The Art of Cueing in Pilates Instruction

When I began teaching I followed the order. Exercise by exercise, session by session, exactly as I had been taught. That was the right place to start. You learn the method first. You learn the sequence. You learn what each exercise is asking of the body and how it connects to what comes before and after. That foundation matters — without it there is nothing to build on.

But at some point in my teaching, something shifted. I realised that the order was not the lesson. The order was the container. The real work — the thing that actually changes how someone moves — is what happens inside it. How an exercise is delivered. What is said, when it is said, and to which body it is said.

That realisation changed everything about how I teach.

The Body in Front of You

I do not prepare lesson plans. This is not laziness — it is a considered position. A lesson plan assumes I know in advance what the client needs. I do not. I know what they needed last week. I know their movement history and their patterns. But I do not know what they are carrying into the studio on any given day until they are in front of me and moving.

A client who slept badly moves differently from one who is rested. A client who has been at a desk for ten hours carries that compression into the first exercise. A client who is anxious holds their breath differently from one who arrives calm. None of this is visible until the session begins. The lesson plan belongs in the bin before it starts.

What I bring instead is attention. Full, undivided attention on this body, today, in this session. The exercises themselves can be straightforward or demanding depending entirely on how the information is relayed and how the client interprets it. There is no need to constantly introduce new exercises to create challenge — diving deeper into existing ones, with more precise cueing, produces far more meaningful results.

Same Exercise, Different Instruction

Take the Roll Up — one of the most fundamental exercises in the mat sequence. I have taught it hundreds of times. I teach it differently every time.

To a client who is healthy and strong, the instruction might be about slowing down — resisting the pull of momentum, finding the sequential articulation of each vertebra rather than using the hip flexors to haul the body upright. The challenge for this client is precision, not effort.

To a client with hypermobility the instruction is entirely different. The joints move too freely — the work is about finding stability within that range, about engaging the deep support structures before the movement begins rather than relying on passive joint flexibility to carry them through it.

To an older client the instruction changes again — the range may be smaller, the pace slower, the priority a clear breath pattern that supports the movement rather than fights it.

Same exercise. Same name. Three completely different bodies, three completely different instructions. The body in front of you is the only plan that matters.

Cueing the Whole Body

One thing worth knowing about cueing in Pilates, particularly if you are coming from a gym or a yoga background, is that cues are not part-specific. There is no instruction like "use your glutes" or "engage your right shoulder" the way there might be in a strength training session. Pilates cueing is full-body cueing. Every exercise asks the entire body to organise itself, and the cueing reflects that.

Take footwork on the Reformer as an example. The client lies down on the carriage. Before the carriage even begins to move, there is already a long list of things being attended to: the body is centred on the frame, there is no arching of the neck, the shoulders are not pressing into the shoulder blocks, the triceps are engaged so the client does not slide back as the carriage moves, the chest is open, the hips are anchored without tucking or arching, the knees are not over-extended, all ten toes are pressing into the bar, the heel stays fixed in space. Then the carriage opens and closes.

The point of the exercise is to open and close the carriage. But what makes it a Pilates exercise rather than a leg-press machine in a gym is that the entire body is involved in producing that simple movement. The cueing addresses that. Every part of the body has a role in every exercise, and the cues guide the client through how those parts coordinate. Breath and opposition run through the work — the body extending in one direction while engaging in another, pulling in toward the centre while reaching out from it.

This is why the cueing is layered. No client receives all of these cues on the first day. The body has come to move first. Getting every alignment cue right from the first session is not what matters. What matters is that the client experiences the movement, develops familiarity with the apparatus, and starts to feel what the exercise is. The cues are introduced over sessions, layer by layer, as the body becomes ready to receive each one. Bombarding a beginner with the full set of cues for footwork would not produce better movement — it would produce a frozen, anxious client who is trying to remember instructions instead of moving. Move first. Refine over time. The body itself eventually finds the rest.

Adapting the Choreography

In teacher training programmes, instructors learn the choreography of each exercise — the setup, the beginning, the middle, the end, and how to teach that to clients. There is often an unstated assumption that the exercise has to look a certain way: the way it was taught, the way it appears in old photographs, the way an experienced practitioner performs it.

Once I started working with individual clients, that assumption broke down. The choreography is the reference point. It is not the destination. My job is not to make the body in front of me perform the textbook version of the exercise. My job is to set the body up in a position where it can find the movement and experience some level of success in it. A client who fails repeatedly at an exercise does not learn the exercise — they learn frustration. A client who succeeds at a modified version of the exercise has actually moved.

Take the Teaser as an example. The exercise asks the body to come from a supine position into a Pilates C-curve, with springs pulling backward and gravity acting from above. That is mechanically demanding. For a client who is not yet ready for the full version, attempting it as written produces struggle without progress. So I set them up differently — perhaps without springs at all, perhaps with the body supported on the box, perhaps with the legs in a less demanding position. The movement principle is preserved. The client experiences the work the exercise is designed to teach. Over time, as the body develops, the modifications fall away and the full version becomes accessible.

This is what teaching the body in front of you actually requires. Not insisting on the textbook version. Not refusing to deviate from what the exercise looks like in a manual. It requires reading what this particular body can do today, finding a setup that allows it to move from a place of capability rather than discomfort, and protecting the integrity of the movement principle while adapting everything around it.

None of this can be copied. A teacher who watches another teacher cue a Teaser successfully and tries to reproduce that cue with their own client will discover quickly that the cue does not transfer. The client is different. The body is different. The setup that worked for that other teacher's client may produce frustration in this one. The adaptation is what teaching is, and it can only come from observation and judgement built up over time.

What I Say and How I Say It

I do not use elaborate language. I do not dramatise. I say what needs to be said, in as few words as possible, at exactly the moment the body can receive it. Every word should serve the movement — move the client, connect them to what is happening, help them find something they have not yet found.

There is a discipline to this that took years to develop. Early in teaching there is a temptation to explain — to justify the instruction, to give context, to fill silence with helpfulness. I have learned that most of that talking gets in the way. The client is moving. Their attention is on their body. A long sentence competes with that attention. A short, precise phrase lands directly.

The rhythm and tone of the cue matters as much as the words. The way you say "lift" or "lengthen" or "exhale" should match the pace and quality of the movement itself. A cue that arrives at the wrong moment — after the body has already passed the point where it could act on it — is wasted. Timing is not secondary to content. It is equal to it.

I say the same things again and again. Not because I have run out of cues but because the fundamental things — breathe, find your centre, let the spine move sequentially — need to be said repeatedly across hundreds of sessions before they become integrated. Novelty is not the goal. Precision is.

Saying What to Do, Not What Not to Do

One thing that took me longer to understand than it should have is that the body responds to instruction in the form of action, not in the form of negation. Telling a client what not to do rarely works. Telling them what to do instead almost always does.

Take Elephant on the Reformer. The natural tendency for most clients is to put their weight on the footbar through the hands and start the movement from there. The instinctive cue is "do not push the carriage out using the footbar." This rarely works. The body hears "footbar" and the attention goes to the footbar, often with the result of the client pushing harder rather than less. The better cue is what they should do instead — "dig the heels in and let that press move the carriage." Now the attention has somewhere productive to go. The body has a target.

Short Spine on the Reformer is similar. Many clients use the springs to find the lift-off rather than initiating from the centre. Saying "do not use the springs" produces exactly that — the client uses the springs, because that is where their attention has just been directed. The cue I use instead is "your feet should not move — use something else to lift the hips off the carriage." The body now has a constraint on the feet and an open question about how the lift will happen. The work finds its way to the right muscles.

This is not just a rhetorical trick. It reflects how the nervous system processes instruction in motion. Negation requires an extra cognitive step that the body does not always have time for in the middle of a movement. Direct positive instruction is faster. It also keeps the client in a constructive frame rather than a corrective one — they are doing something rather than avoiding something. The quality of the movement is different.

Verbal Language and Touch

Cueing can be verbal or through touch. Both have their place. When touch is used, it should always be an invitation for the client to respond — never forceful, never manipulative. The client must be comfortable with hands-on guidance, and that comfort is established over time through the working relationship.

Verbal cues should be clear and concise. Solid anatomical knowledge matters for the instructor — but not all clients share that knowledge, and assuming they do creates confusion. Hip bones rather than anterior superior iliac spine. Collar bones rather than clavicles. Hamstrings rather than a list of their technical names. The goal is to direct the client's attention precisely, not to demonstrate the instructor's knowledge of anatomy.

Imagery can be a powerful tool when used well. A well-chosen image gives the body a felt sense of what is being asked before the conscious mind translates the instruction into movement. But images need to be relevant and easily understood by this particular client. An image that sends the client into confusion — wondering what was meant — has moved their attention away from the work. That is the opposite of what cueing is for.

When a Cue Does Not Land

Cues do not always work. A cue that landed perfectly with one client will land flat with another, and a cue that worked with the same client last week may produce a blank look this week. This happens often, particularly with clients newer to the method. The interesting question is what to do next.

Take Reformer footwork as an example. With an experienced client I might cue "take the sitzbones away from the heels." What I am asking them to do is to open the carriage from the backside of the leg — the hamstrings and gluteals doing the work rather than the quadriceps pushing through the heel. With a client who has been practicing for years, this cue lands immediately and the movement quality changes. With a client in their first or second session, the same cue produces a puzzled expression nine times out of ten. They have not yet developed the body awareness to translate the words into action.

When a verbal cue does not land, the response is graduated. The first move is touch — with prior permission established as part of the working relationship. I might place my hand under the calf or under the heel and ask the client to open the carriage without pressing into my hand. The touch gives the body a reference point that the words alone could not provide. The body now has something concrete to work against and the movement principle becomes available without needing the verbal abstraction.

If touch is not appropriate or not yet established, the next move is a simpler verbal cue. "Open the carriage using your hips" is less precise than "take the sitzbones away from the heels," but it points in roughly the same direction and is more accessible to a body that has not yet built the vocabulary for the more refined cue.

And when even the simpler cue does not land, the right response is often to let it go. Allow the client to move, continue working, and trust that the body will absorb the principle through repetition over time. A cue that fails repeatedly is a cue the body is not yet ready to receive. Forcing it produces frustration without progress. Returning to it later — once the foundational patterns have developed — usually finds it lands without resistance.

This is one of the things experience teaches that no training programme can. The body becomes intelligent over time. Patterns that required explicit instruction in the early sessions become automatic. The cues that once produced confusion become unnecessary because the body has internalised what they were asking for. The work is to keep teaching at the level the body can actually receive — not at the level a more developed body would receive — and to trust that the more refined cueing becomes available in its own time.

Four Things I Think About

When I cue, there are four things running simultaneously. First — what does this client need right now, in this moment, in this movement? That is always the starting point. Second — what specific words will direct their attention there? "Lengthen the back of the neck" lands differently from "relax your shoulders" — even if the physical outcome is similar. One gives the body a direction. The other asks it to stop doing something.

Third — is a direct instruction the right tool, or does this client need an image to bridge the gap between what I am asking and what their nervous system understands? Some clients respond immediately to anatomical direction. Others need a metaphor that gives the body a felt sense of the movement first. Knowing which approach this client needs, and when, comes only from sustained observation over time.

Fourth — delivery. Not just what is said but when, at what volume, at what pace, with what tone. Timing and tone are as much a part of the instruction as the words themselves.

Cueing at Different Stages of Practice

How much to cue depends on where the client is in their practice. A client who is new to the method needs to know what to do — and less is more. Overloading a beginner with cues leads to confusion and frustration. The most useful thing at that stage is consistent, clear direction about the centre — where it is, how to find it, how to maintain it through movement. Everything else can wait until the fundamental connection is more established.

As the client progresses — as they learn the exercise names, move through transitions with greater ease, maintain their centre through longer sequences without breaks — the cueing can deepen. Now the work is fine-tuning. A client who knows what they are doing is ready to be told how to do it better. That is when the most productive cueing happens: not correction of what is wrong, but refinement of what is already working.

There are also moments when the right thing to do is say nothing. Pilates is a process. Not every movement needs fixing, and sometimes it is more valuable to let the client have the experience of working through something without the instructor intervening. Knowing when to hold back is as important as knowing when to speak.

What I Am Working Toward

The goal of cueing, as I understand it, is its own obsolescence. The client who needs constant instruction has not yet internalised the work. The client who can self-correct — who notices when the breath is held, who feels when the pelvis has shifted, who can find the movement without being told — has developed something far more valuable than the ability to follow instructions well.

In practical terms this means something specific. A client who has worked consistently over time should know the names of the exercises they practice. They should understand what different spring configurations do — why more springs provide support and fewer springs increase challenge — and be able to make that choice themselves when it is appropriate. They should know how to adjust the apparatus safely and handle the equipment with confidence. These are not peripheral details. They are evidence that the client has developed a relationship with the work rather than a dependence on the instructor to manage it for them.

When a client can walk into the studio, set up the Reformer for footwork at the spring weight that suits them that day, and begin working with genuine understanding of what they are doing and why — that is the goal of the instruction. Not performance. Not compliance. Informed, independent practice that continues to develop whether the instructor is in the room or not.

Not every client responds to the way I work. I am direct. I am specific. I do not soften the instruction with unnecessary pleasantries. The session belongs to the work, not to the conversation around it. Some people find that style uncomfortable. That is fine — this studio is not for everyone, and I have never tried to make it so.

The instruction that lands is not the cleverest one or the most elaborate one. It is the one given to the right body, at the right moment, in exactly the right words. That precision does not come from a lesson plan. It comes from years of paying attention.