For Professionals
Spaces & Stories
Pilates Spaces and Stories : 4th Quarter
Below are the 4th quarter finalists in our Share your Space contest. Finalists are chosen each quarter and are qualified to win a Grand prize at year end. A total of four Grand Prize winners are chosen each January, from all finalists selected during the preceding year. Each Grand Prize winner receives a $1,000 USD gift certificate from Balanced Body.
We would love to hear from you, too. More details on how to enter »
Congratulations to our finalists, and thanks for sharing!
Pilates Spaces Finalists
Pilates Success Stories Finalists
PILATES SPACES
Finalists: Beautiful Studio
Total Body Pilates and Yoga
Salt Lake City, Utah
Pilates Control and Balance
Bogotá, Colombia
Finalist: Creative Design
Oxygen Pilates
Tel Aviv, Israel
Finalist: Creative Design on a Budget
Enhanced Health and Fitness
Carlsbad, CA
SUCCESS STORIES
Finalist: Affordable Pilates
Queens Community Gets Affordable Pilates
In 2006 I opened Spencer Pilates Arts™, a small and beautiful space in the middle of working-class Queens, New York. I knew the studio simply wouldn't be successful unless I offered both group and private sessions at affordable rates. I purchased six Allegro Reformers with Towers, plus a Chair, Cadillac, and Ladder Barrel. That meant that I could teach the full Pilates repertoire on the studio equipment, and in small groups the Reformer, Tower and Mat. My intention was to bring Pilates into an area that had no other Pilates studios.
Previous to opening Spencer Pilates Arts, I worked in a physical therapist's office and also saw private clientele in a facility that had some Pilates equipment. I saw many people suffering from common ailments such as bursitis, rotator cuff injuries, and all kinds of back pain. Many found pain relief from the Pilates repertoire. While it was great that these people got a little exposure to Pilates in a pain clinic setting, I thought everybody should have access to this method.
I remember a hostess at a dinner party raising her arms to show me her not-quite-yet-healed frozen shoulder. She explained that her insurance coverage for physical therapy ran out before she was completely healed. I knew this was an example of how Pilates could be implemented to maintain and further improve on the gains made in physical therapy. But people often told me they had no studio nearby, or that their neighborhood studio had only private session rates and/or mat classes.
My dream was to make mat and equipment classes affordable to everyone. One year after opening, the studio offers over 20 open-level Reformer/Tower classes each week, many of which routinely sell out, as well as mat and private classes. My rates are more affordable than other New York area studios making the regular practice of Pilates a financially realistic goal.
We have become busy enough for three other trainers to join my staff. The studio sees on average more than 60 clients each week, and we specialize in clients who are recovering from injuries. Dozens of people here are feeling and looking great! Our recent addition of Pilates Arcs will let us expand our class offerings to include the Spine Corrector work. And naturally I wouldn't have been able to do it without the help of Balanced Body.
Spencer Pilates Arts
Forest Hills, Queens, New York
Finalist: Marketing Success
Reaching Young Urban Professionals in a Highly Competitive Market
We began with a vision of a studio innovative in function and exquisite in form, a studio that would break the conventions of design, programming and culture in the world of Pilates. Pouring passion, time and attention into a 2100 square foot subterranean space in San Francisco’s Marina district, we created an environment as swanky as the finest spas, with a “best kept secret in town” feeling. Strong architectural choices, bold colors and intimate lighting flood the senses, coaxing you away from the worries of the outside world, allowing you to focus on one thing… the perfect Pilates workout.
I nstead of decorating the walls with traditional dance posters or photos, we adorned the space with iconic film images such as Ursula Andress stepping from the ocean in Dr. No and a bare-chested Gerard Butler leading the Spartans in 300. The environment is rounded out with warm ambient light, peach-glass mirrors, scented candles and 360 degrees of Outernational music.
In order to successfully access the young urban professional, we implemented an easy-to-use online scheduling software and focused our marketing endeavors toward the online community. We’ve received several online editorial awards, such as Audience and Editorial Favorite for Best Pilates Studio of 2007, from CitySearch.com.
We filled our spacious, open floor plan with 21 Balanced Body Pilates apparatus and developed a system of unprecedented small group training programs to attract our younger target market. Our popular “Circuit Breaker” class rotates the clients through each machine every 20 minutes. Mat classes are limited to 8 participants, allowing the instructor to provide a more personalized level of expertise and attention, which garners a deeper understanding of the Method as well as greater physical results. This small group training allowed us to make Pilates more affordable, therefore yielding a large amount of younger, athletic clients who love to work out but are not yet ready to pay the high cost of one-on-one training.
Our staff is not only versed in functional anatomy and rehabilitation, but excels at teaching a rigorous, athletic approach to the Method, which we proudly term “High Performance Pilates.” Seeing upwards of 80 clients per day, 7 days a week, the studio is definitely doing something right by challenging their clients toward excellence and celebrating their signature motto, “All Vanity, No Shame.”
Mercury Fitness
San Francisco, California
Finalist: Launch or Expansion Success
I Opened a Studio and Made my Teaching Dreams Come True
My dream has always been to devise the perfect Pilates program for anyone, regardless of their fitness level. After teaching small group Pilates at the local gym and concluding that the corporate curriculum did not allow me to improvise and individualize, I realized the only way to have freedom as a teacher was to become a businesswoman and run my own studio.
I didn’t know what I was getting into but charged ahead, using savings and a home equity line of credit to rent the upstairs of an old house. The master bedroom had cathedral ceilings, a ceiling fan and mirrored wall – beautiful, but a tight fit. I managed to put in two reformers with towers, and a springboard. The living room was used for yoga and Pilates mat classes. I hired my first employees: another instructor and a receptionist.
I opened May 1, 2006, and two months later was overbooked and waitlisted for all classes. Clients told me they felt comfortable and cared for, and could apply the techniques they learned to other workouts and their movements in daily life. I really felt I was helping people, but quickly outgrew the space.
Later that year I moved to a 1,000-square-foot space. What it lacked in character, it made up for in space. We renovated with new flooring, plumbing, electricity, walls and paint. More than once, I asked myself what this had to do with Pilates. Then I looked around and imagined a yoga class in one section and eventually, group or individual reformer classes – and maybe even an expansion next door. I said to myself, “This has everything to do with my life’s dreams and goals.” As completion neared, I put a sign in the window: “Yoga and Pilates coming soon.”
We opened in November 2006 with 75 students. Currently I have 200 students from all walks of life – professionals, stay-at-home moms, an FBI agent, a baker, even a teenaged hockey defenseman. We began with 22 classes and now offer 39, plus three full days’ worth of private sessions. Although our strip mall storefront is not as pretty as that old house, I have come to like it so much better because it offers more visibility, professionalism and credibility. People know where we are and who we are.
I didn’t really know where I was headed when I first rented that upstairs space. But I was – and still am – driven by a desire to teach my own students my own way, and see the results. For a teacher there is no greater gratification or reward.
Pilates for EVERY Body
Island Park, New York
Finalist: 20+ Year Legacy
33 Years as a Pilates Instructor – Getting Personal
Our learning process never stops. Even as a life long advocate of Pilates, I am still learning the power of Pilates. Recent personal experience has brought home to me the difference between good teachers and great teachers. Good teachers know their stuff. Great teachers care about the well-being of their clients, and bring love and compassion to their work.
In 1975, as a young woman of 22, I fell in love with Pilates at the Ron Fletcher School of Body Contrology in Beverly Hills. I knew immediately I had found my passion and my calling, and Fletcher personally encouraged my involvement from the start.
I worked with Fletcher until 1980, when I opened my first studio. In January 2008, I opened a second studio and have 12 instructors on my staff. During my nearly 33 years as a Pilates instructor and consultant, I developed my own Pilates system: The Sheppard Method. I have published many articles, and I conduct three to four teacher training classes each year.
But it wasn’t until 2006 that I learned a very personal lesson about Pilates. In June of that year I nearly died from complications following surgery to remove a benign tumor that had spread from my right ear into my brain cavity, putting pressure on my brain. The surgery took seven hours, after which a complication required a second operation. My scheduled five-day hospital stay stretched to three weeks.
Integral to my healing process were the constant vigils of my husband and my father, along with the hope and encouragement offered by an amazing number of my studio’s Pilates teachers who came by regularly to facilitate my stretching. I credit Pilates for my physical and mental recovery, knowing that it accelerated the healing process and allowed me to get back to work much faster than the doctors anticipated.
I returned to work at the studio after two and a half months and was welcomed with open arms and hearts. My teachers are the great ones.
The Sheppard Method Pilates Studio
Los Angeles and North Hollywood, California
