The one thing you actually control in your Pilates practice

There's a moment that happens in almost every new client consultation. After we've talked through their goals, their history, what brought them here - there's a pause. And then come the disclaimers.

"I'm not very coordinated." "I'm weak." "I've never been good at this sort of thing." "I'm unfit."

They're telling us all the reasons they can't do this before we've even started.

In Brook Siler's book The Pilates Body, she calls this what it is: "the mind's self-deprecation." She writes that the first and biggest hurdle in exercise isn't your body - it's your belief about what your body can do.

You're already winning

Here's what we tell those clients: You made the effort to get here. You walked through the door. You're sitting in front of us asking questions. That already tells us something wonderful is shifting inside you.

Joseph Pilates didn't call his method "Pilates." He called it Contrology - complete control of your mind over your body. Not control over external forces. Not control over your genetics, your injury history, your age, how quickly your friend picked it up, whether someone else thinks you're doing it "right."

Control over the one thing that's actually yours: your effort, your attention, your belief that you can.

The belief gap

There's a chasm between "I can't do this" and "I can't do this YET."

That three-letter word changes everything.

"I can't do this" is a door slamming. It's final. It's you deciding the outcome before you've even tried.

"I can't do this YET" is a door opening. It acknowledges where you are right now - honestly, without shame - and leaves space for where you're going.

How many times have we watched someone surprise themselves? They've spent weeks, months, years convinced they can't do something. Then one day - not because anything magical happened, just because they kept showing up - they do it. And they look at us like "Wait, how did that happen?"

It happened because they stopped fighting their own limitations and started working with them.

Who's watching anyway?

Here's the other thing that stops people before they've even started: fear of looking silly.

We see it all the time. New clients watching others in the room, convinced everyone else knows what they're doing and they're the only one flailing about. Worried they look stupid. Worried we're judging them. Worried the person on the next Reformer is silently critiquing their form.

Let us tell you what we're actually thinking: "Good, they're trying. Breathe. Watch the shoulder. That's it. Keep going."

That's it. We're not grading you. We're not comparing you to anyone else. We're watching you do the work, and we're helping you do it better.

And the person next to you? They're too busy concentrating on their own practice to be watching yours. We're all in the same boat here - trying to control our own bodies, our own breath, our own minds. Nobody has time to judge you.

The voice in your head

The self-deprecation doesn't stop once you start moving. For a lot of people, it gets louder.

You do a Rollover and immediately your brain announces: "That was rubbish." You finish a Roll Up and you're already cataloguing everything that was wrong with it. You come out of Short Box and you're telling yourself it was messy, it wasn't good enough, everyone else looks better doing it than you do.

Here's the problem with that voice: it's using up exactly the attention you need to do the work better. You cannot simultaneously do the thing AND narrate how badly you're doing it. Pick one.

Every bit of attention you spend criticising the last movement is attention you're not giving to the next one. The work requires you to be present. That internal critic pulls you out of the present and into a loop of judgement that helps nobody - least of all you.

Notice the voice. Then let it go. Get back to work.

Siler says it plainly:

"We spend the majority of our lives trying to influence external forces over which we have little or no control, when the very thing over which we have almost complete control is literally beneath our own noses."

What you're actually in control of

When you're here in the studio, here's your short list:

Your focus - Where your attention goes during the work. Not on how you look, not on the person next to you, not on what you think you should be able to do. On what you're actually doing, right now.

Your breath - The rhythm that drives everything. You control whether you hold it, whether you use it, whether you let it carry you through.

Your effort - Not your result. Your effort. Showing up. Trying. That's yours.

Your belief - That the method works. That progression is real. That you're capable of more than you walked in here thinking.

That's it. That's your list.

Everything else - how quickly you progress, whether you can do the advanced version yet, what your body looks like, what other people think, what you imagine we're thinking, whether that last Rollover was good enough - is external noise.

Small miracles are boring

Brook Siler writes:

"I am so incredibly lucky in that I get to watch small miracles happen in people every day. I have watched the weary become strong, the stiff become flexible, and those suffering from pain become pain-free. It happens because they have come to believe that they can, and then they do."

Twenty-five years running EQ, we can tell you - she's right. And we can also tell you that those "miracles" look nothing like what people expect.

They're not dramatic. They're not Instagram-worthy. They're someone in their 80s standing from sitting without using their hands. They're a client who couldn't lie flat on the Mat six months ago now moving through Hundreds without modification. They're the chronic shoulder pain that just... stopped.

These things happen because the person showed up, put the work in, and stopped fighting themselves long enough to let it work.

The long game

We have clients who've been training here for decades. Some are in their 90s. They didn't get there by accident, and they didn't get there by being naturally "good at Pilates." They got there by believing - consistently, stubbornly - that they could keep going.

Not because they're special. Because they stopped giving their power away to doubt.

Siler writes about "constant positive bombardment" - her students succeed when they start believing the positive feedback themselves. That's our job as teachers: to reflect back what you can't see yet. But eventually, you have to believe it yourself.

Just start

"Believing in your innate ability to achieve is the key to changing your body."

I think I can

Not "I think I might." Not "Maybe if conditions are perfect." Not "When I'm less tired/busy/stressed/old."

I think I can.

Then you show up. Then you do the work. Then - slowly, boringly, miraculously - you do.

The practice doesn't work without your participation. Not just physical participation. Mental participation. That's the difference between doing exercises and doing Pilates.