Welcome to the July edition of Pilates Central News.

In this edition:

• Mat versus Reformer Pilates
• Polly Good
• Reality Pilates
• My Kind of Studio

Mat versus Reformer Pilates

A common question for those new to Pilates is what is the difference between mat and Reformer Pilates. Mat Pilates is great for accessibility as all you need is, as the name implies, a mat — and possibly a few bits of equipment such as a Pilates ball. Mat Pilates uses your body weight for resistance and the basic exercises improve abdominal strength, posture and balance. While spine and joint mobility exercises are a good way of easing ailments like back pain.

Mat Pilates for beginners is a good affordable introduction to the principles and language of Pilates, plus the importance of breath work. All you need is to be able to lie down on a mat and have enough space to move your legs and arms. It can be a good way of following up Reformer classes with exercises at home in a confined space. One misconception is that mat is easier than Reformer Pilates. It isn’t, as working against gravity is challenging and some exercises can actually be easier on a Reformer.

With Reformer Pilates a Reformer machine has a sliding platform known as a carriage, attached to a metal frame with springs. It has pulleys, straps and bars to assist with various exercises. The Reformer can look intimidating at first but with the right instruction you’ll soon be at ease. It is said that the earliest version of a bed with springs, the Cadillac, was improvised by Joseph Pilates using hospital beds and springs when he was treating patients at the Knockaloe internment camp on the Isle of Man during the first world war. The Reformer was fully developed when Pilates opened his studio in New York in the late 1920s.

Today’s versions are of course a lot more sophisticated. The moving carriage and springs and straps on the Reformer can be used to provide resistance or assistance to movement. So exercises can be made either harder or easier at the discretion of your teacher. Reformer Pilates is a good way to target specific muscle groups and work on particular areas of the body. Its challenging exercises should improve posture, strength, flexibility and functional movement.

If you are easily bored then Reformer Pilates will provide a lot more positions than mat Pilates. You might be standing, sitting, kneeling, lying on your back or stomach or on your side. The Reformer is also an excellent device for working on specific areas for sports; say improving strength and rotation for a golf swing, jumping ability as testified by football’s Ronaldo, explosive movements for tennis or core muscles and balance for paddleboarding.

The Reformer can be very useful for rehabilitation work as it is so versatile. For example there are exercises where you can use your body and arms but not put weight on an injured foot. Many ballet dancers used the Reformer at Joseph Pilates’ New York studio and it remains very useful to injured dancers. Some of the basic moves on the Reformer replicate the actions that are used as part of dancers’ daily exercise. Some dancers still refer to it by its more informal name of the “Plie” machine, which is French for “to bend”.

Though it’s certainly not a case of either one or the other types of Pilates. Reformer Pilates can be a targeted high-intensity workout with lots of variety, but it should be remembered that both mat and Reformer Pilates were originally designed to be used together. With the help of our teachers at Pilates Central both will improve your strength and flexibility. Happy exercising.

Polly good

Polly Vernon has a new book out, How the Female Body Works (in all its wild, miraculous glory). Writing in the Times, she describes how by her thirties she was drinking too much and far too thin through excessive dieting. She also had back issues through, “a combination of stress, writing for a living and not actually having adequate fat or muscle for good functional movement.”

Vernon writes that at 40 she tried her first Pilates class. “One hour in a not glamorous studio with a teacher who happened to be extremely good — and it changed my life. I discovered I both didn’t hate it and that it, miraculously, instantly eased the nagging pain in my lower thoracic spine. Quite without realising it, and definitely without meaning to, I took my first step to becoming a boring, predictable cliché: the fortysomething fitness and wellness woman! One Pilates class became two, then three a week, plus a one-on-one Reformer session with a trainer.”

Vernon now writes regularly on health issues for the Times, and says that, “If I’d loved being skinny (and drunk), it had nothing on being strong (and semi-sober).” Her book certainly looks an interesting read, and we’re glad that Pilates played its part in her becoming, as she wittily puts it, “a wellness fitness bore who treats her body like a friggin’ first-class hotel resident, having spent most of her adult life treating it more like a brutal Airbnb guest, one of the ones who half-destroys it during her filthy hen do.”

Reality Pilates

“In their Pilates era! A look at the stars who have quit reality TV to become fitness instructors,” reads the headline in the Daily Mail.  The feature is based on the fact that Love Island’s Georgia Steel (she was on the 2018 show) has just posted a picture of herself holding her new qualification and wrote: “Pinch me!!!! Can’t quite believe I’m a qualified Pilates instructor. The most incredible day yesterday celebrating with family. Feel like the luckiest girl in the world right now.”

Another Love Island luminary, the 2020 “Casa Amor bombshell” Coco Lodge has also become a Pilates teacher. Lodge now runs her own studio in Surrey and has shared Instagram videos to her 185k followers of her coaching DJ boyfriend Joel Corry on a Reformer.

It seems there are more reality TV stars turned Pilates teachers than you could shake a Pilates ball at. Love Island’s Claudia Fogarty is yet another convert, becoming a Kore Pilates instructor. She posted: “In my Pilates girl era… I have started a Pilates page where I’m going to put all my reformer content on… Just me finding a new path in life. Loving this new journey already.”

In addition the Mail tells us that Made in Chelsea’s Verity Bowditch, who studied biomedical science at Kings College and qualified in 2020, now has her own Pilates app and teaches in London, Bali and Dubai. A more pertinent feature might ask if there are any reality TV stars that haven’t become Pilates teachers?

My kind of studio

“Chicago Bears players take to Pilates to help them keep performing at their best,” reports CBS News in America. The US TV channel ran a feature on Pilates teacher Kirsten Wolf, who’s been helping the Chicago Bears for a decade.

Macho American football players might seem unlikely Pilates converts, but Wolf makes the point that Joseph Pilates was originally training athletes: “A lot of people don’t know it was a man who invented Pilates, and his first clients were boxers. So he was actually training athletes. So that’s kind of what I’m trying to bring it back to was the original intention of it,” says Wolf.

The results have shown on the field. “I’ve noticed a big difference — especially with the breathing aspect,” says the Bears’ Dominique Robinson. “You don’t think about breathing sometimes, you know? It’s kind of crazy, but that helps kind of calm things down; gets your body in a position where it can work and function the correct way.”

While teammate Elijah Hicks told CBS: “These workouts, I’m looking at Kristen like there’s something wrong with this lady — she’s trying to kill me in here! Fell in love with it. As an athlete, as a competitor, it’s like one of those things I just wanted to get better at. And so I don’t know if I ever mastered it. It’s always a hard workout. But I’ll always leave feeling better… I’ve seen what it’s done for my performance on the field.”

More than 20 players have taken up Pilates so far — in fact it’s become something of a Bears necessity.

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The Pilates Central Team