Embarking on a Transformative Journey: Your Guide to Our Reformer Pilates Courses
Depending on your fitness journey, Reformer Pilates can be a completely transformative experience. It is a low-impact exercise that works for people of all fitness levels – and it is suitable for everyone from complete beginners to professional athletes and dancers.
Reformer Pilates is designed to give you a full body workout that strengthens your core by working on your deeper abdominal muscles, toning your muscles and making them more flexible, all at the same time as improving your posture and balance. The best thing about doing a Reformer Pilates course is that it doesn’t matter where you are on your fitness journey, you will undergo a transformation that will have a hugely beneficial effect on your overall fitness and strength.
If you are recovering from an injury, or operation or have recently given birth, Reformer Pilates can benefit your recovery. This is because your body is fully supported by the Reformer bed as you exercise, reducing the strain on the affected body part as you strengthen the surrounding areas. Our low-impact resistance exercises help you recover your strength in a controlled and safe way.
The origin of Reformer Pilates was in the First World War when Joseph Pilates designed physiotherapy equipment that could be attached to hospital beds to help patients with injuries build up muscle strength and regain flexibility while they were still confined to bed. Joseph Pilates later refined the process, creating the Reformer bed and devising exercises that would help professional dancers with their core strength, posture and flexibility – workouts that also benefit elite sports people. However, the techniques used in a Reformer Pilates workout remain an extremely effective method of helping your body recover from injury*.
*If you are under the care of a physiotherapist please follow their advice. It is also worth noting that many of our instructors are qualified sports therapists who specialise in injury and sports rehabilitation and are available for 1 on 1 session. Click on the individual instructors’ profiles to find out more.
As the Reformer bed supports your body as you work out, you can work on all your muscle groups and will benefit from a wider range of exercises. This differs from mat Pilates which is more restrictive because it offers less support, which means you can only work on a restricted range of muscles rather than across the whole body, including the deeper muscles. A series of springs and pulleys provides the resistance needed to strengthen your muscles, enabling you to build your strength at your own pace without putting undue pressure on your body. The support the bed offers also helps prevent injury as it helps you control your movements as you work.
Reformer Pilates is a great workout and you don’t need to do many sessions before you notice a difference – although, after the first session, you’ll feel it! You’ll be working on muscles all over your body and, where they’re not used to the exercises, you can expect to feel stiff and your muscles may be painful – but in a good way. Over the next couple of classes, the post-session aches will disappear and you’ll find you have greater ease of movement, can stretch further than you could before, as well as feel fitter and be able to do more physically. Your muscles will be tighter, and the work you do on posture will help with aches and tension in your back. You’ll probably also sleep better.
Whether you’re a complete beginner or have been doing Reformer Pilates for a while, you can join any of our Reformer classes. You will always be in a small group which means you’ll get as much attention from the certified Pilates instructor as you need. Before every exercise your instructor will tell you what the exercise is, which springs you need to use for your fitness level, and adaptations you can make to get the best results. If you have an injury in the part of the body being worked on, your instructor will always have an alternative exercise.
Throughout the 50-minute session, you’ll do a series of moves that focus on a specific muscle group. Each move lasts just 60 seconds, and you’ll do a few moves back-to-back before having a short break. Then you’ll work on a different muscle group. Your instructor will tell you how you can increase the difficulty of each move as the seconds tick by, but there’s no pressure to make things harder for yourself until you’re confident and comfortable enough to do so.
If you’d like to find out if Reformer Pilates is for you before committing to your journey of transformation, sign up for one of our Reformer classes for just £10 (and bring a friend along for free!) by using the promo code TRY10 when you book. Click here to find your nearest or most convenient studio and begin your transformation now!
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