DAVID GUNTHER: I think the question is,

CARLA RICALIS: Yeah. 

DAVID: what to call our brand of Pilates. Why is this a problem worth solving? do we call it traditional, clinical, rehabilitation, personalised precision, caring, wellness?

They're are all of those things, and we've chosen, at our studio to call it Clinical Pilates, to have that differentiation between what we do and what big fitness franchises do. What do you think about that, what would you call your brand? of Pilates

CARLA: Yeah. I know it's, it is interesting ' cause again, I know from our previous conversation, you call yours clinical and just to have a very succinct way of saying this is what we do because we don't call it a clinical, I think just in the Toronto or maybe even the Canadian market. But I feel like in Toronto to say clinical Pilates would very much mean, physio based Pilates.

INTRO: Pilates business owners, welcome to The Pilates Business Podcast, brought to you by the people who own, operate, and instruct in a successful clinical Pilates studio in Australia. 

Our mission is to help you to discover Pilates business assets to build your clinical Pilates business success. And now, here's your host, David Gunther.

DAVID: The word Pilates has become a shapeshifter. Sometimes it looks like rows of reformers moving to a choreography script. Other times it feels like therapy quite precise and deeply personal. That split has created both opportunity and confusion. On one hand, more people than ever know the name Pilates on the other, those of us who've dedicated our lives to this work now face a challenge. How do we define what makes our Pilates different? This episode marks the start of a new series, Diaries of Professional Pilates instructors, where we'll hear the stories, struggles, and insights of Pilates instructors and studio owners who are living this journey with vigor.

To begin this series, I'm joined by Carla Al, co-founder and director of Studio three in Toronto. Carla's journey spans decades and continents from her early certification with Moira Stott in the nineties to launching training centers across North America and Europe to establishing her own thriving fully equipped studio in Toronto. Along the way, Carla has trained instructors worldwide and added an academic dimension to her work with a master's degree exploring Pilates, aging and the body. In our conversation, we dig into language, identity and the power of clarity. Should we call what we do

clinical, personalised, fully equipped or something else entirely? If you've ever struggled to find the best words to capture the depth and importance of your work, this conversation will help. So whether you are on the road between clients or catching a quiet moment, let's dive in.

Thanks very much, Carla. In our pre-discussion, we talked about the different streams of clinical Pilates I guess the general brand of Pilates that we are both involved with our studios and how you have Polestar and BASI and STOTT and International and these different groups that have similar target markets, and groups of people that they would work with.

Tell me your thoughts on just how the industry has developed post now, the big fitness franchises and what our challenge is with those different areas of learning.

You are coming at it from the STOTT heritage, but then there's others like my wife and our lead studio instructor Claire from International and Polestar qualified through both of those organizations. So yeah, tell us about that.

CARLA: I think these established certification programs did sort of that first step of demystifying Pilates. And so bringing it into mainstream a little bit more. When I did my, certification, I was first introduced actually to Pilates when I was in England on an exchange program at the University of Leeds.

And then when I came back to Toronto, I looked in the yellow pages and saw STOTT Pilates and went and did my certification there and people didn't know what it was. So even to the point where I just wouldn't even say I taught Pilates. It was, oh, I, teach fitness. 

DAVID: It was too hard to explain.

CARLA: It was too hard to explain. People didn't understand, you know, and sto, from my experience, Moira Stott and Lindsey Merrithew, her ex-husband, her former husband, they did this stupendous job. Like really driven to bring it mainstream.

I mean, we went to conventions, we presented, we did all this stuff to really inform the fitness industry, as I'm sure these other established certification programs did. So now flash forward 30 years to where we are now, and it seems everybody's doing Pilates, whether or not it's, Pilates sort of is, to be, I guess determined.

I think it's an interesting time for people who are fully certified in whatever method, who have committed to their education, who have committed to learning how to take the tools Pilates and apply it to a diverse population. Because I think that what we're seeing with these larger studios where maybe the focus is a little bit different, and it's not so much based on that individual programming, but rather on creating workouts or classes for the masses or for larger groups is that the interpretation of Pilates is different from what we're used to as people who've been in the industry for a long time.

So I think there's a, yeah, there's an opportunity. It can be frustrating as I know many established Pilates professionals have expressed, but I think there's also an opportunity to maybe try to inform people a little bit more about what it really is about.

Because now people are more just aware of Pilates, and if they're curious, they'll want to learn more.

DAVID: So what I'm hearing is back then when STOTT started, and probably BASI and International and Polestar and others like that they actually took the word Pilates and they made it more accessible to the population in a specific way, in the STOTT way or the balanced body or the the Polestar way.

And that was something that was good for. Pilates because it spread the word and it sounds to me, and I'm just, I have these realizations when I do these podcast recordings, Carla, that history's repeating itself. No one owns the word Pilates. 

CARLA: Yeah. Yeah. 

DAVID: These big franchises, these big fitness franchises that are doing reformer classes for bigger groups, they're making Pilates.

As a previous instructor told me one day, oh your form of Pilates, it's not very accessible, is it? The accessibility's not great because you have to have a certain income to be able to afford private or semi-private sessions. But the accessibility to Pilates, whatever the it they're doing is what has happened. But it is a challenge for those that have come through and have that, private or semi-private approach and fully qualified as you with all of the equipment and all of the techniques with Pilates to be very much more specific.

From my point of view, we need to come up with a definition because we can't just say we're doing Pilates now, because the understanding the marketplace about Pilates is that, okay you, you've got reformer classes with 30, people on reformers and it's a workout that'll be this sort of price and I can expect certain things in that studio. And that's of course not what we do. I think the question is,

CARLA: Yeah. 

DAVID: to call our brand of Pilates? Why is this a problem worth solving? Do we call it traditional clinical rehabilitation, personalised, precision, caring, wellness?

They're are all of those things, and we've chosen, at our studio to call it Clinical Pilates, to have that differentiation between what we do and what, big fitness franchises do. What do you think about that, what would you call your brand of Pilates? 

CARLA: Yeah. I know it's, it is interesting 'cause again, I know from our previous conversation, you call yours clinical and just to have a very succinct way of saying this is what we do because we don't call it a clinical, I think just in the Toronto or maybe even the Canadian market, although I can't speak to other provinces or whatever.

But I feel like in Toronto to say clinical Pilates would very much mean, physio based Pilates. For us, the risk is that like we do treat people or we do train people who have specific conditions, who have specific physical limitations. But that's not our sole audience, our sole target market.

Like we also do our instructors for as much as they're able to modify for somebody who does have a musculoskeletal condition or is rehabilitating a joint replacement or, or whatever. They're also able to put together, a really strong workout, a really great Pilates workout on all the equipment. So, you know, for us, there's always that tension when somebody says, oh, you do Pilates?

And it's no, we're a fully equipped Pilates studio. And I don't have one word for it. I just, I don't, and so I have more of a little description of how we're different, and for the people who are, really new to Pilates, it's just as simple as saying there's more equipment to Pilates than just the reformer.

You know, there's other pieces that are of value, if not more so depending on your circumstances. 

DAVID: Yeah that's, very consistent with our approach as well. Although, when there's opportunities to use, just the one word we've chosen clinical, because we actually looked in the dictionary or a number of dictionaries to find out what the definition of clinical was. And we found that really, we did fit within that.

We're certainly not physiotherapists. We've certainly had physiotherapists working in the studio as Pilates instructors and some physiotherapists that do Pilates are quite good at it for various reasons, particularly if they concentrate on that and have the education in Pilates specifically, as well as all of the other physiotherapy things that they need to do.

Clinical Pilates for us has been when we have to use just one word in certain circumstances, usually promotional marketing. 

CARLA: I think there's definitely like the question of why is it a problem worth solving? And I think that is like really that article I put in LinkedIn I think it really is about studios like ours in the world, that really need to figure out how they stand apart from these sort of big box Pilates studios.

But also, why, and so the why. I think the consistent thing is that most of these established small studios the, studio owners or the instructors working there are very committed to their education and very committed to their ongoing education too. So it's not just stopping with, the certification and you know, it's not right or wrong, it's just more of your focus if Pilates is your full-time career like it is for us, or if it's maybe just, part of the, as they say, the gig economy, you're just taking a couple classes or doing a couple classes to supplement your gym membership or whatever it is, but I, think I think staying in our lane and really being clear about what we do and why we do it is where it'll keep that top tier of Pilates studio and the distinction. 

DAVID: I think that's an excellent point. The why really helps us with the motivation for our clients, for our instructors, and for our studio owners because the motivation's important. Since COVID, a quite a lot of people have left the industry because it's not as reliable through a pandemic as a way of putting food on the table and paying the mortgage.

And people have taken that option. Now we've decided to stay in the industry, but you need to know, yes, exactly why you're doing that and what you're doing that is different to this whole conglomeration of what is now called Pilates by the marketplace. And yes, there are benefits from everyone knowing that there's something called Pilates and we've got these machines and it works very well and all of that.

But then, yeah how are we different and, what do we call that? So that people, when they come to us they immediately come to our websites, come to our marketing material. They know, ah, that's, that's what I'm looking for. And as you say, our clients too, although a lot of them have had injuries and conditions, a lot of them have not, they want to maintain their mobility in a healthy way going forward into their, as they age.

And they may only now be in their twenties. 

CARLA: Yeah. If I look at, SEOs on our keywords on our website or whatever, it's fully equipped Pilates studio. I think we try to stress that and then pull from there. So there has to be distinction, but just in my, few conversations with people who aren't as informed about Pilates, like newer clients coming in, one of the most sort of frequent questions is, do you offer reformer Pilates?

So there seems to be this link just in, that Pilates is reformer classes. And so if we're able to show that there's more than just that piece of equipment and also that there's probably a lot more that can be done on that piece of equipment than what they're doing in those larger classes. 

DAVID: As we get the chance to, actually explain what fully equipped means because if I'm someone with a shoulder injury, I've fallen off my bike and I want to do something that's gonna be non-invasive. I don't want an operation or to be keeping on taking pain medication for my, shoulder injury.

But I do want it to get better over time and I'd like to have a natural remedy for that, then fully equipped Pilates, if I see that on a website, I'm going to go yeah, I assume it would be fully equipped, but I'm not gonna know what that means until Carla or David explains it to me. If I'm in the studio, or if I make the phone call, or if I send an email, whatever it might be to inquire a bit more.

Let's take one of the other words in my list of what we could call it. Besides clinical, let's take personalised. So personalised does also differentiate. I'm just challenging our perceptions here, Carla, for us to think about it in different ways, personalised means that it's gonna be small numbers.

Assuming it's not gonna be 30 people on reformers oh, okay, with my shoulder, yeah, I'm gonna need personalised. 'cause not everyone's got a shoulder injury. There's not gonna be a shoulder injury reformer class out there in the big box gym. Any thoughts? 

CARLA: Yeah, I've personalised, resonates a bit more for me, like I, that would be something that I, would probably use more than clinical, just again, because of what I said earlier about clinical. But one of the things that just occurred to me is that, most clients who seek out our studio, come with a little bit of knowledge of the distinction.

So we're not necessarily their first educational resource on Pilates. They've done Pilates, or to your example, they have an injury. They were recommended to do Pilates. And then there's that caveat of, but find a studio that offers something that's personalised, that, knows what they're doing, that's teaching full Pilates.

So I think there's so much information or discourse around these big box Pilates studios or these larger studios. And I do think there is a healthy number of Pilates enthusiasts who, that's their only knowledge of Pilates. Just that experience.

It has been around for a very long time. So there are those people, whether it's other people in the health and movement professions like physios or doctors or chiropractors or massage therapists, who just have that knowledge base or just clients who, you know, just from talking to friends or whatever that have that understanding that there are distinctions.

But I do think that personalised is probably something we would use a little bit more. 

DAVID: Yeah. and and we do that as, as well. And we focus on that, all the derivations of that word, but the experience of having someone coming to you and asking, I've been recommended to do Pilates. Now, in the olden days, that differentiation by the doctor or the physio, or the massage therapist might have been to say to them make sure it's reformer Pilates, because in the olden days there was mat work Pilates in the big gyms, but there wasn't reformer Pilates.

So that was the differentiation. And unfortunately that's complicated things for us as well. And made it better for the big box gyms are standing on the shoulders of the good reputation that has been put out there by Pilates businesses like ours over the many years.

 And they've done a good job or a bad job, whatever they've decided to do in making accessible to the masses with the large, larger format. So 

CARLA: Right? 

DAVID: often times people will come to me because I do the sales side of things. We're lucky enough to have myself able to concentrate on that in our studio.

And they'll say, oh, the doctor said, or the physio said, I need to do Pilates, and that's it. That's all they say. So then I'll say, oh, okay, great. What sort of Pilates you've been referred? So I know that probably got some sort of specific condition that they're trying to address referred to Pilates.

And then I'm finding that I have to, as perhaps you find too I've gotta explain. Sort of the whole industry and where everything is. For some people, they know they've done our sort of Pilates before or someone has told them, or they're referred by a current client.

So they know the difference. But for those that don't that we still wanna pick up and have, do our form of Pilates rather than to the big box gym yeah it can be a funny sort of a conversation and a little bit awkward, particularly, if you don't have the wording, precision, personalised, not in a large group those sort of things. 

CARLA: I think when I get questions like that, you know, I, I sort of go back to classes that are successful in large groups. And so I think of something like spin classes or even like boxercise, which that in itself can be kind of, if you're a newbie at Boxercise, it's a very much choreographic based class.

But something like spin, it's just a repetitive easy movement, which is why of course there has to be good corrections and feedback about, your breathing and your form and all that sort of stuff. But for the most part, it's just know, spinning the wheels on the, on a stationary bike in a large group class on the reformer, if people don't have those foundational exercises, if they don't know how. It's not even just , the strongest individual could get on the reformer, and if they don't know how to control it, they could fall, they could slip, they could, there's so many things that could go wrong if you're not familiar to that spring tension and that, and detention and stuff.

So I feel like, when I'm having conversations on that level to explain it to clients, the distinction, it's maybe not even bringing in other pieces of equipment that can sort of be at the tail end of it. It's more just, the foundational exercises and building up that strong sense of like movement, confidence and awareness and proprioception.

That's what we do. You can take that and go to those classes and make it even more reward for you. But to go to those classes without that, there's a whole set of risks. And even if you're not risking, falling or hurting, you're just not gonna get what you should out of it.

I think the ceiling of being challenged and being pushed is, low in those classes because you can't safely take 30 people all at varying levels or even 10 people, all at varying levels to advanced levels exercises. 

DAVID: How hard is that for those instructors to to have to try to do that and how frustrating that must be and how, how encouraging it might be for them to therefore transition to perhaps a situation where they can deal more personally with people. But you mentioned box fit and I'm old enough to be able to say that I did teach Tae Bo and Box Fit and, and Les Mill's body combat, back in the, the, uh, yeah, the nineties, uh, there, yeah. the, the nineties familiar with Les Mills. And before that was Tae Bo. And yeah you're right, those foundational principles and skills. It would be much better if we had the sensei who could help us directly with exactly what we needed to learn to progress through.

But the benefit of those sort of classes was about the energy that the group provided. Which if the instructor was good at orchestrating that energy and knew the repertoire well enough the choreography in that case is really a dance that they're choreographing and so that everyone didn't bump into each other and go in the wrong direction or fall or if the instructor didn't fall off the stage. Which has happened to Claire. I should, 

CARLA: Oh, 

DAVID: She was fine. She bounces very well. And, but that was highly embarrassing for her. But I love telling that story. But it's the energy and I know, we do a lot of semi-private sessions and we have discussed this previously as against privates. We just introduce people to their personalised program with their couple of privates, and then they go into semi-private. So there's a sort of a crossing there between a very small group class where there is some energy and it's more of a social energy that needs to be orchestrated by the instructor, but that helps the instructor with making it interesting and moving everyone along and as a real reason why people want to come back to the studio every week, maybe twice a week because they enjoy that social energy and that whole discussion as well as looking after their body in a personal way through semi-private, in our case, usually privates with yourself, Carla.

So you've probably got some viewpoints on that dynamic. I think you're quite right. It can be dangerous if everyone's doing, trying to do the same thing at the same 

CARLA: Yeah. Yeah. I, I mean, and I think these classes are probably 10 or 12 and I think probably is that my assumption, I've never been to one, but my assumption is that the instructors are very much have a set, not necessarily choreography, but like a certain structure to the classes and a certain selection of exercises that have been deemed safe to do whether, one person in the class has never been on a reformer and other people are more familiar with it. I just, think that I just redid our studio charts, or I'm in the process of doing my studio charts and reformatting it a little bit.

And there's so many exercises as we know, like collectively on all the equipment. And so if instructors have gone through that entire journey of learning them and then to not be able to use them and I feel like where they're ultimately used is in that small studio setting and for us, your business model's interesting because I remember being introduced to Pilates in Toronto when I, it was like 19 years old at a studio that very much did just that. You had a sort of private session. You got your program and then when you came back you were with a group of people, you were put on a piece of equipment and you kind, you.

So it was self-guided to a certain extent, but there was still Pilates instructor there. And when I first started working at the studio and on the Danforth in Toronto, we would have certain sessions in the schedule that, accommodated that. So clients would come and they'd have their work and we would just sort of help them as they went about.

And as I said last week it is for whatever reason phased out. I don't know if it just became less popular as private training.

DAVID: That's where we'll leave it for today's episode of the Pilates Business Podcast. My thanks to Carla Al for sharing her story and perspective on how we define and differentiate Pilates in today's world. This conversation doesn't end here. Next week we'll release the continuation of my discussion with Carla.

Where we go even deeper into the challenges and opportunities facing professional Pilates instructors and studio owners,

we look forward to you joining us while you are on your commute or taking a walk in the sunshine.

If you found today's episode valuable, subscribe to the show so they can start dropping straight into your feed. Until then, keep finding the words and the work that set your Pilates business apart.

OUTRO: You have been listening to the Pilates business podcast with David Gunther. If you are enjoying the show, let us know by subscribing and leaving a review. For more information or if you have any Pilates business questions, visit www.business.com.au.