Is Pilates Dying?!
This provocative article was just published yesterday (Sept 15, 2015) by Annie Lowrey for the online New York Daily Intelligencer.
I’ve heard rumblings of the points she’s making from my studio friends. And my colleague Joan Breibart who is quoted at length knows what she’s talking about as the marketing genius who put Pilates on the map in the 70’s and 80’s.
But I’m so curious to hear what my global readers think. My experience is different. As a Pilates instructor for over 40 years who only teaches mat classes and a very athletic style, I’ve seen my mat classes grow rather than decline over the last several years.
What do you think?
Try something. Lie on your back and engage your abdominal muscles, lifting your head off the floor and extending your legs out at a 45-degree angle. Stiffen and lift your arms by your sides and then vigorously pump them, up and down, up and down, 100 times, breathing in for five, and out for five, in for five, and out for five.
This is the 100, one of the most iconic exercises in the century-old fitness method called Pilates. Designed to strengthen and stretch the body into its most Adonis-like form — Madonna and Gwyneth are reportedly devotees — Pilates went from an obscurity beloved of ballet dancers to a 1990s fad to a full-on mainstream trend by the mid-2000s. In doing so, it demonstrated to a whole generation of muscled entrepreneurs that Americans would pay a whole lot for the pleasure of a certain kind of pain, often coughing up $20 or $30 for a small group class.
But Pilates has not quite managed to benefit from the boutique-fitness boom that it is in part responsible for starting. Interest in the method seems to have peaked last decade, dwindling just as spinning, barre, bootcamp, CrossFit, pole dancing, and a million other niches started to bloom, and as yoga continued its zen march to omnipresence. Across the country, attendance is down. Studios are struggling, and some are closing. Teachers are seeking additional certifications. Pilates centers are adding non-Pilates classes.
Call it the Pilatesdämmerung, or even the Pilatespocalypse. “It’s 1,000 percent true, and it’s worse than you know,” said Joan Breibart, the founder of the PhysicalMind Institute, who has been practicing Pilates for five decades. “I feel like there’s a huge future for Pilates, but we have got to bounce back from this.”
That “this” is a little bleak at the moment. In general, boutique-fitness classes like Pilates are growing at an astonishing clip. Pure Barre has gone from having 100 studios in 2012 to more than 300 studios today. SoulCycle has tripled the number of rides its devotees have taken in the past three years, too, and is preparing for an initial public offering of stock. Yoga continues to grow in terms of participants, revenue, and studio count, with 20.4 million Americans partaking as of 2012.
But a survey from the market research firm IBISWorld found that the number of people doing Pilates declined about 2 percent per year every year between 2007 and 2011, dropping down to 8.5 million. The number of “regular” participants contracted 9 percent in 2011 alone. Data on how that has played out in financial terms is hard to come by. But when I asked one research analyst if investors were interested in Pilates, she retorted, “No, they’re not. No.” And Pilates instructors themselves said that the change was palpable…..
Then, there might be issues with the Pilates workout itself: Given all the options out there, it seems to be too quiet, too antisocial, too critical, and too sweat-free for the Millennials blowing the boutique fitness bubble. “A lot of people will fight me on this, but correction is overdone and it is too wordy,” said Breibart, describing how instructors help their students realign and reform their bodies, sometimes a little harshly. “I remember going to classes in the 1960s where if you did an exercise and your left eyebrow raised they’d criticize you. But people don’t want to be picked on. It can come across as too negative.” And that criticism often happens in a quiet room with only a small handful of students. “We were always so narrow-minded about that,” Breibart said. “You need to include some music! It’s a motivator!”
The lack of sweat has also dimmed the practice’s appeal, said Amanda Freeman of SLT, a “heart-pumping, calorie-burning, and total-body workout” performed on a Pilates machine. “I think the problem with traditional Pilates is that you don’t sweat, so you don’t feel like you’re getting as good a workout as you do with other popular workouts,” she told me. “The reason I started SLT was that I wanted a Pilates body — those are the results that most people want — but I didn’t enjoy the Pilates workout. You kind of felt like you needed to get on a treadmill or an elliptical afterwards to get a complete workout.”
Fitness experts cited one last factor: the dudes, many of whom shy away from Pilates, despite its demonstrably excellent results among individuals with a Y chromosome. “Yoga has really appealed to a nontraditional demographic, including men,” said Turk. “That is a reason why Pilates is lagging.” Freeman noted that she did not include “Pilates” in SLT’s name precisely to avoid the athletic biases some men might have. “Pilates doesn’t have a male appeal, and we think our workout should appeal to men just as much as women,” she said…..
But as Pilates contemplates Pilatesdämmerung, the whole boutique-fitness industry might be facing its own kind of twilight. “Today, we have such a crowded marketplace,” said Kapoor of Moelis & Co. “Everybody is jumping on the bandwagon. Every entrepreneur who ever wanted to enter the wellness category is getting in. Given how hot the market is – particularly in influential urban hubs such as Manhattan and Los Angeles – a lot of concepts are over-inflated today.” She went on: “There isn’t room for everyone in the long run.”
That whole boutique-fitness trend that Pilates helped to ignite, in other words, might start slimming down itself.
Please let us know what you think – is Pilates dying? Can it be saved?
For the complete article go to http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/09/pilatespocalypse.html.