Reformer Pilates for Beginners: An Honest Guide Before Your First Class in the Sutherland Shire
Half the Shire seems to be doing reformer Pilates at the moment. There are studios in Engadine, Gymea, Miranda, Sutherland, Caringbah, Jannali and Cronulla, plus ours here in Kirrawee, and most of them have a waitlist for the 6am.
The question we get on the phone nearly every week is some version of "I've never done it, am I going to make an idiot of myself." Nobody's website seems to answer that one, so we thought we'd have a go.
What the machine actually is
It's a low bed on rails. There's a carriage that slides up and down, a bar you push against with your feet or your hands, and springs underneath that clip on and off to change how hard the whole thing is. You lie on it, sit on it, kneel on it, occasionally stand on it.
Walking into a room with a dozen of them lined up is a bit confronting. Ten minutes later you stop noticing them.
The springs are the part that confuses everyone early on, so it's worth saying up front that more springs does not automatically mean harder. A lot of the time it's the other way round, because a heavy spring will hold you in position and quietly do some of the stabilising for you, whereas a light one leaves you to control the lot yourself. Your instructor calls out what to put on. You don't need to work it out.
Your first couple of weeks
Here's the bit nobody says out loud. You'll be rubbish at it for a fortnight, and it won't have much to do with how fit you are.
Reformer is a coordination puzzle before it's a workout. There's a carriage moving underneath you, springs pulling one way and resisting the other, an instructor telling you to breathe out on the hard bit, and somewhere in the middle of all that you're meant to be keeping your hips level. Most people's brains quietly abandon two of those four jobs in the first few classes. We have watched blokes who squat 180 kilos completely lose the plot on a basic footwork sequence.
It passes. Somewhere around the third to fifth class the machine stops being the thing you're concentrating on, and that's usually when people get properly into it.
One fair warning about the soreness. Inner thighs, deep in the hips, the sides of your stomach you didn't know existed. Different flavour to gym soreness entirely, and it catches nearly everybody out the first time.
What to wear
Something fitted. Loose singlets end up over your head the second you're upside down, and baggy trackies and drawstrings do genuinely get dragged into a moving carriage, which is not the way you want to introduce yourself.
Grip socks. This isn't a studio inventing a reason to sell you socks. Bare feet slip on the carriage and on the footbar, and a foot sliding off a footbar with spring load behind it is how people get hurt. Any pair from anywhere is fine.
Bring water. Probably skip the big lunch beforehand too, because a solid chunk of the class happens on your back with your knees up near your chest, and you'll work out why on your own.
How often is worth doing?
Two or three times a week is where things actually start changing.
Once a week is pleasant. You'll enjoy it and you'll move a bit better, but if you're expecting much from forty five minutes a week you'll probably end up disappointed. At two or three, most people start noticing real differences in their posture and core control somewhere between week four and week six. Around ten sessions in is the marker we'd use.
If you're doing the spicier end of the timetable, the HIIT and jump board classes, two of those a week is plenty. Build the slower technical sessions around them.
Will it make me stronger?
Yes, up to a point, and we'd rather tell you where that point sits.
Reformer builds real deep strength, the stabilising sort that keeps your spine and pelvis where they're supposed to be. Your back will probably feel better. You'll move better. That's not a runner-up prize either, it's the thing that keeps people training comfortably into their sixties and seventies.
What it won't do by itself is load you heavily enough to add serious muscle or shift your top end strength very far. The springs cap out. If you want to get properly strong, or change your body composition in a big way, reformer does its best work sitting alongside some barbell training rather than standing in for it.
Most reformer studios won't say that, because reformer is the only thing they've got to sell. We run both, so there's nothing in it for us to fudge.
Reformer or mat?
Mat Pilates is you, the floor and gravity. Reformer brings in springs, and those cut both ways: they'll make an exercise harder when you want that, and they'll hold you up through something you can't quite manage on your own yet.
Which is why reformer is usually the friendlier place to start, even though it looks like the more intimidating one. There's also more variety in it, and people who find mat work repetitive tend to stick at reformer a lot longer.
Where we fit in the Shire
You've got options around here, so here's our case, briefly.
Basement isn't a reformer-only studio. Same building, same membership, you get the reformer room and a full gym, and there's a sauna, ice baths and a creche running through the 9:30 and the afternoon classes. Nobody's choosing between Pilates and weights and nobody's paying two direct debits to have both.
Perfect if you're lifting a couple of times a week and want reformer for the mobility side of it. If you've been to a reformer-only studio and found yourself missing the weights room, what are you waiting for. And if you've got a toddler at home, the creche is often the entire difference between training and not training.
There are five class types on the reformer timetable. The standard technical class, Strength with weights and props, HIIT, Jump Board, and a Recovery session that's mostly stretch and breath work. Marnie, Michelle and Kirsty run them, and they're good at quietly handing you an easier option mid-class without making a thing of it.
Come and be rubbish at it with us
Everyone in that room was hopeless for their first fortnight and every one of them remembers it, it's all part of building you into your best self.
The $20 all-access week gets you onto every reformer class on the timetable for seven days, plus the gym, the sauna and the ice baths. Enough for three or four reformer sessions, which is about the point it stops feeling like wrestling a machine. Come join us!
12 Monro Avenue, Kirrawee.
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