is familiar with how to help people with injuries. In addition, if you are a kid or a teen, it’s important that the instructor is skilled in working with children and adolescents as there are special precautions that must be made in Pilates and yoga due to differences present in the growing spine vs. the adult spine. Typically what I do, as a Pilates instructor and PT, is teach kids the right movements they would need to know for Pilates, then find them the right Pilates instructor or class.
You can skip the ad at the beginning, but I also love the Neurac and WebPT advertisements at the start of the video. Between Pilates, Neurac, and WebPT, I use all of these things in my daily practice (in full disclosure: nobody paid me to say that).
The best 3 lines:
“Motion is lotion”
“A physiotherapist can probably help you with all of these things”
youthsportspt 