The Peloton-ification of Pilates Has a New Twist: The Stars Stay Backstage

Fitness instructors know how challenging it can be to sequence the perfect class and keep it fresh, especially in a highly competitive space. Your Reformer wants to take that off their plate with a roster of star instructors behind the scenes

Pilates is booming, but it has a problem. A few, actually: it can be cost-prohibitive, it’s short on instructors and countless hopeful class-goers get turned away when they can’t squeeze into a class that’s booked solid.

To be fair, some changes are underway. A growing number of low-price gym operators are adding Pilates, boutique fitness operators like Solidcore are scaling to meet demand and, on the instructor shortage, Your Reformer thinks it has found the fix in a handful of star instructors.

The Australian-founded Pilates company, which serves more than 1,000 businesses across 50-plus countries, launched InstructorPro earlier this year. It’s now introducing a lineup of international instructors as it makes the platform available to studios, gyms and multi-site operators worldwide.

It’s a move that pulls from the Peloton magic that turned instructors into celebrities and had riders forming real loyalties to the person on the screen. But while Peloton sent its instructors into living rooms and home gyms, Your Reformer is taking a behind-the-scenes approach, where a studio’s own instructors use InstructorPro to access ready-made programming and class-planning tools from expert ambassadors, including how they structure classes, progressions and regressions.

The lineup is handpicked: Andrea Speir (U.S.), Renee Siljeg (Australia), Grace Hurry (Europe) and Maria Leone (U.S.), each contributing exclusive new programming to the platform every month. InstructorPro subscribers will also receive supporting PDF class-planning guides.

“The instructor really is the class,” Your Reformer co-founder Emma Stallworthy said. “People come back because of how a class made them feel, and so much of that comes down to the person teaching it.”

When it came to choosing the roster, Stallworthy said the criteria went beyond reach.

“We were looking at people who have built really loyal communities around the way they teach and who all bring something different,” she said. “Pilates is such a flexible modality, and our community uses it across everything from strength and conditioning to recovery and mobility, so that range was really important to us.”

And in terms of instructors, Pilates — much like yoga — runs on lineage. Every great instructor learned from mentors, co-founder Ben Stallworthy said, picking things up class by class. 

“What’s harder to get access to is the thinking behind the programming and delivery,” he said. “Why did they put that exercise there? What was the theme or sequencing rationale? How are they thinking about different bodies in the room? How do they create such an engaging class? That’s who we wanted on the platform, the industry leaders that other instructors are already looking to learn from. It’s not just giving them a class plan; it’s helping them understand how some of the best people in the industry think.”

The ambassadors’ reach isn’t limited to studio floors. Separately, some of them also create content for Your Reformer’s at-home, on-demand members. Andrea Speir runs quarterly challenges for that audience, and Grace Hurry is expected to add one of her own.