Before You Put Corkscrew Together, Take It Apart :)

Sometimes Corkscrew tells me exactly what a client is unsure about. They circle their legs quickly. The rest of the body gets pulled around, and the lower back often loses support.

The person is not quite sure where the movement should come from, so they try to “get through it” by moving their legs around and hoping for the best. 🙂

I see this problem in at least two groups of clients.

Those with vulnerable lower backs or a history of injury may feel uncertain about rotating their spine. Holding the weight of their legs in the air adds another challenge, making the movement even more difficult for them to control.

Strong clients can struggle with Corkscrew for a different reason. Because they can hold their legs up and move them easily, they may use that strength and momentum to swing the legs around. Their strength allows them to complete the shape of the exercise, but it can also hide the fact that they are not stabilizing the upper body or initiating the movement from the center.

In both cases, the problem is the same:

They know the choreography of Corkscrew, but they do not yet understand how to organize their body to perform it. Can you relate? 

Corkscrew Is Not Just a Circle Made With Your Legs

Corkscrew appears in different forms throughout the Pilates method. We perform versions of it on the Mat, Reformer, Chair, and Cadillac with leg springs. The setup and difficulty change, but the relationship between the pelvis, spine, trunk, and legs remains.

When you watch Corkscrew, your eyes naturally follow the legs.

They are, after all, drawing the visible shape.

But unless attention is brought to what is happening through the pelvis and spine, the legs can easily become the focus.

I teach Corkscrew as a movement initiated from the pelvis, with rotation continuing through the lower spine and ribcage.

The legs are no longer pulling the pelvis around.

They are being guided by it.

One Correction Changed How I Understood Corkscrew

During a lesson with one of my teachers, I was told to think of an oval rather than a circle.

It was a small correction, but it changed how I understood the exercise.

I felt my obliques working and became much more aware of the rotation through my trunk. The image of an oval reinforced what I felt through my body. It shifted my attention toward the movement happening through my pelvis, spine, and ribcage.

The Upper Body Has a Job Too

Corkscrew is a good example of a thought process we use throughout the Pilates method:

Stabilize the upper body to move the lower body.

On the Mat, pressing the backs of the arms into the Mat and activating the upper back muscles creates support through the upper body, allowing the lower spine to rotate and the pelvis and legs to follow.

We use the same strategy when performing Corkscrew on the Reformer. Holding the “joysticks” or the frame beside the headrest makes the upper body a source of control, allowing the lower body to move freely but with precision.

So performing Corkscrew requires us to coordinate stability of the upper body and mobility of the spine.

It Helps to Separate the Pieces

This came up recently while I was teaching a completely different exercise.

I was teaching a version of Mermaid on the Cadillac in which the side bend is followed by a twist.

I broke the sequence into four distinct actions:

Bend. Twist. Untwist. Straighten.

My client told me afterwords that separating the movements helped her understand the exercise better. Once she understood the individual steps, she could immediately feel the difference in her body.

I find this approach effective, and I use it with Corkscrew as well.

So before I introduce Corkscrew, I first teach Knee Sways so my clients can understand which muscles support spinal rotation and how that rotation creates movement in the lower body. That understanding gives them a solid foundation before adding the more physically demanding task of holding the legs in the air.

Corkscrew Can Also Reveal Differences Between the Two Sides of the Body

You may notice that rotating in one direction feels coordinated and familiar, while rotating in the other feels restricted or simply more difficult to organize.

I find that these differences become even more noticeable when someone performs the advanced, “hips-off” version of Corkscrew. This is also where gaps in understanding the basic movement of spinal rotation, which I teach through Knee Sways before introducing beginner Corkscrew, can become more apparent.

Understanding how we organize our trunk during rotation is so valuable.  We use this skill throughout the Pilates method: in Saw and Spine Twist on the Mat, Sitting Twist on the Chair, Stir the Pot and Around the World on the Cadillac, and Stomach Massage Twist and Short Box Twist and Reach on the Reformer, to name a few.

Perhaps that is why an exercise that looks like a simple circle of the legs can teach us so much about how we should be moving. 

When we understand the individual skills that make up an exercise, we can bring them together to perform even the most complicated movements more efficiently.

To Your Health,

Joanna

RESOURCE

"What Pilates Is: The Essential Skills"

If this newsletter made you curious about the individual skills that make Pilates exercises easier to understand, perform, and teach, explore my online tutorial: What Pilates Is: The Essential Skills.

This is the approach I developed through years of teaching my clients: learning/teaching the skills separately, understanding how they work, and then bringing them into the exercises so they can practice Pilates with greater intention and control.

In the Exercise Library here, You can watch and read about How I teach Corkscrew.

For more Pilates goodness, visit our website: https://pilatesformodernlife.com