Teaching Pilates To The Yoga-Monsters

I turned up to cover a Pilates class at a new gym the other week. The studio manager welcomed me in warmly before yelling over her shoulder "Good luck - they think it's going to be Yoga!" Then she ran. She knew. She wasn't running from me. She was running from them. Or maybe she was just running to bolt the door so I couldn't make a break for it.

Have you ever been to a Yoga class? Yoga students have their own mats. They have their own spots in the class that they like to sit. They sweep into the room, lay down their special mat, talk to the same people they talk to every week, wait for Panpipe Moods to start playing, at which point they launch into some crazy sequence designed to turn themselves into a human pretzel and completely intimidate everyone around them. Sometimes they even scare the teacher. I know. I've seen it with my own eyes.


Yoga students are.... very particular. And there's nothing wrong with that. Unless you're the one trying to teach them Pilates. I had two people walk out of my class. I have never ever  had anyone leave my class before, and let me tell you it took every ounce of self-control not to flip them the bird on the way out.

Do they think that fitness instructors are really the gung-ho, lycra-clad energiser bunnies with evil cyborg hearts that we pretend to be? Do they think we don't go home and cry?

I didn't go home and cry, just in case you were wondering.

I went home and cemented my highly prejudiced feeling about Yoga students instead. 

(apart from the eight people who stayed and enjoyed my class enough to thank me at the end, anyway. But they're probably just Pilates students waiting to be discovered).