London is being besieged with reformer pilates. If it’s not studios springing up like mushrooms, it’s the news that A-listers like Harry Styles and Jennifer Aniston are fans of the strength training exercises and attribute their honed and toned bodies to the discipline. If you’re not yet an acolyte, Reformer Pilates is a series of exercises that takes place on a carriage that offers resistance, all designed by the German trainer Joseph Pilates during WW1, when he was interned on the Isle of Man and wanted to stay fit, developing the system using a crude version of the apparatus you’ll find liberally across London today.
There’s one major problem with following all those celebrities suit and taking up Reformer Pilates: it’s an expensive business, with classes coming at up to £30 a pop, which sort of makes sense when you factor in the cost of the machine itself, and the fact that an instructor can only properly keep an eye on a certain number of attendees so classes tend to contain fewer people than, say, a yoga class might — but where does it leave anyone who can’t afford to join but would like to benefit from the stress-reducing, muscle-building, core strength-focussed joys of Reformer Pilates?
