Accessible. Inclusive. Welcoming. You’ve likely seen the words splashed across studio windows and all over your social feeds (perhaps in some millennial soft-beige font). Pilates, we’re told, is for everybody. And in theory, these words reflect the roots of the method, created in the early 1900s by German boxer and fitness educator Joseph Pilates. (Many of the apparatuses he patented, like the reformer, were designed to assist practitioners in Pilates’s signature exercises—training wheels for more strenuous mat moves, so everyone could do them.)
In practice, however, these adjectives can ring hollow today, given that many studios still reflect some of the whitest, most affluent spaces in wellness. In recent months, a number of TikTok influencers have reinforced this notion via video clips extolling the modality as a luxury or privilege, or accusing Black practitioners of trying to align themselves with whiteness through pilates. Even without toxic rhetoric, studios may unintentionally be unwelcoming, whether due to high price points, racial biases, or branding that appeals to thin, white women.
The gap between Pilates’s original vision and the reality of the modern practice is real, but so is the pushback: Across the country, a new guard of instructors and founders is challenging who gets to take up space in the studio—and who gets to embody a “pilates person.”
All Sizes Welcome
Lindsey Leaf likes showing off what her body is capable of—especially when she can quickly squelch harmful stereotypes and preconceived notions in the process.
“I’ve always been naturally athletic,” says the 43-year-old creator of Fat Body Pilates, which advocates and educates on size inclusivity and accessibility in pilates. “I can do things that people don’t necessarily expect.”
A high school volleyball and softball player, Leaf was referred to pilates after a yoga injury landed her in physical therapy more than a decade ago. (Leaf has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic condition that weakens the body’s connective tissue. One symptom is hypermobile joints that can be more prone to injury, particularly if she pushes her range of motion too far.) Coincidentally, a Club Pilates had recently opened near Leaf’s home in the Twin Cities, so she began taking classes with the other newbies, focusing on the foundations of the method. “There was definitely a learning curve, but I started to feel a lot more powerful in my body, tapping into some of the more stabilizing, smaller muscles that help us utilize our bigger muscles more effectively,” she says.
Despite her growing mastery, Leaf couldn’t help but notice that few people in the studio, students or teachers, had a body like hers. She began to wonder if there were trainers elsewhere who had more experience with—and could better support—larger frames. An instructor friend referred her to Balanced Body, and Leaf loved the organization’s scientific, rehab-friendly approach.
“My original intention wasn’t to go the distance and get full comprehensive training—I just wanted to be able to better advocate for my own body,” she says. But after encouragement from a mentor and others, she decided to go through with it. Then in 2019, once again seeing a lack of representation in the pilates community, she started her social media account @FatBodyPilates. “I honestly didn’t expect anything to come of it,” she says. Leaf’s hope was simply that someone might stumble onto her account, see themselves, and use it as a resource. But as interest in pilates has exploded over the past five years, so too has Leaf’s follower count.
While a good portion of the feedback has been positive, she’s been the target of nasty comments too. “I’m at the point with this whole Instagram journey where people are like, ‘Oh, that’s AI. Big bodies can’t do that.’ The number of times I have gotten that comment over the past couple of months is insane.”
But Leaf is undeterred, and not long ago, she took her work a step further by launching a size-inclusive pilates workshop, which educates teachers on prejudices and on strategies to make studio spaces and exercises more comfortable for bigger bodies. To do so, however, she had to tamp down a nagging case of impostor syndrome, eventually reaching the conclusion: If not me, who? And just as with her social media experience, low expectations quickly turned into meaningful impact. “I’ve trained at least 200 instructors at this point,” Leaf says. “Anything I can put out into the world to help somebody who walks into a studio feel like they are understood and we know how to work with their bodies is the best thing.”
Building on Black History
Sonja R. Price Herbert, 57, took her first mat class back in 2006. She couldn’t do a lot of the exercises. “I’m very competitive, so I thought, I’m going to learn this,” Herbert says. “After taking a couple of classes, I just got addicted.”
So hooked, in fact, that Herbert, who was employed as a social worker in New York City at the time, completed her mat teacher training. Not long after, she enrolled in a comprehensive training program so she could teach on all apparatuses. Herbert was the only Black person who finished the training. Just one of the instructors was Black.
“I was like, surely there have to be more Black teachers than this,” she recalls.
Soon after she completed her training, Herbert took a hiatus from social work and taught pilates full-time. Whether she was working at a big-name gym or a smaller boutique studio, she continued to feel like an anomaly. Over time, Herbert slowly assembled a small group of Black mentors who helped her feel less alone. It was one of those mentors—an instructor named Dyane Harvey Salaam—who told her about the oft-overlooked Black pioneer of pilates, a woman named Kathy Stanford Grant.
A dancer and choreographer, Stanford Grant was a pilates elder, one of a handful of instructors who were trained directly by Pilates himself. Though she died in 2010, she helped popularize the method, and her legacy endures. Herbert launched Black Girl Pilates on the anniversary of Stanford Grant’s death seven years later. “It was just happenstance,” she says of the serendipitous timing.
The founding of Black Girl Pilates was inspired by earlier endeavors by Salaam and others to start a community group for pilates instructors of color. It never quite got off the ground. “They’re the folks who planted the seed,” Herbert says. “I was just able to cultivate it.”
Over the past nine years, Black Girl Pilates has offered a space—sometimes physical, sometimes virtual—for Black instructors to find community, mentorship, and education. Even in the relatively short amount of time she’s been running the organization, Herbert has seen a shift in representation. “Now that folks are opening their own studios and buying franchises, there are more people getting certified because they’re able to see themselves,” she says. “Whereas before, they weren’t really seeing themselves. They didn’t know if Black people even did pilates. They didn’t know if we even had anything to do with pilates. And then, come to find out, we had a big part of it.”
Through supporting instructors and studio owners, Herbert believes, more Black folks will come to pilates. And while Stanford Grant’s legacy serves as a reminder of pilates’s Black lineage, Herbert encourages people of color to make their own mark. “Our history doesn’t start and end with Kathy Stanford Grant,” she says. “She was the foundation—we put the bricks on top of it.”
The Price Is Right
After a decade of teaching pilates in chain gyms and small studios, Lori Crosthwait, a former dancer, decided to open a studio of her own. She wanted to cultivate her voice as an instructor and control operations the way she saw fit. And one of her goals: to be able to offer sliding-scale pricing.
“Everyone has a right to a really robust and meaningful movement practice of some kind, and that requires education, which requires a teacher,” says 39-year-old Crosthwait, who opened Pilates Homeroom in New Orleans in 2019. “As a teacher in a movement education space, there’s a responsibility to cultivate opportunities for people regardless of their ability to pay.”
Pilates Homeroom offers both sliding scale and scholarship options. Crosthwait’s sliding scale comprises three tiers based on a student’s financial situation: Tier 1 is a 50 percent discount for those struggling to meet their basic needs. Tier 2 is a 20 percent discount for those who can meet their basic needs but have little to no disposable income. Tier 3 is full price with no discount, which helps offset the other two tiers. (Crosthwait based her scale on the Green Bottle Method, created by herbalist and writer Alexis J. Cunningfolk, who views a sliding scale as a tool of economic justice.)
Scholarships allow select students to take classes at no cost and are also
offset by full-price fees, says Crosthwait, which helps nurture and support the community of regular students at Homeroom Pilates. “For people in the community who are paying at the top of the sliding scale, I think it is maybe affirming or a feel-good investment for them to know that when they do that, they’re supporting a scholarship student,” she says. “We’re all contributing to this ecosystem, and that’s what makes it sustainable. Everyone gets to participate.”
During any given week, about 25 percent of Crosthwait’s roster is composed of sliding scale and scholarship students. When asked if she’s ever worried people might take advantage of the system, she says no. “If that’s happening, I don’t know about it,” she says. With many classes costing far more than other forms of exercise, it can be difficult for newcomers to even consider pilates. “It’s my firm belief that the people who need it the most have the hardest time choosing it in the first place.” That’s why Crosthwait makes her pricing as transparent as possible: It’s clearly posted on her website, so that people don’t have to go searching for it or email about it. “It’s not a secret that I offer sliding-scale pricing,” she says.
Making the method accessible is also about Crosthwait’s way of teaching for comprehension vs. consumption: helping students understand the principles instead of simply going through the motions of a workout. “If we can teach for comprehension, then we start to deconstruct the gatekeeping around pilates,” she says. “Yes, my time costs, yes, my skills and attention and expertise cost, but doing pilates is not actually expensive over time if your investment has been worthwhile and you have learned well.”
Autonomous practice is actually rooted in the bedrock of the pilates method (originally called Contrology). Pilates himself wrote this in his book Return to Life Through Contrology, in 1945: “[Contrology doesn’t] demand your joining a gymnasium nor the purchasing of expensive apparatus. You may derive all the benefits of Contrology in
your own home.”
Crosthwait is once again giving her students more options. “There’s still longevity as a teacher, even if I’m empowering students to practice on their own.”
A Pilates Flow for Everyone
Unconvinced that pilates is for you? Let this beginner mat sequence (designed by Pilates Homeroom owner Lori Crosthwait to wake up your spine and build core strength) get you moving. Aim for five reps of each exercise.
1. Rolling Back
Crosthwait likes this exercise because it aids in “learning how your body and gravity dance together, which is really the whole essence of the mat work.”
HOW TO: Sit with knees bent, feet flat on the floor. Use hands to pull knees toward chest, holding legs wherever you can (ankles, shins, or thighs). Round spine and lean back slightly to help lift feet up to a hover, then hold the balanced position for 5 breaths. Continue holding legs, roll back to shoulders, head lifted, and then roll back up to the balance position. That’s 1 rep.
2. Spine Stretch
As the name would suggest, this move stretches the spine—and should give the hammies a lengthening moment too.
HOW TO: Sit with legs reaching in front of you, just wider than shoulders; ankles are flexed. Lengthen arms forward, either at chest height or down on the floor. Round spine forward, reaching hands toward feet. Slowly reverse the movement back to a seated position. That’s 1 rep.
3. Swan
Extension exercises, like swan, help strengthen the back and undo long days slumped at a computer or hunched over a phone.
HOW TO: Lie facedown with hands by shoulders. Elongate spine by lifting head and chest away from floor, however much you can. Lower head and chest back down. That’s 1 rep.
4. Side Kick
This move stretches the legs and challenges the core.
HOW TO: Lie on your side, propped up on your bottom elbow with top hand behind your head. (If that position is too difficult to hold, the top hand can rest on the floor in front of you for support and/or the bottom arm can be lengthened with ear resting on biceps.) Legs are extended to a slight angle in front of you, top stacked on bottom. Lift top leg a few inches to clear bottom leg, then kick it forward with the foot flexed. Next, kick it back with toes pointed. That’s 1 rep. Be sure leg stays at the same height through your full range of motion while keeping your torso relatively stationary. Flip to the other side and do 5 more reps.
5. Pushup
Never an easy one, pushups are highly modifiable, which is one of the reasons Crosthwait recommends them as part of a beginner workout. If holding a plank is enough to start, just maintain the position for 5 breaths.
HOW TO: Start in a plank position. This can be standing at a wall or bench, or on the floor, either with legs long behind you or knees bent. Bend elbows to lower chest and hips toward wall, bench, or floor; then lengthen to push back up. That’s 1 rep.
Amy Wilkinson is a contributing entertainment editor at Women's Health, where she edits the magazine's celebrity cover stories and writes health features. She has previously held editor titles at Entertainment Weekly and MTV News. In 2021, Amy completed her 600-hour teacher-training at Core Pilates NYC to become a comprehensively trained Pilates instructor.
