APPI, STOTT, Polestar, BASI, Balanced Body or DMA: which clinical Pilates course should you actually do?

Hey, I want to be really honest with you before we start.

I sell a clinical Pilates course and it competes with every single one of the courses I'm about to talk about. So this is my opinion and you should read it like that.

This is my poison, I love Pilates. Factor that in as well.

I'm telling you upfront because the whole reason you can't get a straight answer on this is that nobody ever does.

You've probably googled this at eleven at night, found a forum thread with four replies, and shut the laptop no wiser. That's because nearly every page that ranks for it belongs to someone selling one of those courses. They're not being dodgy. They just can't ever tell you their course might be the wrong fit for you.

I've got exactly the same problem. I've just told you about mine.

What I can actually speak to

I haven't done any of the six. Be suspicious of anyone reviewing a course they've never sat, me included.

Here's what I have got instead.

Heaps of physios and EPs have come to work at Move Sports Physio, my clinic in Geelong, holding one of these certificates. I've watched them take their first classes. I've seen what they could do on day one and what they couldn't. And I've filled the same gaps, in the same spots, over and over for years.

Clinical Pilates isn't a side thing for us. It's most of what we do, so I've had a lot of chances to notice.

I may be wrong about any of this ( genuinely, I'm going off what walks through my door ).

Course by course

STOTT. Proper and thorough and well structured. If you want a classical education in the method you'll get a really good one.

APPI. Great course, and I know some of the people who teach it. They're fantastic physios. But honestly, I couldn't reliably pick an APPI grad out of a lineup. It's also so freaking expensive, and it spends heaps of time on anatomy. That's worth a lot if you haven't got a clinical degree. It's worth a fair bit less if you spent four years covering exactly that.

Polestar. Sits in pretty similar territory to APPI.

Balanced Body. Feels built for people who haven't come through clinical training. Good at what it does, and it'll teach you anatomy you already know.

DMA. This is the one I've got most to say about, and also the one where I'm leaning hardest on other people. So hold it loosely. It's a bit weird in that it merges McKenzie thinking with Pilates, and the clinicians who come to us from it tend to arrive with:

• Frameworks that are really complex to hold in your head when you're under the pump with a client in front of you
• A lot of unilateral joint loading, which I don't think stands up against current evidence when most of the time you're just trying to improve how the whole person moves
• No idea how to run a group session
• No idea how to get someone from early rehab into properly functional, higher level work

My read is it's strong right at the start when someone's in pain, and thins out after that. But again, I haven't sat it. That's just what I see.

The bit they all miss

Two things, and the first one is the big one.

They teach you to assess, but not to be outcome based.

All of them will teach you a lovely assessment. Almost none will teach you to use real outcome measures, VALD force plates, actual load and capacity data. So you end up with a beautiful assessment and no way of showing anyone your client is genuinely better.

They're still classical.

Hold this position. Keep this line. Find this posture. The evidence has moved a long way from there, and a lot of what still gets taught as gospel comes from a model of the body we don't really believe anymore.

If you've had a client who could hold a textbook neutral spine on the reformer and still couldn't pick their kid up off the floor without flaring, you know what I mean.

Why I won't name a winner

I know that's what you came for. I don't wanna name a winner, sorry.

I don't think any of them hold up for what I actually needed, which is the whole reason I ended up building something.

I did my clinical Pilates training in Canada and it's still the best professional education I've had. It wasn't really the content, it was the shape of it:

• Physio led
• Really small group
• Every week we brought our own cases in and worked through them together

That's what changed how I practise. Sitting with other clinicians, thinking out loud about a client I was stuck on.

Nothing like it exists here and the course I did isn't even running anymore. I waited ages for someone to build the Australian version and eventually worked out nobody was going to. So discount some of what I've said accordingly. I came into this pretty annoyed.

So who should do what

Don't do my course if:

• You want to be traditionally Pilates trained. Go and do STOTT properly, you'll get a great classical education and you'll be glad you did
• You haven't got anatomy knowledge, or you're not a clinician. It'll be a waste of your time in the form it's in right now

There's real demand for a version for non-clinicians and we'll get there. I'd just rather do one thing properly first.

It's built for you if:

• You're a clinician in the treatment room with a client who's got sticky beliefs, or pain, or fear
• You've got someone who wants to move, doesn't know how, and flares every time they try
• You want to get that person into one on ones, then into a group, then into genuinely functional training

It's way more functional than traditional Pilates and it isn't trying to be.

I built it for the physios and EPs coming to work at my clinic, because uni hadn't prepared them and the other courses weren't getting them ready. Our clients are pointy. In pain, bendy, sometimes pregnant, often irritable, and some athletes who need pushing hard. You can't wing that.

What I'd do if I were you

Do your research properly. Follow whoever you're thinking of learning from for a while first, long enough to work out how they think and whether that's how you want to practise.

We put heaps out for free for exactly that reason. I'd honestly rather you spent two months watching our stuff and decided we're not for you, than ended up in a cohort you didn't want to be in. We're not here to churn and burn.

And look, it's not your fault you finished your degree and still couldn't get every client moving. Uni taught you how not to hurt someone. Nobody taught you the next step.

You do have to put in to learn it though. I'm not going to promise you easy.

Anyway, have a think about what you actually want out of it before you spend the money.

And if you've got questions about our course just yell out. I'm more than happy to have a chat about whether it's actually a fit for you, and I'd honestly rather tell you it isn't than have you sign up and work that out three weeks in.

The Clinical Collective is free to join as well, so come and have a look around first. You'll get a feel for how we teach and see a fair bit of what's already in there. That's probably the quickest way to work out whether we're your people. We're trying to be as transparent as we can about all of it, because I'd rather you came in with your eyes open than took my word for any of this.

Let me know what you land on, genuinely curious what people end up choosing.