Everyone wants to do Reformer Pilates. Here’s what they’re missing.
Reformer Pilates is booming. But the Reformer is just one part of a much bigger movement system. Step inside a fully equipped Pilates studio and things get really interesting.
I love the Reformer. I’ve been teaching it at the studio since 2019, and there’s a reason it’s become so popular. It’s brilliantly versatile; it can be supportive and challenging (sometimes both at once), and the feedback from the springs and carriage can help you understand what your body is doing in a completely different way.
But I sometimes wonder whether, in all the excitement about Reformer Pilates, we’ve accidentally made it sound as though the Reformer is Pilates. It isn’t. Or at least, it’s only one part of it.
Pilates was developed as a whole system of movement, with different pieces of apparatus designed to work together. And once you start exploring beyond the Reformer, you begin to understand why having those different options can be so useful.
So what is Studio Pilates?
If you’ve been into our studio, you’ll have seen that we have quite a bit more than Reformers. There’s the Tower, Chair, Ladder Barrel and Spine Corrector, as well as all the smaller pieces of equipment we use in our Mat work. Some of it admittedly looks a little unusual until you know what it does!
Studio Pilates simply means that we can use all of those different pieces of apparatus as part of your Pilates practice, rather than sticking to one. It’s not about getting around the studio and ‘having a go’ on everything. The real value is that each piece gives us another way of helping your body find a movement, understand it and eventually become stronger and more confident with it. Bodies respond very differently to different things.
You might struggle to understand an exercise on the Mat and then suddenly find it makes complete sense when you try it on the Reformer. The springs give you something to push against, the carriage gives you feedback, and your brain tunes in: ahhh, that’s what you meant. We see those little lightbulb moments all the time. Then we might take a similar movement to the Tower, where the springs are coming from a different direction, and you experience it differently again.
The Ladder Barrel support the body while we explore movement through the spine and ribcage.
The curved surface of the Spine Corrector or Ladder Barrel can support the body while we explore movement through the spine and ribcage. They can be particularly lovely when so much of life involves sitting, driving, working at a computer and generally spending more time folded forwards than our bodies might like. And the Chair, despite being one of the smallest pieces of equipment in the studio, can be surprisingly mighty. It’s simple, strong work and a great way to explore balance, control and whole-body strength.
Then, of course, there’s the Mat.
I think Mat Pilates sometimes gets presented as the basic version you do before graduating to the exciting equipment, but that really isn’t how I see it. Take away the springs, straps and support, and suddenly your body has to organise all of that movement for itself.
Everything has its place.
More ways to work with the body
This is where having access to the different pieces of equipment becomes really useful. If somebody is finding something difficult, the answer doesn’t always have to be to keep trying harder until they get it. We can change something. We can add support, reduce resistance, change your position or try a different piece of equipment. We can find another route into the movement and then come back to the original exercise later.
Equally, if something has become easy, we have lots of ways to progress it without simply making it bigger, faster or heavier. It gives us options, and those options matter because none of us stays the same.
Your Pilates might look quite different while you’re rebuilding strength after an injury than it does a year later. It might change through pregnancy, after having a baby or during menopause. Your priorities might shift because you’ve started running, want to keep playing tennis, have taken up gardening or want to feel stronger and more comfortable in everyday life.
There’s no particular version of your body that you need to arrive with. We work with the one you have now, and go from there.
And that’s really the point
The chair gives the body different feedback through the pedals and platform
As much as I love all the equipment in the studio (and I really do), I’m not particularly interested in making people good at Pilates exercises for the sake of being good at Pilates exercises.
I’m much more interested in what happens outside the studio.
Can you turn around to reverse the car without your back complaining? Get down on the floor and play with your grandchildren, knowing you can get back up again? Carry your shopping, walk up a hill, lift your suitcase into the boot, keep doing the sport you love?
Those ordinary things are quite often the things that matter most.
Pilates gives us a way to practise strength, mobility, balance, coordination and control in a really thoughtful way. Having a fully equipped studio gives us more tools to do that.
What if I already love Reformer?
Keep doing it!
This most definitely isn’t an argument against Reformer Pilates. For some people, Reformer classes will give them everything they’re looking for, and they’ll happily practise that way for years.
But if you’ve become curious about the other equipment you’ve spotted around the studio, or you feel as though you’d like to understand your own body and your Pilates practice a little more deeply, Studio Pilates might be your next step.
And the same goes for Mat Pilates. Mat work is at the heart of the Pilates system, not the simpler option before you move onto equipment. As your practice progresses, the Mat can become incredibly challenging. When you can control more advanced movements with nothing but your own body and gravity to work with, you’re building a pretty impressive combination of strength, mobility, coordination and control.
That’s really the point of all the equipment too. The springs and apparatus can help us find things, practise them and build capacity, but ultimately we want your body to be able to do more for itself.
Our Studio Pilates Gym sessions are where we bring all of this together. There are just four people in the studio and, rather than everybody doing the same class, you work through your own programme using the equipment that’s right for you, with a teacher there to guide you.
Everyone starts with a 1:1 first. It gives us time to get to know you, introduce you properly to the equipment and put together a programme before you join the group.
And you don’t need to know your Tower from your Ladder Barrel before you come in. That’s our job.
You just need to be curious about what your body might be capable of next.
