It is a weekday afternoon and I am at a pilates studio on Sydney’s north shore, face contorted and limbs asunder, staring down my impending demise. An abhorrently cheerful voice radiates from a screen at the front of the room: “You got this!” I grunt in response.
If you live anywhere within 30km of a Lululemon, you might be familiar with the epidemic known as reformer pilates: an exercise where lithe people in matching sets mount a machine halfway between a bondage device and a medieval pillory to spend the better part of an hour performing increasingly excruciating positions in springs and straps.
