Accreditation yes or no? Where do the Outliers go?? (Part 1)

So, we at Pilates Therapy have stepped well and truly outside the box and leapt into the void by offering courses to Pilates teachers that upscale their skills to cover objective screening and manual therapy tools that are not covered or included in most traditional Pilates education programs in the UK – that we know of…

The here and now.

Why this blog about accreditation you ask (or maybe not)? We have been continuously asking our teachers to spread the word and let others know about our courses so we can spread the love. We have also been asking why people may hesitate to come along to our sessions and one question that occasionally comes up is ‘who are they accredited with?’ So we are asking: how important is accreditation to you when deciding to take a course? What does being accredited add to a course? Does it represent value, credibility, instil trust that the people you are parting with your hard earned cash for and giving up your precious weekends with are worth it? Please tell us…..

Brief history lesson.

What has happened over the years within the Pilates industry has been interesting. When I trained with Body Control Pilates (BCP) and the Physical Mind Institute in NYC, there were no accredited courses on either side of the pond, none, zip, zero, nil, nada. In fact, in the USA teaching organisations could only say they taught exercises based on the teachings of Joseph Pilates. They couldn’t say they taught Pilates until the trademark lawsuit in the USA was settled in NY in October 2000 and Pilates was ruled a generic term, like Yoga. Since then the PMA (USA based but welcomes international members) has worked to self-regulate our industry and has created its own accreditation. Here in the UK, we were protected by the Atlantic from the lawsuit, so BCP and the Pilates Foundation (PF) were free to market their teaching programs as Pilates. They also accredited their own courses as this was in the days before the Exercise Register here in the UK and the PMA over there. The most important thing for these organisations was that those who went through their training programs were able to obtain insurance to practice teaching.*

Fellow outliers (noun: a person different from all over members of a group or set).

Those who have jumped with us and taken our courses have been incredibly complimentary about what we have been teaching and the phrase ‘why don’t we get taught this’ has been mentioned more than once. We are non-judgemental and recognise the challenge for most Pilates educators is that they have to leave stuff out to cover what they believe is essential and it is also possible that many Pilates educators may not know some of what we are teaching themselves.

Just a pair of Pilates Geeks.

We are just a pair of Pilates geeks who don’t believe we know all there is to know and are driven by growth and an ongoing thirst for more knowledge. We are addicted to learning and love to share what we have found useful in our teaching with our clients. We are also not afraid to dip our toes outside the Pilates pond and into anything that might help our clients move better, more quickly and with more ease. We also want to ensure our courses are recognised as being of a very high standard. One of our students had completed a degree not long before joining our Level one Bridging course and has told us what we are teaching is of a comparable level.  We know Pilates teachers are smart and highly skilled and are not likely to waste their time on rubbish courses.

That’s enough for now, more to follow in the next blog posting……

* For the record, when BCP decided to become accredited with an outside organisation it aligned itself with REPs (Register of Exercise Professionals) in 2006 it invited those of us who had trained with them to attend a one day workshop to meet the requirements of the Pilates national standard and register as Level 3 Pilates teachers. I’ve never been asked if my training was accredited by any of my clients. I do recognise I only worked briefly for fitness centres and this was in the days before REPs existed (pre-2002). PF set up its own accreditation for courses run by its members.