Hey Pam, good question...

the cueing I find the most useful is (like you say) to anchor the hips on the mat. When I say the hips I mean the student trying to move the femoral head towards the mat. The hips should be the "fixed point" where we can benefit for a good recruitment in the legs keeping stability in the lumbar spine.

When you push with focus on the hips, the gluts will react and contract automatically so it's preferable not to cue the glut contraction directly (but sometimes and depending the case you have to do this at early stages of the movement program), this contraction is highly unlikely to produce an anterior tilt since your thinking in pressing in the hips, the gluts are hips extensor and also produce posterior tilt, glut contraction with anterior tilt is a strategic movement disfunction.

One common mistake is to go into a real posterior tilt, this is not what we want, we want to keep our neutral but increase the focus in the hip extension.

[continue]

... In the SLK, when you go into an axially elongated spine extension the abs will recruit automatically, so yes, it's a co-contraction between both sides of the lumbar spine and both sides of the pelvis... Everything is co-contracted and "pre-tensioned" (sorry if I've invented this word) but it's happening through the right organization of the skeleton, not the direct muscle contraction.

I hope it makes sense, thanks a lot for watching the class, It's an honor.

Hugs!

Many thanks! Brilliant, Juan. Loved the work, style of teaching, just a splendid class I can't wait to share??

I know he emphasis the class for runners but not being a runner I felt this class being very beneficial! I truly enjoyed this class! Thank you, Juan!

I just love your classes. You inspire movement "out of the box". You honor Pilates but incorporate wonderful biomechanics. Thank you very much!

Muchas gracias Juan, muy insightful y practico.

I loved your perspective and your humour! Many thanks and hope to see you again
:)

Loved it!

What a pleasure to be able to take a class from a friend and colleague from afar! Thank you Juan. My nine year old daughter and I did this class together and both enjoyed it very much.

Your classes have such a lovely light ,fun approach with functionality at the core.I love them .Just hope I can learn to understand certain why's.The kneeling 4 point position with the idea of the hands being almost not there is new to me and I have to have my hips further back to be able to acheive it.I do then get the hip connection you are talking about and wonder why I've never come across this before!I've only ever had 'hips over knees' where you actually lose the hip connections.Thank you for sharing-would love more classes-tutorials.