How to plan a Pilates class that flows

Learning how to plan a Pilates class mostly means learning to think like a programmer, not just an instructor. We borrowed that line from Erin Schirack's group fitness teacher training, and it's the most useful reframe we know for anyone running full rooms. Classes that feel easy to follow, where the beginner on mat two and the ten-year regular on mat three both get something, and that end before the next group is pacing in the lobby, almost always have a plan behind them.

Pick the feeling first

Before choosing a single exercise, pick the feeling. A long spine after a week hunched over a laptop. Shaky legs on the way down to the car. Calm. With one goal on the page, every exercise has to earn its place, including your favorites.

Sketch the arc before the moves

Most good classes have a shape. A common shape goes like this: settle the breath, warm up the directions you'll use later, build toward the hardest block, stay there long enough to matter, and bring everyone down so they leave calmer. Sketch that on the back of an envelope before you choose a single move. Filling in a curve is much easier than stringing favorites together and hoping they add up.

Some exercises hate crowds

A movement can be gorgeous in a private and chaos with twenty people. Erin's training covers which exercises actually work in a group setting and which don't. Long setups are the usual trouble, along with anything that needs your hands to be safe and any moment where half the room waits on the other half. Batch the position changes as well. Five trips from lying down to standing and back again eats minutes and focus.

Write the options in ahead of time

A group plan is really one class at three intensities. For every block, jot an easier and a harder route before you teach it, so you're not inventing them mid-sentence while someone wobbles. Erin calls this layering progressions and regressions in real time, and it's how the whole room gets to feel challenged and successful in the same hour. There's more in our guide for the group Pilates instructor teaching mixed levels.

Time it, then cut

Pencil a rough number of minutes next to each part and add them up. First drafts nearly always run long. When you trim, lose the exercise you're least attached to and protect the cool-down. People remember how a class ends.

Plan your words and your music too

Write down the two or three cues per block that really matter. Left to the moment, most of us talk too much. Our guide on how to cue Pilates goes into that. If you teach to music, build the playlist by section so the tempo matches the work, which is more or less the heart of Erin's Beat-Driven Musicality workshop.

Leave room for you

With the bones in place, leave a little room for what only you bring: your transitions, your humor, the exercise you always save for last. Erin's training talks about classes that feel intentional and distinctly your own. A solid plan is exactly what frees you up to do that.

Learn the framework properly

The Signature Group Fitness Pilates Teacher Training by Erin Schirack, in partnership with STRENGTH Collective, is 12 hours built around a repeatable framework for classes that flow, scale and land. It isn't a traditional Pilates certification, and it's meant for instructors already teaching group fitness. The details are on our certifications page. The Austin workshops are on the PLTS+ Collective page.