Clinical Pilates in Practice: Instruction Modes for Motor Skills

Previous research has demonstrated that mirror neurons play an important role in learning; action observation training or motor imagery practice is based on this mechanism. This small study has some flaws, but demonstrated that motor imagery was more effective for developing motor control than tactile feedback or verbal instruction.

Roy La Touche, Macarena Sánchez-Vázquez, Ferran Cuenca-Martínez, María Prieto-Aldana, Alba Paris-Alemany & Gonzalo Navarro-Fernández (2019): Instruction Modes for Motor Control Skills Acquisition: A Randomized Controlled Trial, Journal of Motor Behavior, DOI: 10.1080/00222895.2019.1645087

Key Points: Instruction Modes for Motor Skills

• Motor imagery is the dynamic mental processing of an action, without its real motor execution.

• Motor imagery can be used to facilitate the learning and acquisition of motor skills, and the maintenance of previously acquired skills.

• Motor imagery can also be used to stimulate motor, sensory, emotional, and kinesthetic responses.

  Motor imagery can improve pain and improve lumbar movement, implying that is is as effective as real motor practice.

• An individual’s ability to generate and control mental images can play a significant role in its effectiveness.

• Position control through tactile feedback can be useful for patients who struggle with motor imagery.

• Motor imagery in combination with real motor practice is more effective.

Clinical Pilates in practice

• Connect with and understand your clients, as a deeper understanding of their backgrounds, interests, and ideas will help you to put motor imagery into practice with them.

• If a client is struggling to generate motor images with the examples you're using, try again: expose yourself to many other instructors, instructions, and images as you can, to build your toolkit.

• Demonstrating exercises can be a way to come up with motor images together with your client: allow them to pick the motor images that resonate with them.

• Combine tactile feedback with motor imagery to facilitate learning a new task: you can remove the tactile feedback later.