My Pilates Instructor Training Journey

This post is part 1 of all things course related! It’s honestly SUCH a big topic and I have so many thoughts about it, but I thought I’d just share what I did first so you know where my perspectives (and also biases) come from, and so you can also think critically about the information I share in the future. I won’t be going into too many details in this post, because I don't want this to become a long-winded story of my life! 😅

I took my Pilates instructor course in April 2023 at Pilatique Singapore, which is a provider of STOTT Pilates training and certifications here. For my training, the sequence of courses I did was:

Anatomy Review (shorter anatomy course) > Intensive Mat > Posture Analysis workshop (one day course) > Intensive Reformer > Intensive Chair, Cadillac, Barrels.

For me, as I had already stopped working, I planned to go all in on my courses and because I could invest the time into shorter and more intensive courses. This is one of the main reasons I chose STOTT, because the schedule of courses meant that I would be able to condense my training and practice hours (and frankly speaking, not be jobless for so long). 💵

I pretty much did the courses back to back, and finished all of them within 2 months (just classroom hours, not including the practice, teaching and observation hours under exam requirements). Now, I am 🚫 NOT 🚫 advocating rushing through your training, and just know that I would not actually recommend taking the courses in such quick succession, because the mental and physical demands of the course are huge.

But I totally understand the empathise with people thinking of a career switch and know how scary it can be 🥹 so if you’re in the same boat and are willing to put in the hours and push yourself hard for those few months, then I wouldn’t say it’s impossible either.

Outside of classroom hours, if you intend on getting certified on all apparatus, there’s upwards of 200 hours of practice, observation and teaching that you will need to fulfil (roughly 75 hours just for reformer, 55 hours for mat, and 85 hours for cadillac, chair and barrel combined), and this does not count your own self-study, and programming, and exam prep you need to do 🫠🫠 I took my exam in mid October 2023, because that was the earliest I could get a date, though I had completed my hours about 1 - 2 months prior to my exam date.

The thing about practice hours is that even if you want to practice 10 hours a day, it’s not going to be very feasible because your hours also depend on studio availability as well. For my course provider, they limited it to 2 hours per person per day (if you practice with your coursemate, eg if they practice teach on you, you can still count those hours), so unless you have a reformer yourself, or if you have another studio you can practice at, your daily hours are going to be capped - hence dragging out your training period accordingly. Another thing to consider is that the available studio hours are likely going to be non-peak hours (ie. working hours, excluding lunch), so if you have a full time role you might need to make quite a few arrangements just to practice. I did have batchmates juggling full time jobs and practice hours, so it’s definitely possible (mad props to them)!

This post is getting super long, so I’ll end it here. Let me know if you have any questions, and hopefully this has been helpful! 💕💕

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