"The technique is less important than the person."
In this episode, we are joined by Alan Herdman - the man widely credited with bringing Pilates to the UK, opening the country's first Pilates studio back in the early 1970s. After training in New York under Bob Fitzgerald, Alan returned to London and has spent the last 55 years shaping how Pilates is taught, practiced, and passed on.
They explore what real teacher training looked like in the early days of Pilates, from months of apprenticeship to learning tactile cueing on real bodies, and why Alan believes the explosion in demand for teachers has made standards "a little suspect."
They unpack the difference between being an instructor and being a teacher, the gaps emerging in fast-tracked training courses, and why Alan still believes you cannot learn to teach Pilates without a body in front of you.
They also go deeper into the evolution of the industry, the rise of group reformer classes, the misunderstood role of flexion in modern training, and the client stories that have kept Alan teaching for over five decades.
Timestamps
00:00 Alan opens the UK's first Pilates studio
03:11 How "Pilates" got its name
09:57 Training as an apprentice in New York
13:35 Bodies first, technique second
24:14 Why Alan built a network outside Pilates
25:27 Is teacher training broken?
27:53 The truth about tactile cueing
36:11 How far is too far for Pilates on social media
40:13 What Joseph Pilates would think of Pilates today
45:16 The flexion problem in modern training
48:16 What it really takes to teach a group class
57:10 Why group reformer classes aren't really teaching
58:56 The client who's been coming for 50 years
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