Coordination
What may not be visible in this video is one more nuance of this exercise: the quick opening and closing of the legs, which is intended to loosen up the muscles around the hip joints.
When timed correctly, Coordination has both slower and faster moments, demonstrating the coordination between the mind and the body.
There is one tempo for the beginning and the end of the movement, and another for the quick opening and closing of the legs.
For that reason, "Knee Stretches" often come to mind—they also teach us how to control the tempo within the choreography.
Having the ability to change the tempo with the exercise, to slow down, speed up and stop suddenly is a skill I encourage my clients to develop. 😉
When I say the name of this exercise, I often see eyes rolling, as if to say, "Oh no... I don't have good coordination." 😅
But remember that the sequence is not the lesson.
Instead, the lesson is whether you can maintain stability through your spine, trunk, and pelvis while your arms and legs are moving.
The choreography changes but the organization should stay the same.
The key information here is the continuous reaching of the hands into the handles to maintain the contraction of the upper abdominals to maintain the upper curl.
That is where your strength to support the neck and head comes from.
I find that when my clients understand the why behind the choreography, they retain the information much better. 🙂
When you practice Coordination, your legs move while your pelvis and lower back stay stable. But keeping the pelvis still while the legs move is a skill that you need to learn first. That is why I teach the skill before asking my clients to use it in a Pilates exercise.
In What Pilates Is: The Essential Skills, I teach skills like pelvis stability separately, before they become part of a more complicated exercise. That way, when you start practicing Coordination, you already know how to isolate and move only the legs.
Pelvis Stability During Coordination Is More Than "Good Technique."
Coordination is a great example of how one small adjustment can change the entire experience of an exercise.
The assumption is often that the challenge is simply keeping the head lifted while trying to avoid neck strain.
But more often than not, the challenge is as much mental as it is physical. The key is maintaining your focus on the body parts that are not moving, rather than the ones that are.
The continuous connection into the straps helps organize the upper body and allows the abdominals to more effectively support the upper curl.
When that connection is understood and maintained, the exercise becomes easier to perform.
I find that it's almost automatic for us to focus on the body parts that are moving rather than on the ones that need to stay still.
But when we shift our focus to what needs to remain organized and stable, our physical effort shifts as well.
Often, that's the moment we begin to feel in our body the purpose of what we are doing.😁
If every time you are performing Coordination you wonder:
What is this exercise about? All it does it hurts my neck...
You may be missing some key information.
Reaching the fingertips “to infinity and beyond” 😂 helps to maintain the contraction of the upper abdominals to keep the upper curl.
And this is where your strength to support the neck comes from.
One of the reasons Coordination becomes confusing is that people focus on what the arms and legs are doing.
I find that when I redirect their attention to maintaining the upper curl and continuous connection into the handles, the exercise suddenly starts making sense to them because they feel it in their abdominal muscles more intensely.
One thing I've noticed over the years is that Coordination is often misunderstood.
If all you feel is your neck, it's easy to wonder what the exercise is actually supposed to be teaching other than how to endure discomfort.
What I find is that many people focus on holding their head up, so I encourage my clients to shift their attention somewhere else.
Instead of thinking about the neck, I ask them to engage the muscles under their arms, press into the handles, and keep reaching into them throughout the entire exercise. As they do that, they organize the upper body and create the conditions for the upper abdominals to work more effectively so that the neck no longer gets strained.
That one change often makes the exercise feel completely different.
To me, Coordination is about teaching where the support for the upper curl comes from. Once that becomes clear, the choreography starts to make sense, and the exercise often feels much more doable and enjoyable.
Over the years, I have learned that confusion about an exercise is often a sign that the person is focusing on the wrong thing, not that the body is incapable of doing it well. 😊
I'm thinking about stabilizing my shoulders before I begin moving my arms and maintaining that stability throughout the movement.
This is one of the fundamental movement skills I teach every day in my studio, and they are the same skills I teach in my online course, What Pilates Is: The Essential Skills.