“We’ve seen a noticeable increase in men taking part in Reformer Pilates sessions,” says Katrina Fox, founder of RFRM, a Pilates studio in London and the Midlands. “Not just in our own studios, but across the industry.”
The rise in popularity is due, in part, to high-profile male exponents including David Beckham, Harry Styles and Ed Sheeran taking to the springs, pulleys and adjustable resistance and championing a very different way of working out.
It’s also helped by the fact that the Reformer Pilates frame and carriage looks and feels like a serious piece of exercise kit that you have to master. Less yoga mat, more engineering project.
Another factor behind its new found appeal among males is that Reformer Pilates is hard. Properly hard. The kind of hard that exposes weaknesses heavy lifting can hide.
“I was the stereotype. I’d look at a Reformer and think, ‘Nah, that’s too easy’,” admits Carl Anthony Guthrie-Evans, master trainer at Virgin Active Kensington. “Then we had to do a staff class – and it was humbling.”
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