Pilates with Sofia

My journey to Pilates

Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt personally victimized by your pilates instructor.

I grew up dancing ballet. For years I spent anywhere between 2-14 hours a week at rehearsing, drilling, and training in one of the world’s most famously difficult disciplines. I was good at it, and it made me feel strong and graceful. My legs and arms were shredded, and by the time I was 10 I probably could have cracked a watermelon open with my thighs. I loved it, and the studio I went to in the Dominican Republic was run by a director who learned in the classical tradition of Russian Ballet with direct ties to Cuban companies – some of the most prestigious in the world. We danced in high-budget productions of Coppelia, Gisele, the Nutcracker, and Swan Lake with beautiful costumes at the National Theater in the Dominican Republic. I loved my fellow classmates I spent so many hours dancing with. 

When I was 13 my family moved to New York. One of the worst parts of this, aside from the obvious trauma of being ‘new’ at school at the most awkward of the awkward stages in life, was leaving behind my beloved Ballet school. We found a new studio and I started going twice a week. But something sinister was afoot.

At my old school, we used to laugh and joke and help each other bind our feet or share tape tricks for pointe. The camaraderie was palpable and we encouraged each other when we did harder drills. There was smiling and laughing and all that while we were doing much more – more drills, for longer and harder; more choreography, more technically difficult. 

At the new studio in New York, the changing room was quiet – everyone kept to themselves. The mood was somber and my classmates didn’t make eye contact, often wearing headphones or practicing their own choreographies in private before class. In class, we rarely strayed from the same drills and there was more snickering and giggling if you made a mistake. And at that age, I already realized a stark difference between my body and the girls in my class. 

I was not fat, but I had thighs and calves because I was doing heavy duty training on drills that do exactly that – build thighs and calves. I started to realize that the girlies in New York were maybe very much more focused on the size of their legs rather than what they could actually do with them. And when there was conversation in or after class, a lot of it had to do with what they were and weren’t eating. 

It’s not a secret that ballet is a discipline where a lot of the ‘old guard’ of teachers implicitly and explicitly endorse disordered eating. The body standards are gruesome and the pressure to conform to them are much more extenuating in New York, with girls who maybe had their eyes set on professional careers in an industry that accepts only the thinnest legs and arms in the world. As my build became more athletic, I realized I was no longer interesting to my teachers and knew exactly why that was. They had thinner students to attend to, and my interest in ballet took a dive. I stopped going when I was 16, after 13 years of dancing.

My parents were pretty upset. “Sofi, you love it so much! Why don’t you keep going. It’s so good for you.” My abuela Lila, who always had more flair for drama, was devastated. “Nena, tan bonito que bailabas.” But ballet in New York was not good for me in the way it had been in the DR; rather the opposite. I didn’t have the heart or maturity then to tell them why. After all, I really was very thin! I felt they would dismiss my impression that I wasn’t skinny enough for it and didn’t have the maturity to deal with that conversation head on.

In college, I moved to Berlin and found a dance school that had classes for adults with ballet experience. I loved that class! But soon I started studying and working, and couldn’t commit to something with other responsibilities like the performances we put on. I had done Yoga and Pilates on and off, and started doing pilates more regularly. I loved Yoga but it really depended on the instructor, and I found some of these western European or North American white Yoga teachers with their appropriated spirituality to be too much. I will always be grateful to Yoga is Dead podcast for putting my issues with yoga so eloquently. Because of a lot of my issues with modern yoga and the capitalisation of a spiritual practice, I gravitated more towards Pilates and eventually found a studio I really liked after a lot of trial and error. 

What do I mean by trial and error? 

Pilates can feel very gatekept. From the get go, most studios work exclusively on whichever apparatus they specialize in. I love reformer, tower, and chair pilates, but I love mat pilates just as much. Even more, because it democratizes the process! Some of these apparati cost upwards of 12,000eur per piece – and the price of class definitely reflected it. I’d often have teachers discuss frustration with us students (yes, very unprofessional – I know) about other students who came a few sessions and then stopped. Or instructors who would post passive aggressively on social media à la “if nobody signs up to my class I’m leaving ____ studio.” The pressure to create this commitment was definitely coming from a place of, “I bought all this expensive equipment, why aren’t more people signing up for class.” Then you’d go to class to be verbally abused for 45 minutes. 

I’m exaggerating, but the style of a lot of teachers was feeling oddly reminiscent of my New York Ballet studio. It’s not surprising – A LOT of pilates teachers have a ballet/dance background, as well. And what happened when the studio was successful? When they had overcome the initial hurdle of becoming successful and justifying the cost of those fancy reformers, what was there? A ‘girl bossed’, ‘yassified’ clientele with the newest matching fit and the latest overpriced iced latte in hand. And on the instructor’s side, maybe the passive aggression wasn’t there. So what was? Too often, a hyper-autoglorified instructor with 0% body fat, an affected monotone voice that sounded like a bird got caught in their throat, and most egregiously, a clear air of superiority and very little encouragement or even recognition that you exist. 

I am so grateful that, during my training to become a pilates instructor, I was able to learn from some really talented, real individuals that shared their successes and struggles with me (in a normal, non-birdlike voice). But most of all, I’m grateful to have had the chance to build the community I’ve been able to build in the  four short years I’ve been teaching. I’m only getting started, and I’ve already helped people through injury, regain mobility, and get places physically that they never thought attainable. And what I’m most grateful for is that with them I’ve learned so much and come so far, developed sequences that I know they will love and will help them develop.

I guess what I hope to achieve on this page of my site is to introduce myself and my motivations a bit more clearly. I know this candid approach might ruffle some feathers (if anyone even reads this) but I know there must be other pilates instructors out there like me, too, who want to provide a different kind of environment. Hopefully, if you’re thinking about joining my class, but you’re wondering if you need to look a certain way or get a certain ‘fit’ first, you’ll realize you don’t. Can’t wait to see you on the mat.

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Love, SFZ