Reformer Pilates - what level should I do?

How to go on the journey from Newbie, to Pilates Pro!

It’s often a tad confusing when you first start attending group Reformer Pilates classes, when it’s time to move up to the next level. There’s often differences between practitioners' styles, modifications for clients within each session, and the same level class but at different times of the day. You may even attend the same class, with the same practitioner at the same time for a few weeks, and have a completely different experience each session! These are all common bits of feedback we get from our clients who attend regularly, and is also a common thread across most studios’ I’ve ever visited or worked at. So what do you do?

First, let’s break down the different levels Movementality has on offer for Reformer Pilates:

• Fundamentals - this is designed for newbies to Pilates, and also to the studio. The goal is not to do fancy things, but instead to nail down the basics of how we’d like you to use your body in the sessions: deep stomach, finding length in your body, controlling the movement and concentrating, all to help your coordination and build your body awareness.

• Progressive - now that you know what to expect in your sessions, and know the key points to look for, it’s time to go up a gear. We’ll maybe go a little faster than the Fundamentals class, but the basic moves should look similar with similar goals, and then we’ll add in a heap of extra fun/hard things to make sure you’re getting a good challenge without leaving you in pain (beyond the ideal 2 days muscle soreness!)

• Flow - once you’re comfortable on the reformer and feel like you’ve got a good level of body awareness, Flow can be an excellent challenge. It’s not necessarily meant to be significantly harder, but it is designed to flow smoothly from exercise to exercise. Ash used to teach Barre fitness classes, so uses the blend of her Barre and Ballet background to bring a coordinated and flowing experience on to the reformer.

• Advanced - this is a new addition to the schedule, and is reflective of a handful of clients really looking to excel! We’ll take what you’ve learned in your progressive sessions, and ramp it up another level again. We’ll manipulate heavy and light spring setups, spend more time upright and challenging your control and balance. It’s designed to use as much of your body as often as possible.

• Mum’s and Bub’s - pitched at a Fundamentals level, but can be modified depending on how things are feeling postpartum. This class is designed to be baby friendly above all else, up until they’re moving around and getting their little limbs caught in the equipment! It’s a slower pace, to ensure you’ve got time to tend to any disgruntled babies, but also focuses on specific strategies to help you feel empowered again after giving birth.

That’s the rough breakdown of the classes, with some different information from what’s on the website. With this in mind, how do you choose? Well to be honest, a lot of it comes down to the practitioner ensuring they’re being able to work someone to their best level, by providing progressions within each exercise. This means that someone who might be confident in a Progressive class, can still come to a Fundamentals or even a Mums and Bubs class and still get a good workout. The Advanced class is a little different - definitely not the one you want to go to on your first session, but absolutely something to work towards!

But when it comes to choosing what class you want to attend, sometimes it’s more the time and the practitioner you want to work with, rather than the particular level. If this is the case, below are some ideas on how to modify your reformer to give you more of a challenge, if you want it! Keep in mind, our goal is to work you to a 7/10 effort consistently. It’s at this level of challenge that you’re under enough fatigue load your body will be stimulated to get stronger, but not so hard that your form starts to get compromised and you need to take lots of breaks.

Simple progression options

Modify your resistance

We generally give you a guide on spring resistance when starting an exercise, and occasionally some options to make it easier/harder. Broadly speaking, if we’re working on your strength, then heavier springs are best. If we’re working on your balance, we’ll often go lighter. So don’t be afraid to ask what you’re working on, and then you can either add or subtract springs as you deem necessary until you’re feeling suitably challenged!

Change your tempo

By tempo, we mean how quickly you move repetitively. Often, we end up moving the same speed up and down, forward and back etc. But changing the speed in one direction can be an excellent way to create an extra challenge. I’d recommend going faster when going into the hard bit of the movement, rather than into the recovery - we’d hate for you to fall off!

Reduce your anchor points

The more points of contact we have with the ground and the reformer, the more it supports us. By reducing a point of contact or two, it can dramatically up the challenge both for strength, and for balance. It’s also an excellent way to identify and work on any significant asymmetries in your movements. The example being a hip flexor stretch - if you have your knee down, try taking it off; if you have your hands on the footbar, try moving them to your hips. Soon, that hip flexor stretch now feels like more of a lunge! Still stretches the hips, but also works your balance and your leg strength.

Add a twist

Often in the early stages of learning an exercise, we generally keep it to one plane of movement e.g. up and down, side to side. We don’t often blend multiple planes until we’ve seen everyone can confidently handle the first stage. But if you’re a confident mover, feel free to try and add some form of rotation, or bending sideways where possible. Adding this extra spine and head based movement will challenge your coordination, your strength, and your balance, making the exercise significantly more challenging.

With these ideas in mind, you may now be able to see where in some sessions you’ve perhaps experienced a more progressive session, or more a fundamental one, even if the names don’t match up! Historically, pre-covid, we actually just ran all-level Reformer classes, and everyone just did what they could and modified as necessary. In some ways this was excellent, allowing anyone to come to any class. In other ways, this made it really hard when you had a complete newbie beside someone with 100 classes under their belt! When we came back from the lockdowns, it became easier to just run Reformer sessions (previously we’d also offered Mat and Barre too).

We also needed to create a distinction in class levels to ensure we could group clients of similar levels together and progress everyone as a whole, rather than running around like a headless chicken to match the various levels in a class. In saying that though, we do have clients who attend different levels each week depending on their schedule, rather than the class level. We do our best to challenge everyone, but if you also know how to challenge yourself, it makes everyone’s life significantly easier!