Pilates Training Courses

What, you might ask yourself, is going on with the state of Pilates training courses and certification these days? It is not good my friends, not good. As a long time, STOTT Pilates Instructor Trainer (over 25 years) I can attest that “training and certification” programs have popped up all over in the last few years. While my total training to get to this level of expertise took years and literally thousands of hours and dollars, the number of hours to some of these training programs are in the double digits, or worse yet, online. While online education resources can be a great addition to a professionally run live course, we are movement teachers and one cannot learn how to teach movement by watching videos online or reaching a book. Recent courses I have seen are not only limited in time but have no pre requisites other than “a love of Pilates” I have seen members of a certain Pilates club join a teacher training course after literally taking only 25 classes or so, with zero other teaching background or anatomical background at all. Then there are the courses themselves…they claim to be 500 hours, BUT the in-person training portion of it with a master trainer is 60 hours, and the remaining 440 hours is so called “self-study”, meaning watching a video online counts, doing a workout yourself counts etc. with literally no feedback or mentoring at all. I am disappointed in how watered down and poor these training programs have become, how the low the bar is to become a trainer, and how the public is duped into thinking the quality of these “insta-instructors” is the same as those of us with thousands of hours of high-quality training and an actual valid and rigorous testing experience. Pretty sure JP would be disappointed as well.