You’re a qualified Pilates teacher! Now What? 5 Top Tips!
Perhaps you are a recently qualified Pilates teacher or you might have even had your certification for a while. Wherever you are at in your journey, firstly a huge congratulations to you on gaining your Pilates teacher qualification.
I hope you feel really proud and I hope you celebrated. It’s such a huge achievement and takes a lot of work and commitment. You now have all the skills to teach a fabulous Pilates class…however you might be feeling a little stuck with how to get started or in need of a little confidence boost?
It’s completely natural to now feel a little stuck and hesitant to dive into the teaching and career side of things. It’s something they don’t often teach once we have the qualification.
So how do you bridge the gap between becoming a qualified instructor and actually teaching?
If you find this useful, join my regular monthly meet up, Pilates Post Grad Crew! 🙋♀️
So firstly here’s your top tips!
1. GET PEN TO PAPER
Firstly your brain is probably a bit scrambled but also full and brimming with ideas and excitement. So what I want you to do is…get yourself a nice new notebook and pen that you love. Sit someone peaceful with some of your favourite music playing, perhaps even on your Pilates mat and write down these questions and anymore that pop to your mind. Write down your perfect life as a Pilates teacher, what does that look like? Get excited and know that what you write down is absolutely achievable.
Questions to ask yourself:
What does a perfect week as a Pilates teacher look like for you?
Do you want to teach in studios, gyms, online?
Do you want to set up your own classes?
What does the space you teach in look like?
Who is your ideal client?
Do you want to specialise in a certain area perhaps this is pre/postnatal, back pain recovery, sports?
What is currently holding you back?
What is something you can do today to take you a step closer to your life as a pilates teacher? Perhaps that’s emailing a studio asking about opportunities to teach or buying a domain name to start your website one day.
You’ll start to feel like you have more direction just from asking yourself these questions and it will narrow down your action points to getting started.
2. START A NEWSLETTER
Newsletters are making a come-back at the moment due to platforms like Substack but honestly they haven’t ever gone anywhere. Email marketing is the NUMBER 1 way to get long term loyal clients. Even if you only have a few of your friends and family signed up to your list initially, get into the habit of writing a regular monthly email send out.
Even if you are yet to set up classes or still unsure on the direction you want to go in. You don’t need to have loads to talk about or share. Here’s some newsletter topics you could write about initially and send to people.
Newsletter Ideas for new Pilates teachers
A few fun facts about Joseph Pilates - I’m sure you already know how surprised people are to find out that Pilates was named after an actual man. I love sharing Joseph Pilates facts with my clients and they will LOVE knowing a bit about where it all started!
A little bit about your experience training - write a short paragraph about your training experience. How did you find the course, did you juggle the studying amongst a full time job and childcare? Did you have a celebratory cocktail after your final exam? Share an insight into your training experience.
Your morning or evening routine - your newsletter doesn’t always have to be Pilates related and it doesn’t and actually shouldn’t be salesy. It’s about building and nuturing a relationship. Sharing a small insight into your world, makes your feel more human. There’s a real person on the other side of this email, not a robot. You love coffee and Pilates in the morning or maybe you are hooked on a new netflix series in the evening and forget to do your skincare routine. Be real.
Books and podcast recommendations - who doesn’t love new book and podcast recommendations. You could suggest ones themed around your expertise so maybe you are a runner who loves Pilates so want to share some running books?
3. STAY LOCAL
It seems to be a right of passage, especially in London to spend the first few years of your teaching life, running around different studios from dawn to dusk. I did it, I see friends doing it, and then we burn out!
I don’t believe this needs to be the case, I would advise staying local or at least within a comfortable travelling radius from your home. Otherwise, as much as you love teaching Pilates, you’ll end up feeling flustered, exhausted and quite frankly not enjoying it if you are spending most your life on public transport getting from A to B.
Make your schedule enjoyable! I understand most classes in public studios and gyms are usually early morning or evenings. But make sure you are still taking care of yourself. For example, if you teach an evening class then keep it local, make yourself a flask of tea or hot chocolate, make sure you’ve prepped dinner so you aren’t worrying about that before or after the class and enjoy your evening teaching and meeting/helping people.
4. BE CONSISTENT
Okay I haven’t always got this one right myself but from experience, if you are starting up your own classes, online or in a hall, stick to the same day and time each week.
Even if the numbers fluctuate, stick with it! Everyone’s lives are crazy busy but if they start to know you are going to be where you say you are going to be every single week teaching Pilates, it will get stuck in their head and they will come back.
And don’t take it personally if they don’t. It’s not you. How many times have you been to class and LOVED it and LOVED the teacher but for some reason a year has flown by and you haven’t been back. It happens.
5. THROW AWAY THE RULE BOOK
Shhhh don’t tell the other teachers! Right, don’t get me wrong here, there’s boxes you have to tick to pass that exam and you ticked them. But now you need a little freedom.
Let’s remember- Pilates is movement. Movement is good for people. Full stop. That’s it. That’s your job. To get people moving. And I guarantee you’ll be getting people moving much healthier and safer than they do in the other 23 hours of their day.
Stop stressing over whether their little finger is pointing forwards in line with the hair on their nose. Just get them moving!
Confidence as a movement teacher comes with time, practice and patience and you are already taking all the right steps to create beautiful classes for the right clients for you. Remember people will come to your classes for your individual style and tone of voice and personality so just keep being you.
Okay so if you fancy hanging out with me for a morning and chatting more about this. I’ve set up our first little zoom workshop on Saturday 4th May 9-10.15am BST.