A client was doing one of my live online Pilates classes at her mum’s house recently. Her mum watched for a while, then turned to her daughter and said, “why are you paying her to just sit there?”
Her daughter put her right straight away. She’s correcting us, she said. That’s why we don’t get injured.
“Is it even teaching if you’re not?”
A fellow instructor asked me something similar not long after. Do you always correct your class, live, every time?
Of course I do. To me, it’s almost the wrong question, is it even teaching if you’re not?
I do have pre-recorded sessions too, and they have their place. But my live classes are built around this: I demo it, I watch you do it, and I correct it. That’s not an add-on. That’s the class.
No one is faceless in my live online Pilates classes
Everyone’s camera is on, but nobody’s looking at each other they’re just getting on with their own thing. What they don’t always realise is that I am looking. At every single one of them, every single class.
Over time, that means I get to know people properly. Not just a name on a screen, but their injuries, their niggles, whether they run or not, what their week’s looked like. If someone’s had a dodgy knee for a fortnight, I know to adapt the exercise for them there and then, live, without them even having to ask.
That’s the bit that gets missed when people think about online Pilates classes. It’s not just a video call. It’s someone actually watching, actually adjusting, actually catching the thing you can’t feel yourself doing wrong.
Members have said it back to me in ways I couldn’t have put better myself:
“You see more online.”
“It’s astonishing how much you notice. There’s no getting away with poor form in your classes.”
“This is what we need. That’s why we work with you, for the two-way support.”
That two-way support is the whole point. It’s not me talking at a screen. It’s me watching, and you doing the work together, even if neither of us can see the other’s living room.
Still a community, even with cameras off from each other
No one’s looking at each other in my classes. But it’s still a community. People encourage each other in the comments, they cheer each other on, they know who else shows up week after week even if they’ve never met. It’s a strange kind of togetherness everyone doing their own thing, in their own space, but all being watched, corrected, and supported by the same person, at the same time.
That’s what my client’s mum didn’t see when she watched from the sofa. She saw someone “just sitting there.” What she was actually watching was me doing the job properly the way I was taught to teach, live, for every single person on that call.
If you’ve never had that kind of feedback in an online class before, come and try it for yourself.