Pressure, Tendinopathy, & Movement
Jenn Pilotti I recently went down a rabbit hole, like I sometimes do, about tendinopathy. Tendinopathy is a poorly understood cause of pain attributed to overuse. It happens at the tendon, the structure that connects muscle to bone. Pain is weird. It’s multi-faceted and difficult to pinpoint. We can sometimes feel when the injury […]
Resistance & Change
Jenn Pilotti Have you ever tried to help someone, only to be met by what feels like a brick wall as the person stubbornly digs their heels in and, without actually saying it, resists your words of wisdom? Or maybe the person just can’t seem to do what you ask and you aren’t sure […]
Learning Strength
Jenn Pilotti I recently took up pole dancing. My sister thinks I am having a midlife crisis which, though it may be accurate, isn’t the reason I felt compelled to begin flipping upside down on a solid vertical object. In actuality, the act of learning how to navigate my body around a pole gave […]
Levers & Movement
Jenn Pilotti How do your joints collaborate to produce movement? Any movement? When I reach down, unscrew the lid off my water bottle, bring the water bottle to my lips and drink, there are an infinite number of ways I could do this (the degrees of freedom problem, for those of you who like […]
When Performance meets Awareness
Jenn Pilotti & Adarian Barr *Weekly conversations between these two can be found at Women Running Cafe.
Medicating with Movement
Jenn Pilotti I am having one of those weeks, a week where a lot of the people around me are upset, or anxious, or depressed. A week where there is a sense of heaviness encompassing the people I interact with regularly, which makes me feel like I am being held down under a thick, […]
Creating Space
Jenn Pilotti August came at me with a vengeance. My client load was full, my mostly organized life was being met with the potential for a big change, and every single project I had either organized or said yes to were all due within a two week span. While I (miraculously) managed to get […]
Openness & Movement
Jenn Pilotti The coach who writes my programs recently included handstand play on one of my hand balancing days. “Set a timer for ten minutes. Play with different entries to handstands. Try and catch the balance for 3 seconds. Note which variations feel interesting.” This particular aspect of my movement practice made my Tuesday. […]
Strengthening Wisdom
Jenn Pilotti One early morning in 1983, Lieutenant Petrov carefully watched the computer screen in front of him in a secret command center outside of Moscow. Alarms sounded, signaling missiles had been launched from the United States. Rather than immediately alerting his superiors who would, in turn, aim and fire a nuclear bomb in […]
Lifespan & Learning
Jenn Pilotti One of the things that happens when you read books from similar, but different, areas is the observation of common themes. I have heard it said that there is no new information, only old information that is presented in new ways. While this isn’t exactly true because of advances in science and […]
Alter the Environment, Alter the Behavior
Jenn Pilotti A behavior is an output in the form of action, and is a response to context. An action implies movement of some sort, so another way of thinking about behavior is that it is a movement that satisfies a desired outcome based on environmental cues. What that desired outcome is depends on […]
The $500 Game
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Input Output Processing
Jenn Pilotti I had a version of the following conversation with two different clients last week: Client: “How should I be holding myself? Should I think about lifting through my ribs? Should I keep my left hip always back? Should I emphasize pressing down my right foot?” Me: “You should stand in a way […]
A Practical Exploration of Pain and Healing
Jenn Pilotti I was doing Russian dancers recently, a move I have always struggled with (for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, a Russian dancer is a one armed backbend that dynamically switches to the other arm by shifting your weight forward to your feet). I learned that if […]
Feel More Capable
Jenn Pilotti In our quest for the mind body connection, we have moved further away from it. We focus on perfect alignment, experiencing full expansion, pushing to be more: more flexible, more fit, more strong. But what if establishing a mind body connection actually came from thinking less and feeling more? What if […]
Hip! Hip! (An Overview)
Jenn Pilotti The hips. Peaches. The area where your femur, the longest bone in your body, rests neatly into a concave structure that looks like a cup and is actually the meeting place of the three bones that make up one half of your pelvis. (Fun fact: your pelvis is made up of two […]
Helpfulness Without Distinction
Jenn Pilotti I sat down to apply to speak at a well-known fitness conference recently. I wrote out the draft of my session summary and before I hit send, I sent it over to a friend of mine who has a good handle on both the fitness industry and how to actually get conferences […]
Pelvic Motion, Awareness, & Control
Jenn Pilotti Your pelvis, the bowl shaped structure that hangs from the bottom of the spine, is comprised of muscles on the inside that help maintain intra abdominal pressure and muscles on the outside that transmit forces from the leg to the torso during walking and running and also control movement of the […]
Vaulting as a Catch-All Skill
Jenn Pilotti One of my favorite post-rehabilitative exercises is vaulting. Yes, you read that right, as in figuring out ways to navigate objects that are off the ground. Or, more accurately, the steps towards tripod vaulting or the butt roll vault or any other variation that involves weight bearing on a hand while navigating […]
Anatomy of a Movement Practice
Jenn Pilotti I was recently contacted by a concierge service to train an out of town visitor. I thought about it before calling her back, since it meant I wouldn’t have any days off from training and I had things I needed to do, like format the book/film/complete online training for my government job, […]