Pilates Mat Transitions Reference, Exercise Flow Guide for Instructors (PDF)

You have planned the class you want. Swan, then Side Kicks. Thursday, seven o'clock, twelve people face down on the floor, and the only way you know to join those two things is "OK, everybody come up to sitting." Eight seconds of nothing. It happens four to six times an hour, and you know it is the difference between your class and the one that flows.

Every book and every video on this is organised along the classical order. That is genuinely useful if you are teaching the classical order. It tells you how to get from the Hundred into the Roll Up, and from the Roll Over into Single Leg Circles, because those are the pairs that order contains. It has nothing at all to say about the pair you actually built, and building your own sequence is what almost every mat class is.

So this is organised a different way. By position.

Every mat exercise starts the body in one of six positions and leaves it in one of six positions. Supine, prone, seated, side-lying, kneeling, standing. Write those two facts down for every exercise and the arbitrary pair stops being a puzzle and becomes a lookup: six positions, thirty-six crossings, and for each one the movement that joins them, what it costs, and the sentence you say while the room is moving.

British English throughout. Written for qualified instructors.

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WHAT'S INCLUDED
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✔ 145 entries across three indexes, 53 pages
✔ The Map: all 36 crossings, each with the named link, the cost, and why
✔ The Exercise Index: 68 exercises filed by the position they leave you in, with what can follow each one for free
✔ The Bridges: 24 pieces of real repertoire that live inside an expensive crossing and give the time a job
✔ Ten pre-solved free runs, including the Series of Five and the floor-to-feet arc
✔ A printable one-page transition map for beside your class plan
✔ 18 original illustrations: the position key, the cost ladder, the bridge diagram and 14 drawings of the link positions themselves
✔ Instant digital download, print at home or keep it on the tablet by the mat

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THE PART THAT MAKES IT USEFUL
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Every crossing is rated one of three ways, and the rating is arithmetic rather than opinion.

FREE means the position the last exercise left you in is the position the next one needs. Nothing to do, nothing to say.

ONE MOVE means a single named movement joins them. Roll to the side and press up. Thread the leg through. Press back to all fours.

COSTLY means two or more position changes, or a room that has to be talked across a gap.

And every costly crossing carries a bridge: a real exercise that lives inside the gap and uses it. The class is already turning onto the other side, so the turn becomes the first slow repetition of the leg lift. Nothing is added to the clock. Something is added to the class. Every costly crossing also names a second route, for whoever in the room needs one.

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THE ILLUSTRATIONS
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A transition is a body moving between two positions, which is the one thing a table cannot show you and a drawing can. Fourteen of the link positions are drawn: the side-sit, the log roll, the press up to sitting, the thread-through, rest position, walking the hands in. All original, all drawn for this book, all in one hand.

The exercise index deliberately has no picture per row, because it is a lookup table and a picture on every line would make it slower to use, not faster.

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PERFECT FOR
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• Mat instructors who build their own sequences rather than teaching a fixed order
• Teacher trainees who have learned the exercises and not the joins
• Reformer teachers covering a mat class, where there is no machine to reset behind
• Studio owners who want the same class to flow whoever is teaching it

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WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT
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✓ It answers the pair you actually planned, not the pair a book happened to print
✓ 66 of 68 exercises leave you exactly where they found you, and knowing which two do not changes how a class feels
✓ The expensive part of a mat class is getting a room on and off its feet, and the map shows you how to pay for it once instead of three times
✓ The second-side change, the longest silence in any mat class, gets five different bridges
✓ Every entry gives you the words, not just the theory

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WHAT YOU RECEIVE
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One A4 PDF, 53 pages, instantly downloadable after purchase. Print the whole thing, print just the map page, or keep it on a tablet.

Please note this is a digital download. Nothing is posted to you. Because Etsy delivers the file as it was at the moment you bought it, please download and keep your copy.

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BRICK BY BRICK STUDIOS
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Deep, grounded reference tools for Pilates instructors. This is the sixth in our mat reference line, alongside the Mat Cueing Library, the Faults & Corrections Reference, the Progressions & Regressions Reference, the Props Reference and the Standing & Balance Reference.

For qualified Pilates instructors. Not a clinical, diagnostic or treatment resource.