A few months ago, Stevie Walton booked an introductory offer at a “reformer” Pilates studio near her office in north London.
The trend for using reformer machines has swept the exercise world in the past few years. It involves using a moving, bed-like instrument with resistance springs to help improve core and posture. And it’s loved by all the usual suspects — Hailey Bieber, Kendall Jenner, the Duchess of Sussex …
The machines, however, can be temperamental and require careful use — otherwise injuries can easily occur, as Walton discovered.
“The resistance in the springs didn’t seem right, there was no tension,” Walton, 33, says. She alerted her instructor to the concerns then continued with the class. But the loose springs meant that she ended up being thrown over the top of the reformer, hitting her legs and elbows on the way down.
“It was extremely painful and I had huge bruises. The instructor asked if I was OK but carried on with the class,” she says. “Nobody from the studio followed up with me afterwards to check on my injuries.” Despite having ten credits on her account, she never went back to the studio.
Walton isn’t the only person left battered and bruised by the reformer Pilates craze. Last week the London-based Pilates studio Heartcore Fitness — Meghan’s “favourite workout”, according to Vogue — paid £80,000 in an interim settlement to a musician, Maya Meron, for injuries she sustained in a reformer class.
Meron told a judge that the bar of the reformer machine collapsed while she was performing a “downward dog” manoeuvre, leaving her with a fractured elbow and abdominal injuries that ruined her career.
Maya Meron won an interim settlement of £80,000 for injuries sustained in a reformer class
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Pilates is often thought of as a gentle workout but as its popularity soars, injuries are becoming more common due to the use of machines, and gyms and fitness instructors cutting corners. This has led industry insiders to call for stronger regulation.
The original series of precise, slow, controlled movements was developed during the First World War by the German circus performer and boxer Joseph Pilates, who was interned by the British authorities on the Isle of Man as an “enemy alien’ and wanted to help guards and prisoners to keep fit. Originally performed on a mat, Pilates enhanced the movements with apparatus including the reformer, conceived when he attached springs to hospital beds.
Joseph Pilates, pictured in New York in 1961, devised his exercise method during the First World War
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Today, however, reformer Pilates comes with a glossy social media aesthetic and the promise of a long, lean supermodel body. Millions of Britons practise it.
Unsurprisingly, the fitness industry wants to cash in on this demand and reformer Pilates has boomed: 117 new studios opened across the UK in 2022. On the fitness app ClassPass, Pilates made up more than 20 per cent of reservations in 2023 — the highest rate to date.
Classes aren’t cheap, either. Many gyms have removed bikes from spin studios to make way for reformer machines, charging as much as £35 per class, cramming in 15 to 20 people with one teacher. Lesley McPherson, director of the Pilates Teacher Association, says reformer classes should contain “no more than six people and all should have had private lessons beforehand to ensure they are familiar with the apparatus”.
As things get more competitive, gyms get creative, inventing dynamic ways to perform new movements on the reformer bed, with non-traditional elements such as dumbbells. McPherson says this is “a risk to the public when incorrectly used or poorly supervised, as reformer machines are a complicated piece of apparatus with springs and a carriage designed for specific loads”.
Classical Pilates studios require teachers to undergo up to 600 hours of comprehensive training over the course of one year or more, which can cost about £6,000. Online, however, anyone with a basic fitness instructor qualification can get a teaching certificate in a matter of weeks for less than £1,000.
Underqualified instructors combined with exercises that were not designed for use with the equipment “is resulting in injury and gives real Pilates a bad name”, McPherson says.
The most common injuries are scapular trauma in the shoulders and slipped discs, caused by incorrect form and attempting advanced exercises without proper supervision.
Pilates machines should be used under close supervision — but some class sizes are increasing
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Ashley Martin knows this all too well. In 2021, the school clerk was recovering from postpartum diastasis recti, a condition where the “six-pack” abdominal muscles separate during pregnancy after being stretched. A personal trainer recommended her to “do Pilates”, so she booked a group reformer class at a popular studio near her home in New York. Martin went five times a week, spending £35 each session.
“I told the instructor about my condition, but she didn’t seem to understand what that meant for me physically,” she says. “The movements were so fast that there was no time to engage my core.” With 25 other people in the class, Martin tried to keep up until she noticed a bulge in her abdomen. She went to her doctor and discovered that her condition had become worse. She hasn’t participated in a reformer Pilates class since and says she’s met many women with similar experiences.
Other reformer injuries that have been reported include two women aged 41 and 69 with shoulder fracture dislocations and a 42-year-old with a spinal fluid leak. Classical Pilates teachers are now reporting a rise in clients seeking rehabilitation for injuries after attending large reformer group classes.
“The fitness industry has been alerted to these issues for some years,” McPherson says. “However, numbers [of people] in gyms appears to be more important than public safety.”
The advice isn’t to stop exercising but to check your teacher’s background thoroughly, and opt for one-on-one sessions and intimate classes with smaller groups — though these can be more expensive. Or, if you want to guarantee your shoulder stays intact, maybe just stick to a spin class.