#2: Flow Pilates
My first time trying reformer pilates the way Joseph Pilates (real person!) intended was at Flow Pilates in Clinton Hill. The studio has two locations within two miles of each other, both in Brooklyn. After my [solidcore] experience (and close reading of the Wikipedia page for Joseph Pilates) I feared that real capital “P” Pilates would be extremely difficult, so I decided a small studio with class sizes conducive to individual instruction would be the move. Flow says on their ClassPass profile that they cap classes at four people, so I figured it would be perfect for my first foray into the practice, with a minimal number of people to witness my struggling through the movements.
The studio was bright and clean, with white walls and floor-to-ceiling windows covered with gauzy white curtains—basically the opposite of a mirrored-and-black-walled, bunker-esque [solidcore] studio. The decor could be described as mid-century modern via Amazon.com, or a dentist's office marketed towards millennials (looking at you, Tend)—tons of small ceramic potted plants and muted pinks and gold light fixtures. The bathroom was nice and had Aesop products (though the toilet paper was one-ply, 10/10 would not poop there).
There were eight reformers on one side of the room (as previously mentioned they claim to restrict classes to four people, but mine was six, and there’s space for eight), and on the other side of the room was a check-in desk (the front desk person doubles as the instructor), an enormous pilates contraption that looked even more like a torture device than a usual reformer, a giant stack of cubbies for your belongings (no lockers needed in a small one-room situation), and a human skeleton like you’d see in a science class, for some weird reason.
I got there early and told the tattooed Irish redhead instructor/receptionist it was my first time and she kindly went through the reformer machine with me. I sat on it waiting for the class to start, and as five other women filed in and sat on their own reformers I realized I was facing the wrong way, on a device that didn’t look like it could have a wrong way. In a matching workout set I felt appropriately dressed, but still wished I had cuter socks like the scrunchy hand-knitted-looking ones the blonde girl who french-braided her long hair in the moments before class was wearing.
The instructor led us through several series of motions that progressed from a simple movement to increasingly more complex holds. Think lots of single-arm or single-leg pushing and pulling on the sliding platform, and lots of donkey kick-like moves. It was all a lot of very controlled, slow movements that would’ve made Joseph Pilates very proud (he originally called his exercise method “Contrology”). At times I was shaking like a leaf, cursing the fact that the music was Mumford & Sons and sad Frank Ocean and Simon & Garfunkel. Hard workouts require energetic music—I don’t want to listen to “White Ferrari” or “Scarborough Fair” while I’m exerting. It’s gotta be pop or hip-hop or occasionallyyyy metal or rock for that.
The fifty-minute class felt like it went by rather quickly, but I kept waiting for it to ramp up in intensity or get harder. Save for a few movements in the beginning that made my core shake, I left not even sweaty enough to look like I had worked out, and the next day I wasn’t sore at all. And yet, I felt like it was a nice gentle low-impact form of exercise that I could see yielding a lot of improvements in balance and general core strength over time. And I’m sure some other pilates studios incorporate more rigorous cardio and strength elements, without veering too far from the pilates ethos. As there are soooooooo SO SoOOoOo many pilates studios in New York, and I know of many A-list celebrities and hot friends of mine alike who swear by it, this is certainly far from my last attempt. Not to mention I’m self-contractually-obligated to try every single workout class in the city :)