🤔 How to Tell if It's The Workout for You
🎉 Happy Friday, Friends!
I've talked about the Pilates boom in this newsletter before, but I have more to say on the topic. So let's dive in.
Some of what's driving been driving the Pilates boom in the last few years is legitimate. I've said this before: Pilates can be genuinely great for breath work and building a connection with your core. It can help you get grounded in your body in a way that a lot of other movements don't prioritize. And depending on if your class size allows it, one-on-one attention can be valuable for learning that core activation, meaning you're actually using the right muscles instead of letting your neck and shoulders handle too much (we've all been there).
Generally, group fitness can be a real gift when it comes to accountability and making movement feel less punishing on your body and spirit. That's not nothing. Movement as a social activity can also improve your relationship with other people, along with your relationship with your body!
But here's where it gets complicated.
Whether any fitness class - Pilates or otherwise - actually serves you comes down to two things:
1. The entire point of the class. Some classes are designed to wear you out. The "no pain, no gain" philosophy is alive and well in a lot of studios, even the trendy ones. That approach just plain doesn't work for a lot of folx.
2. The instructor's ability to make people feel welcome. Not just tolerated, but actually included. That means you need an instructor who sees it as part of their job to give cues that meet people where they are, not just where they think people should be. Have you ever been in a Pilates class where the instructor asks each person if they have any injuries they need to know about? It's rare! Many instructors don't even have an individualized approach on their radar.
I've noticed that a lot of fitness spaces are designed to make you feel like an outsider. Because if you feel a little ashamed about not knowing everything already, you'll keep coming back to prove something.
This is a business model, not a wellness philosophy.
I'm not personally in a group Pilates class or any of the new hip, everyone's-doing-it fitness trends. (I'm looking at you, Lagree and Solidcore.) But I've seen the marketing behind all of them, and it tends to recycle the same messages we've been sold forever: your body is a problem to be solved, and this particular workout is the solution. Rinse and repeat.
And when celebrities start telling us and showing us that they got their body by doing a specific workout, that's your cue to be extra skeptical. We already know that's less about the workout and more about resources, time, personal trainers, GLP-1s, lighting, and usually, genetics.
The workout doesn't matter at the end of the day. The relationship with your body is what matters, and that's what guides you toward certain workouts.
Any movement that helps you feel in your body instead of at war with it is worth exploring. Any class where you leave feeling better than when you walked in - that's a good class. That can be Pilates, or it can be something else. That's the filter.
Everything else is marketing.
With you as we cut through the noise,
Dana