Reformer or mat Pilates in Harrogate: which one should you start with?

There are two ways into Pilates with me, and from the outside it is hard to tell which one you want. Both are taught the same way here — one to one, in a room at my home in Harrogate, with no class to keep up with and no queue for a machine. So the choice isn't about how much attention you get. It's about what is underneath you while you work.

Here is how I'd talk it through if you were sitting in front of me.

What the reformer actually does

A reformer is a sprung carriage that slides along a frame. You lie, sit, kneel or stand on it, and the springs either help you or make you work harder depending on how I set them.

That is the whole trick, and it is why the machine suits so many different bodies. If your shoulder doesn't much like taking your weight at the moment, I can set a spring so the carriage carries some of that load — the muscle still works, but the joint isn't asked to do more than it can today. If a movement turns out to be too easy, I change the spring and it isn't easy any more. Same exercise, completely different demand, altered in about five seconds while you stay where you are.

It also makes the work honest. On the reformer you can feel when you have lost a position, because the carriage tells you: it drifts, it wobbles, it goes crooked. People who have spent years being told to engage their core without ever being sure whether they were doing it often find that the machine explains it better than any instruction I could give them.

That is why I usually suggest the reformer first if you have never done Pilates before, or if you are wary of something in your body.

What mat work is for

Mat Pilates is where the whole method started, and it is harder than it looks. There are no springs to help you — your own body is the resistance, and there is nowhere to hide. It is a very honest test of control, and it will show you within about four minutes which side of your body has been quietly doing all the work.

There are two good reasons to do it. The first is that what you learn on the mat carries straight onto the reformer. The positions are the same, so the machine makes more sense once you have felt them on the floor. The second is that it travels. Mat work gives you something you can actually repeat on a hotel room floor, or on the sitting room carpet on a wet Tuesday when you are not due in the studio until Thursday.

And some people simply prefer it. They like that there is nothing to it but a mat and an hour.

So which one?

If you are new to all of this, or you are coming back to movement carefully, start on the reformer. The support is genuinely useful, and it gives us more ways to make a movement fit you on the day.

If you already know your way around Pilates and want to sharpen up your control, or you want something you can keep going with between sessions and while you are away, mat work will give you more.

And plenty of people do both. There is no rule that says you pick one in September and stay with it. We can spend a session on the mat when your body wants that, and go back to the machine the week after.

What doesn't change either way

Every session is 55 minutes and one to one. I watch every repetition and correct as we go, because that is where most of the progress actually comes from — a rib position, where the weight sits through your foot, whether you are holding your breath through the hard part. Those are exactly the things that get missed in a room of twelve people.

You get the same teacher each time, who remembers what your back was doing in February. Wear something you can move in that isn't too baggy, so I can see how you are moving.

If something hurts, tell me before we start rather than halfway through. I teach Pilates — I am not a physiotherapist, and a session with me is not treatment or a diagnosis. If you are already under a physio or an osteopath, tell me what they have said and I will keep up the exercises they have given you rather than swapping them for my own.

Sessions run by appointment, 9am to 3pm, and clients travel in from Harrogate itself and from Knaresborough, Pannal, Killinghall, Spofforth, Wetherby and Ripon.

Most people start with the introductory session at £45, which is a full 55 minutes with time at the beginning to talk properly. After that a single session is £55, or a block of five is £220, which works out at £44 each. Mat sessions are priced separately.

Call or text me on 07960 746480, tell me where you are starting from, and I will tell you honestly which of the two I'd put you on first.