The walls in this room should be painted red. The red room of pain. At least that's what I envisioned when i stepped foot in to my first Pilates Reformer class.  I stood over this machine, biting my lower lip, twirling my hair , wondering what the hell I had just signed up for.

I've been doing mat Pilates twice per week for over a month, and my instructor (who I love, her name is Jennifer, highly recommend!) was offering a 30 minute "intro to Reformer" class immediately following our normal Pilates class. I signed up weeks ago and she only takes 3 students at a time. I am still learning all the names, positions, etc., so basically I'll just post pics and try to describe what we did!

In this exercise she had us lay on our back, shoulders NOT pressed up in to the pads, feet touching at the heels, and then we pressed up, moving our entire body up, squeezing our inner thighs and butt. It was awesome. And hard.

Same movement, just changed foot position. Worked different muscles. Awesome.

And again, changing up the feet changed up the muscles.

 

These springs are what is giving the user all the resistance. Red is the most difficult, then blue, then yellow.

She had us remove all the springs EXCEPT the two red ones on either end, and then place our feet in the stirrups.

With our feet in the stirrups we slid our body up and down only using our feet. Another amazing feeling as different muscles were being asked to work!

 

I loved working on the Reformer machine. And would sign up for the class in a heartbeat. But it's expensive! For a 6 week class, 3X per week, it's $489. And that's in addition to my monthly gym membership. For now, I'll have to be satisfied with Mat Pilates and hope that I can win some sort of Wellness Center contest to get myself in the Reformer class.

Pilates has done amazing things for my body in a relatively short period of time. My inner thighs are gaining massive amounts of strength. My hip flexors are loosening up which is enabling me to be a faster runner and cyclist. Pilates has also done wonders on my core. My obliques are becoming "somewhat" chiseled and I'm able to do more difficult core work for longer periods of time. I am still having some issues with the tightness of my hamstrings, but I can tell that Pilates will help me to work through that, and it gives me a goal to work towards! Double win!

Have you taken a Pilates Reformer class? Does your gym charge extra for it??