The Classical Method

Pilates has become a word that covers a lot of different things. Some of them have very little to do with what Joseph Pilates actually taught.

We teach the classical method: the complete system, on the original apparatus, in the order it was designed to be learned. Here’s what that means in practice, and why it’s worth knowing before you choose a studio.

A complete system, not a collection of exercises

Joseph Pilates called his method Contrology — the study of control. He developed roughly 500 exercises across mat and apparatus, and he arranged them deliberately. Each one prepares the body for the next. The order isn’t tradition for its own sake; it’s a teaching sequence, built so that strength and mobility arrive in a workable order.

Teaching it classically means keeping that structure. You learn the foundation before the thing that depends on it. It also means the method has somewhere to take you — there’s a beginner system, an intermediate system and an advanced system, and clients work through them over years rather than plateauing after a few months.

The apparatus

Joseph Pilates designed each piece of equipment to solve a particular problem. They’re not variations on a theme — they do genuinely different jobs, which is why we teach on several rather than one.

The reformer

The best-known piece, and the one most people picture. A sliding carriage on rails, with springs providing resistance, plus a footbar and straps. Because you’re lying, sitting, kneeling or standing on a moving surface, the reformer trains stability and strength at the same time — you can’t cheat a movement when the floor beneath you slides. Spring tension can be raised or lowered to suit the exercise and the person, so the same work adapts across a very wide range of ability.

The tower

A vertical frame with springs anchored overhead, along with a push-through bar and leg springs. Because the resistance comes from above, the tower excels at spinal articulation, shoulder work and anything requiring support through the back. It’s where a lot of rehabilitative and postural work happens, and it allows exercises that simply aren’t available lying flat. Our two Cadillacs offer the same principle with more range again.

The Wunda chair

Deceptively small, and the hardest piece in the studio. A padded box with a spring-loaded pedal, worked from standing, sitting or lying. The chair takes away the support the other apparatus gives you, which makes it the place where balance, standing strength and genuine control get tested. We have six of them. Clients often find the chair humbling for a long time before it becomes satisfying.

Mat

The mat repertoire underlies everything. It’s the method without assistance — no springs, no straps, nothing to help you — which makes it both the foundation and the destination. Much of what you learn on the apparatus is preparation for doing the same work on the mat, unaided. It’s also the one part of the method you can practice anywhere.

The ladder barrel

A padded barrel set apart from a ladder, used for extension, side-bending and rotation. The barrel supports the spine through ranges that are hard to reach safely on the floor, which makes it valuable for anyone who spends the day rounded forward over a desk or a steering wheel. It’s often where a session finishes, opening out everything the rest of the work has been building.

Spine correctors and small apparatus

Alongside the large apparatus we use spine correctors and a range of smaller equipment developed for the classical method. These do the quiet work: opening the upper back, supporting a position long enough for you to feel it correctly, or adding just enough challenge to an exercise you’ve outgrown. Small pieces, but they’re often what makes a particular exercise finally click for a particular body.

Why springs assist as well as resist

This is the part most people find surprising, and it’s the reason Pilates apparatus suits bodies that are working around something.

A weight only ever resists you. A spring can do either. Depending on how the exercise is set up, a spring can make a movement harder — or it can carry part of your body weight and make a movement possible that you couldn’t yet do unaided.

That’s why the same piece of equipment serves a client recovering from surgery and a client who has trained for fifteen years. The exercise doesn’t change. The spring does.

Pilates and barre, under one roof

We’re the only studio in Edwardsville teaching both classical Pilates and barre on a full weekly schedule, and that isn’t an accident of history. It’s how we think people should train.

Our barre is built on classical principles. We care where your pelvis sits and what your ribs are doing while you’re working, not only how much you can feel it. That makes barre a genuine complement to Pilates rather than a different sport: Pilates teaches you where your body should be, and barre is where you find out whether you can keep it there under fatigue.

Practically, it also means you can train four or five times a week across two formats in one place, at one desk, on one schedule — rather than holding memberships at two studios that don’t talk to each other.

How our teachers are trained

Every teacher here is comprehensively trained in the classical method. Comprehensive means the whole system — mat and every piece of apparatus — rather than a weekend certification on one machine.

We’re also a Host Advisor studio for The Pilates Center in Boulder, Colorado, one of the most respected classical training programs in the world. That means we don’t only employ classically trained teachers; we train and mentor them through certification, here in Edwardsville.

For you, that has a practical consequence. When a teacher adjusts your spring setting or changes your footbar, it’s a decision grounded in a system, made by someone who has been taught why.

Where to start

Most people new to the apparatus start with one private session plus two classes. The private gives a teacher fifty minutes to look at your body and show you the equipment properly; the classes let you put it to work.

Equipment classes are capped at six clients, so your teacher can actually see you.

Have a look at our new client options, read the frequently asked questions, call (618) 659-0100, or text us on (618) 620-1447 and we’ll help you pick.