A career as a Professional Pilates Instructor is fulfilling, with the potential to benefit the health and wellbeing of both the instructor and clients. Whether the instructor takes a clinical or wellbeing focus to their practice, their main strengths lie in helping clients progress their health and wellbeing. That can include injury rehabilitation, improvement whole-body movement and alignment, or wellbeing and social experience.
However, there is a lot a Professional Pilates Instructor wants, and indeed needs, to achieve a satisfying and sustainable career in Pilates. This can be a difficult mission, and one that requires a special set of circumstances to succeed. What are those circumstances?
Efficient Studio Operations
Let’s start with the basics-- a Professional Pilates Instructor wants to come to work in a beautiful studio! A well-designed, stylish, and comfortable studio equipped with high-standard Pilates equipment is an absolute essential for Pilates instructors looking to grow. The atmosphere of a Pilates studio is equally as important. Excellent Pilates studios take all the practical design steps necessary to provide an encouraging, open, and invigorating space for Professional Pilates Instructors to work within.
“[I value] creating a sense of community amongst staff and clients, so that the Pilates studio is a safe and comfortable space for the psyche as well as the body” – Jenni, Pilates Instructor.
But it’s not just the space that’s important, it’s the efficient operational systems of a Pilates studio that make it appealing and functional. Running Pilates sessions takes more than just what happens in the studio. The administration, client services, sales, marketing, scheduling, and client retention processes keep a Pilates studio thriving.
To do their job, a Professional Pilates Instructor needs to be dedicated and focused on their practice with their clients. To ensure this focus, they need an efficient studio that runs these essential behind-the-scenes activities seamlessly. An efficient Pilates studio be cost-effective and profitable for all the stakeholders including the clients, instructor team and the business. If the business is not doing well then both the clients and instructors will eventually also suffer.
“Our admin team are fantastic at taking care of the running of the business so our teaching team can concentrate on doing what we are good at” – Emma, Senior Pilates Instructor.
In our last blog we talked about how COVID-19 impacted the Pilates industry. The behind-the-scenes work to keep valuable clients connected and to develop integrated online operating systems has been, and remains, vital to keeping studios alive. Pilates studios that had the team and capacity for this during the COVID shutdowns were the Pilates studios that thrived.
There is so much more a Professional Pilates Instructor should look for to start or grow their career! Subscribe to our blog for Part 2 where we look at the role of teamwork and how to achieve job satisfaction in the Pilates industry.