Collette Stewart walks around the sunlit room that houses her Pilates class every Friday morning, snapping her fingers and fixing her students’ positions, never missing a beat.
“Your body is so, so individual,” she tells them, offering instructions on breathing and keeping a “neutral spine.”
Stewart is one of two faculty instructors teaching University of Wisconsin-Madison’s brand-new Pilates certificate, a 20-credit program focusing on the practice and teaching of the exercise.
The certificate will teach Pilates at the intermediate and advanced levels, generally requiring two years to complete, and will include a summer studio course. Although UW-Madison will not grant certification for instruction, the program will prepare students with the credentials necessary to take the Pilates Method Alliance Certification exam, Stewart said.
While many of Stewart’s students are already enrolled in dance classes at UW-Madison, numerous others are not formally affiliated with the department.
“I also think it’s quite applicable to people pursuing some sort of physical therapy type degree or kinesiology or even health and fitness of any sort,” she said.
“We do want to offer it to the dancers, but I’m actually pretty excited about the people who aren’t dancers that are coming in,” Stewart added. “[I’m excited about] finding a way to really value the body and have that be very diversified in the kinds of people that come in and practice it.”
This logic rings true for Chloe Smith, a UW-Madison sophomore majoring in kinesiology who joined the certificate program this spring.
“I thought it would be a good complement to my studies,” Smith said. “I’m really looking forward to starting to teach and I know that’s a big part of it.”
For UW-Madison senior and psychology major Ellen Disch, the class offers a break from the traditional classroom setting.
“I like it. It’s a nice way to wake up on Fridays,” Disch added.
Stewart said she looks forward to sharing her favorite parts of Pilates with her students.
“It creates this kind of self-confidence and empowerment type of quality for people and I really enjoy that in teaching Pilates,” Stewart said. “To teach the certificate will be really fun because I’ll get to teach them how to teach people that same thing.”
