LIFTS Episode 126 - Why the Fastest-Growing Workout Category in America Is Also the Most Misunderstood | with Dr. Brent Anderson

27:27So it really came from a strong place of performance. So you think of martial arts, boxing, gymnastics, acrobatics. Carola Trier was a contortionist that became his first teacher in New York City. Eve Gentry was a famous dancer, modern dancer. and you saw that evolve so that by the time I came around in the 1980s, there were only about 500 people doing Pilates in the world. And most of us had direct contact, like mine was through the dance world, even though I was in physical therapy school. I was taking a ballet class in San Francisco, and I was going to UC San Francisco, and they said, hey, there's this dance medicine center over at St.

28:19Francis Hospital. you should check it out. They have pilates. And so I went over there and discovered that it's actually, they say Pilates. And I have a funny story about that. But the idea was there's only about 500 people in 1987, 1988. So we saw an incredible boom starting in the early 90s was the first one. And then we and Ron Fletcher was working with the very elite movie stars down in Southern California. So that was where we got some exposure of, you know, President Reagan's wife and Barbra Streisand and some of these people that were getting Pilates from Ron Fletcher. I'm not real clear on the history, just movie stars doing Pilates, very exclusive Beverly Hills kind of thing.

29:07Then we saw Alan Herdman out of London. He was working with the ballet down in Houston. He was going back and forth to the UK, United States. He was bringing a lot of the work in much stronger into the dance world outside of New York. And then we were bringing it into the rehabilitation world. Mari Windsor brought it into shopping online. Then we brought the reformer out, the Allegro, that was group classes and got it into Bali's gym back in late 90s. Everybody was appalled that they were doing a group reformer class with more than four reformers that really was just limited by space. And then you had club Pilates coming out in the mid 90s, 2000s.

29:58And everybody was appalled that they could, you know, replicate and have 800 studio spaces. We've seen this happen over and over again. And I don't think we're anywhere close to saturation. What I think is we're going to discover more and more niches of how a Pilates system can be applied in the wellness and health world. And so, for example, for me and Polestar, about 50 % of our grads, so over 50 ,000 grads, half of them are physical therapists all around the world. And so our whole focus, because of my being a physical therapist, has been how do we use the Pilates? And if you think about how Joe designed it, the contrology work you talked about, Matthew, was the mat work.

30:50And it was the lifestyle. And it was living a life that had body awareness and balance of forces. And Joe made a very powerful statement in, I believe it was in the 30s or 40s, he said, if the world practiced contrology every day, there would be no need for hospitals, prisons, or insane asylums. That was a quote unquote from Joe, right? And it's quite overwhelming to think of something like that. But what was interesting is he developed the equipment to assist people who could not do the mat work. That's why the equipment was made. The equipment was always assistive and the mat work was your body against gravity.

31:37It was your body and its own weight. Contrology is on the mat. That's wow. Your body weight. It could be standing, but it was your body weight against gravity in different orientations. And the idea was that you had a flow, you had a sequence, you had transitions, you had different orientations to gravity that challenged different muscle groups and joints and movement groups to give you the best possible facility to go live life, whatever that would be. So if you decided you wanted to play basketball, Pilates is not going to make you a better shot, right? It's just going to give your body a better place to work from and to train better and to have better suppleness.

32:24And maybe you can apply it in how you juke out your mate, you know, that you're playing against. And I think if people could grasp that concept, and this is why I think it's so sticky, is people who practice Pilates on a regular basis, and I'm talking about the method of Pilates, are happier, right? There's research it shows they're happier. They are more confident. They are able to participate more fully in life, and hence we use it in rehabilitation for that same reason. How can I create a successful movement experience for somebody that is having severe pain from a recent knee replacement or from spinal stenosis?

33:06Well, I take the equipment that Joe designed to be assistive in nature, and I can meet them where they are. I can create that positive movement experience that changes the way they see themselves, do it enough times that they have to change their paradigm. This is research that we've produced. And now they progress into the group class. Then they progress into the mat work and they can do the mat work at home and they can maintain a quality of life that they did not believe they could have based on what we did in the healthcare system or what was happening to them based on their injuries or their diseases.

33:43Very powerful.

33:45Matthew Januszek:I am sold, and I keep saying this. I'm now three or four months since we did the last interview, and I'm like, I really need to get into this. Every time I speak to someone like yourself, I'm like, damn, I'm really missing out on something. And also my personal appreciation and education. I've worked out for many years, several decades, and it's just something I've not really gotten into. But to go back to your point about the growth, and if you pull up the article, Athlete Tech article, John, about Club Pilates. So they have been around for a long time, but they are still growing. There's the Athlete Tech article says Club Pilates is breaking franchise records in the US with a fitness deal that will bring on an additional 127 new studios over five years.

34:34Matthew Januszek:So there's clearly continued growth in that brand. And they were probably one of the first and most successful franchises at expanding or getting Pilates out to a lot more people. And the other group that I was reading about is Jet Set Pilates. And if you can pull that one up, they had a recent release where they're opening another 24 studios this year. they've got 270 open or in development and now they're looking to expand beyond just the United States and so it brings up a question for for people like myself that want to get involved there's there's clearly not a shortage of opportunities out there and it seems as though the expansion is beyond the United States and beyond the UK which are probably some of the primary markets to having the investment and for the expansion.

35:33Matthew Januszek:But what do you think the ability to expand internationally? Because it definitely seems like it does almost like come together with luxury, wellness, hospitality, that sort of market. But I can't help thinking that is the market expanding beyond the capabilities of many of the trainers? Because it's not like we're delivering a body pump class or we're not delivering a treadmill class this from my understanding is is a higher level of of instructor and coach than what you would expect for certain exercise programs and does that itself create a challenge where if you go and do one of these workouts you may not actually be getting the the level of instruction that you need and I'm not saying that it's not good to be doing anything.

36:25Matthew Januszek:Yes, yes, I agree with the argument that just getting people off the couch and moving is certainly good. But in order to be able to really deliver and receive a good quality of class, what are some of the challenges you're seeing from an education perspective in terms of maintaining that standard as the market explodes globally? Yeah, you brought up, you know, you brought up club Pilates, you brought up jet set Pilates. Club Pilates is very true to the Pilates method. I would say that, you know, Club Pilates definitely has incorporated the methodology and the system. They use a very traditional equipment from Balanced Body.

37:03They're training. I'm very familiar with their training. We train a lot of their teachers. They are looking at it from the methodology of Pilates, where Jet Set is more of the fitness. And there's the growth. We're seeing the growth in both, right? And just looking at the international aspect of it, we already have hit a critical mass in the sense of awareness. So for example, we're in 90 countries. Polestar, we have our training in 90 countries. And probably our fastest growing and just really booming country is China. So China is growing very fast. And China has probably 20, 30 manufacturers that are over there that are making Pilates equipment for people, as well as, and we saw this in the conference, and I'm sure you saw it at FIBO, that whole hallway, and there was a whole lot of Chinese equipment being made.

37:58So that's an area that we see growing very fast. And we have courses that are running. We can't keep up with the educator demand. And this would be true systemically, right? So this is looking at Balanced Body, Bozzi, Power Pilates, Fletcher Pilates, Polestar, the list goes on and on. We cannot keep up even with something like Club Pilates Group. There was a point where Club Pilates came up to and said, I need 80 teachers a month. And we're like, oh, yeah, we would love to give you all 80 teachers, they're pulling from everybody that are really qualified, you know, what we would consider qualified programs in the PMA, and they still can't meet their demands.

38:47Their growth is too much, right? Brent, I want to unpack this FIBO kind of comment, because one thing that I saw at FIBO this year is a lot of these manufacturers, a lot of them Chinese, are also adding other equipment types or variations to the equipment. Others, a lot of people that you and I know are adding digital this summer, like very, very quickly to add capabilities there. Why do you think they're adding, you know, different types of equipment, different types of offers? Is it because there's just, on one hand, you have growth that's happening. But on the other hand, is it because it's becoming more difficult to differentiate from a vendor perspective?

39:25So you've got consumer growth, but vendors have to differentiate. it because I was walking around and saying like, wow, there's just a lot of, it sounds like they're almost trying to do too much. I was blown away with what was going on. I was at HFA with my daughter, Nicole, and Nicole runs Polestar USA. And she went and tried all of the different manufacturer equipment. And I was filming her and we were just looking at some of them that had five pieces of equipment in one. It had other types of equipment that was combined with it. I think people are looking that maybe don't fully understand the power of the Pilates method.

40:07And they're looking more at catering the fitness industry with the hot topic of Pilates. So there is that. We are seeing a lot of people, and it's like I tell people, the purists get really frustrated by this. Like they they they're up in arms and they're trying to figure out how do we stop them from doing this? And it's like we don't stop them. What we do is we continue to educate. We educate the community and the community can make their own decisions as to what they want in their desired outcomes. Do you want to do a sweat Pilates class? That's fine. I mean, I've been down in Miami for the last 25 years.

40:48Everything we do, we sweat. You know, it doesn't matter what you're going to sweat. It's so humid. Right. But it's not the design of the class is not to make you sweat. The design of the class is to give you body suppleness and body awareness and power and confidence and improve your dynamic posture. I think that we're going to see, we'll continue to see that rise. I really do think we're going to see a rise for a while because people have invested so much money in trying to create the new evolution of Pilates equipment. But if I go back in time, right, it used to be that there was Graz. And Graz made the reformers in the table for Joe Pilates and everybody in New York and everybody that worked with Romana.

41:35And 50 years ago, Balanced Body entered the market as current concepts making waterbeds in L.A. And they got hired to make a reformer for Ron Fletcher. So the story goes, right? And it led with such a boom that Ken continued to make the equipment. Ken moves up to Sacramento, has a complete manufacturing company that he's starting to build, making Pilates equipment, right, out of wood. Grotz was made out of metal in a lot of cases, and there were some other things going on. Pete comes in, Stott is already in with Merithew. and everybody sort of, we were already competing, right, with different interpretations of the Graz Reformer.

42:25And some of those changes were really needed. For example, there was a time where we were in a heated discussion with Romana. I was talking to Romana and her sidekick, Steve Giordano. I have no idea where Steve is these days, but Steve was maybe five foot two, five foot three tall. And we were talking about a basic exercise that's done on the Reformer called high arch where you have your hands on the shoulder pads and you go into a full arch. Well, I'm six foot two. And my point to them, and Ken was with me at this dinner we had, was, Romana, I can't do high arch without dislocating my shoulder on the Grotz Reformer.

43:02It's too small. You know, Romana's four foot ten. Steve Giordano's five foot three, five foot four. Ken and I are both over six feet. And we're like, just my shoulder width is so wide on that machine. And so we were trying to explain why there might need to be adaptations to the equipment to create the methodology that Joe wanted for people of different sizes. So that was one thing that led to modifications of equipment, right? And I think that's all we're seeing, Mo, is we're seeing people looking at it. And there's some really good inventions that are out there. Like I looked at Reformer Pilates and I felt like they had some really cool things.

43:45And we looked at NordicTrackBottom IQ. Was it IQ Pilates or? ReformerX. ReformerX. And, you know, there were some very cool things built into that that are very interesting of ways we haven't looked at it. out of Korea Dr. Jang had developed equipment like the trapeze table could be adjusted to be able to work more in a rehabilitation setting where the table could bring up some support for the legs for somebody that has a severe back pathology you know is that wrong

44:23Matthew Januszek:it sounds like what you're saying though going back to your previous point like you're struggling as are many educators to actually educate people on the on the foundational level so all of these extra things you would think are brought in when you've ran out of ideas my guess is it's brought out but brought on by a lot of the manufacturers seeing an opportunity in the category that probably don't really understand to the same extent as you do about what they're doing and they're just trying to create a fitness spin because if if it was driven by educators you'd probably just be delivering high quality of education I suppose that goes back to my question You know, are we, if we're not careful, are we going to end up with all these sort of variations and the quality will naturally deteriorate as we come away from what Pilates actually is meant to do?

45:12And that brings us to a really important point. And, you know, the question is, do we have some kind of industrial representation of one, manufacturing guidelines for Pilates equipment and two, education and curriculum guidelines for accreditation? Right now, what we have is we do have a national third-party certification that is accredited third-party as well. And that's probably the best thing that we've done. And that most of us agree with that are in any kind of comprehensive Pilates teacher training, all different types of schools, that we at least have that in common that they would pass that exam that is the NCPT.

45:59And that would be our commonality, right? But we don't have the commonality of what says, does the school teach both the methodology and the system approach of Pilates? Is the equipment made with these key elements that all of the Pilates manufacturers could come to agreement? If you want to add a bell and whistle onto it, if you want to add a data collection device on it, that's fine, right? That's okay. But does it provide the basic properties that are necessary for the methodology? And that's okay, too, as long as you don't call it the Pilates method. You would just say that it's a Pilates-derived equipment that you're doing some really cool strength training and fitness training on and more power to you.

46:46That's okay. But I mean, that's my opinion, right? This is the world according to Brent. This is not all of Pilates done. But I do think that if there was a way to standardize these kind of things. And again, look at fitness. I mean, it's very difficult to be able to standardize different things in education and trainings in the fitness world. The world I come from in the rehabilitation world, it took, you know, 100 years to become, to have a doctorate in physical therapy that has a standardized accreditation body, a national certification exam, state licensure, took a long time. And I think that Pilates has that potential.

47:34I don't know if enough people are interested in it in any way, shape or form going that far. But I do think we owe it to the community at large to have the education. And that's something that we've been working on is to be able to have a classification system that just says, you know, where do you fit in in the continuum of Pilates fitness and wellness? And for people to be able to choose, yes, I have this. Yes, I do the reformer. Yes, we have Springs that this way. Yes, we teach the methodology. Yes, we understand what Joseph and Claire Pilates taught. We have the historical perspective. Does that communicate in the delivery of your services, yes or no?

48:17Because it might not. It might not. You might use it in a different way, but you understand it and you're trained and you know where you're coming from and where you're going. So that's a possibility. But I do think that we probably need to go down that road. I think if there's one last thing I do in this profession is to be able to provide some kind of classification. And that being said, going back, Mo, to your very original question and thoughts is, again, I don't think we're getting close to exhausting or saturating the field. I think that we have incredible demand for it in underserved communities that we have to find a solution of how do we go into underserved communities?

49:00How do we incorporate it into elementary schools? How do we incorporate it into prisons? How do we incorporate it? we're going to find a lot of new niches that the Pilates can be very effective and be accessible. And that's been the big challenge we've had in the past is it's been so niche and so upper echelon that, you know, the commoner and the underserved communities have not had the chance to fully embrace it. But if it's just floor exercises, it's just a matter of having a teacher that could teach it in different communities that all of a sudden gives access to Pilates. If it's in the hospitals and the rehab centers, they have access to it with their Medicaid and with their Medicare and with their insurance companies.

49:50Well, Brent, this has been eye-opening and we are at time, but before we wrap up, we love to leave with one takeaway. And so many of our listeners and audience come from the fitness world. A lot of them are operators. A lot of them are boutique studio owners. And a lot of brands I talk to are thinking about ways of bringing Pilates or the modality into their experience. If it's a gym, do you offer math classes? Do you put a reformer on the floor? If it's a studio, do I... Look, I've even had conversations with strength studios that are looking at some very big brands who are thinking about adding a reformer into their circuit.

50:29So everyone's getting really creative about this. If there's one takeaway for the fitness world, operators, boutique studio owners, what should they take away from this conversation? Yeah, I love that question, Mo. I think the biggest thing is, you know, before using the Pilates word, realize Joseph Pilates was a person. And in doing so, seek out to understand the methodology and see how the methodology fits into your system. If you understand, and then you're able to incorporate Pilates into your fitness systems because you understand the benefits of Pilates. You understand how it's going to integrate with weight training and cardio.

51:19And if you're doing HIIT training or cross training, that it has a place. And the other thing that I would mention is that in the push for wellness and health inside the fitness world that's so big right now is realizing that this is a great transition tool. This is a tool that is very sticky for people who might join up in your clubs or your boutique practices in January and they disappear in February, right? We have statistics that show that patients I discharged 40 % went into the Pilates cash pay arena. At five years, 80 % of them were still coming at least one to two times a week. That is a ridiculous amount of stickiness compared to what your normal statistics are in the fitness industry.

52:17And so one way of looking at this might be, this is a fantastic transition tool to get people to be serious about coming in and weight training and conditioning and participating in many of the other wonderful modalities that you have in your practice, in your studios, in your clinics, that this is a great transition tool. And, you know, if you could think of being able to consult somebody coming in that is deconditioned and say, I think what I would suggest is you do three Pilates classes a week for the next two months. You start learning to get familiar with the cardiovascular equipment. We do a weight training session for you to learn how to lift weights correctly.

53:01And then you're on your own. What you would find is that the three months of doing the Pilates class build so much confidence that they're going to stick around and continue to come into the club. They're going to continue to come in. I think I would bet my money on it that if they incorporated that way, they would have their best customer acquisition and retention by having that. Yeah. I think there's a lot of truth to that. Matthew, there's a lot to unpack here. Hopefully you've learned even more to now actually get you to come do a Pilates class with me, but any key takeaways from this episode?

53:43Matthew Januszek:yeah my my key takeaway is pretty simple is that you and i are going to have to do a podcast on a pilates reformer and actually go through a session i think i think that's something we need to to commit to i need to commit to before the end of the year so um mo what about yourself well one i think i'm just thinking about i'm just trying to visualize doing a podcast on a reformer um let's let's go take a class together first and then let's just see if we could we can actually do one. No, I think to me, and I'm struggling with this a lot. And really after this conversation, I kept on thinking about the expansion of modalities when I think about the gym floor.

54:22So a couple of things came to mind. One, it's simple tools like the foam roller or the TRX straps. When I started working out in the late 90s, they were typically in an office, in my trainer's office, they were in the PT's office, then they would pull out the TRX graft, they'd pull out the foam roller, and then they would work with you on that practice. Today, when you walk into an HVLP club or premium club, it's out on the floor and you've got a dedicated recovery area. But you know what's not out on the floor? It's a reformer or any kind of tools around even mat-based Pilates. It's behind a room.

55:00It's behind a closed door. It's still got that exclusive feeling to it. Yeah, and I think, to me, until we actually see that reformer out on the floor at more clubs and having it more accessible, I still think we have room to grow. And look, you look at, I was looking at some recent stats and having conversations around the elliptical is really going out of style. People are replacing that with more treadmills, with more stairmasters. Well, thinking about, you know, why not use some of that real estate to put a reformer on the floor? Maybe put some digital content on there so it doesn't have to be instructor-led.

55:32Maybe have a personal trainer who is dedicated to the practice or who is trained in Pilates so that they could take people onto a reformer. There's so much growth that needs to happen. And as you were talking, I kept on thinking about all the areas of fitness where that maturity curve actually happened. So I agree, even though I'm conflicted about the saturation, because, again, I'm looking at the data and there's just so much of it out there. But at the same time, there's so much room to grow. So I was going to say one thing. I was going to say one thing on what you said. You know, Joseph Pilates, his studio, you would pay five dollars and you would go in and do a circuit.

56:11And they had the things up on the wall and they had somebody that was in attending. You know, that that was how Joe taught. And you just went through your circuit. You knew what exercises you were going to do. You hit your circuit. You got on the reformer, the trapeze table, the barrel, the chair. You did the mat exercises and you left, you know. And so we've often thought, what would it be like? This is how we get it accessible. And if you have your pictures up and you had one attendant that was just making sure the Pilates gym was safe and that you had the – now with technology, like that Reformer Pilates, they have the video of the exercises attached to the Reformer.

56:53So they can – Your Reformer. Your Reformer. Yeah. Yeah. And so the other ones are doing that as well. But I mean, that's the idea of like, how could you make and here's the here's the beef that people have. People feel in the Pilates, more classical traditional area is that it has to be something taught to you. It has to be something that is elite. And the reality is all of us that are teachers, we work out on the Pilates all the time by ourselves. So it's just something that has to be learned. It's not something that has to always be coached. You know, you could have somebody go through and have a gym and you could say, as long as you're taking one class every other week, you can use the Pilates equipment in the gym.

57:39Matthew Januszek:Maybe that's a new concept. So, well, look, Brent, thank you so much for your time. I hope you've enjoyed this week's episode of Lifts. If you have, then to help us get on more great guests like Brent, give it a share. Share it to one or two people. If you're listening to on YouTube, please comment. Let us know what you think at the bottom. And if you're listening to it on audio, then do us a favor and please leave a review. So thank you very much for listening to this week's episode of Lifts and we'll speak to you next week.

58:20Bye.