Joe Pilates didn’t teach levels, he taught people. The division of the method into basic, intermediate and advanced levels is more recent and slightly artificial, but that’s not to say that it isn’t useful. 

The levels are a template or guide, not a competition. They are made up of developmental goals and a way of moving rather than exactly what exercises you do. 

The levels are most obvious in a mat class as in private sessions the work is customized to you. 

Basic Beginners, no matter how fit, need to attend Basic Mat classes. These classes teach you the basics of the method through a series of simple, challenging exercises. The goal for this level is to find your “power house”, to begin to find “lift” in the body and to even out the alignment of the torso. You will start to feel the benefits of Pilates.

Intermediate When your body has absorbed the basics of Pilates you are ready to take intermediate level sessions. The aim of this level is to strengthen and deepen the power house. Some new movement patterns are introduced for the first time (e.g. back bends), and other patterns already present in the basic level are deepened

What makes you intermediate is not how long you have studied, but how much your body has absorbed. 

Advanced At the advanced level the focus is on increasing the stamina of the power house. More upper body exercises are introduced with the aim of working the upper back and connecting it more deeply with the rest of the power house. The advanced level is where complete flow and synchronization with the breath take place.

There is nothing to be gained by trying to rush ahead in your progress. Impatience means that you will simply not get as much from your classes as you could. If you have an injury or illness it is advisable to have private sessions first before you join a mat class to ensure your needs are properly addressed.

Eugen Sandow: The Father of Modern Body Building

Sandow was a showman and a very successful businessman and he set up many gyms in the UK, patented his own specially designed spring weights to be used with his patented exercises, published a magazine (“Physical Culture”) as well as touring extensively in the UK and USA. 

He first came to prominence as a strongman doing the sort of “feats of strength” as circus strongmen, though his shows acquired a certain notoriety because he did not have the typical strongman build (very overweight) and he wore very few clothes for his scandalous posing displays. 

He actually marks a pivot point in many ways, combining in his writing the interests of medical gymnastics and physical culture as well as fusing the feats of strength and the more aesthetically focussed discipline which would soon become the sport of body building. Physical culture became part of western culture. 

Old school physical culture is not easy to find nowadays, but one of the places that it survives is in classical Pilates. 

Not all cars are the same and not all pilates is the same. At Kinetic Pilates we teach classical pilates, as passed down by Romana Kryzanowska, but what is classical Pilates?

Classical Pilates is a Method

Classical pilates, or simply Pilates, is a method for training the body. We have specific goals of body development in Pilates that we are working towards and use the exercises to bring your body towards balance.

This means that we have to use different exercises with different people: a very flexible female dancer with weak wrists cannot do the same training as a very stiff male office worker with a bad back if they are both to get the best results. 

Classical pilates is a sophisticated method of physical training, not a series of floor exercises that you learn to teach in a month.

Classical Pilates is a System

Classical pilates is not just mat exercises, it is an entire system of exercise, using many different apparatuses. 

Because every body is different, everybody needs different treatment and to work with different apparatus. Some people mostly need stretching, others mostly need strengthening. 

A full classical pilates studio has a wide range of options for working with everyone who walks through the door.

Classical Pilates is Alive

Although classical Pilates is in direct continuity with the work of Joe Pilates, trying to maintain the rich and varied system that he developed, we are not so concerned with the past that we become rigid.

Pilates is about movement, it is dynamic and vigorous and it changes bodies.  

The marketing of some pilates groups claims that classical pilates is too difficult for normal people. Here is a typical example:

“The ´classical´ Pilates exercises that he [Joe Pilates] developed may take many years to perfect and may well be beyond the capability of the average person”. 

It is certainly true that the exercises DO take many years to perfect: if you could do them perfectly in a month there would be little point in doing them at all and little motivation to continue. But is it true that the system that Joseph Pilates developed (“Pilates”) is beyond the average person’s ability and that most people can do no more than “base” their training on his work? 

I’ve seen classical pilates taught usefully to a 76 year old with a recent knee surgery, a client with Multiple Sclerosis, and another who had broken their spine. All competent teachers modify the exercises to work with injured people. This is part of the “classical” system, not a contemporary improvement. 

Classical pilates starts where you are and gives you progressively more demanding exercises as your body strengthens. We don’t throw you in at the deep end and hope that you somehow manage to float rather than drown, but we do make you work hard. Pilates should never be 'easy': your body won’t improve while you are still in your comfort zone. 

In fact, as you improve Pilates keeps getting harder and harder because you are able to work deeper and deeper. You will always feel that you are getting a workout no matter what your ability or limitations are. This means that classical Pilates holds the attention and continues to challenge year after year, giving even the most experienced person a challenging workout. 

Joe Pilates worked with “average” bodies. Not everyone will be doing advanced training and we won´t be standing on anyone´s stomach, but the idea that only certain people have the potential to do the classical work is a sales pitch which sells you short. 

If you are going to entrust your body to someone else then you want to know that they are up to it. Here are three key things to look for:

Their Teaching Style

Does the teacher look at what YOU are doing and adapt to how your body is reacting? Or does everyone do every exercise the same?

Are the teachers´ instructions normally easy to follow? (We all have days when we confuse left and right). Do they use their hands to teach as well?

You should be looking for a teacher who is watching what is happening to your body and correcting it clearly and physically if necessary. You don’t want someone who is just repeating a script from the corner of the room. You may as well buy a DVD. It’s cheaper.

The Effect Of Their Teaching On Your Body

This one is easy. Does your body normally feel good as a result of their class? We all have off days (teacher and student alike), but if it usually takes you several days to feel OK again after a class then something is wrong. If you normally walk out of your class feeling amazing you know that whatever that person is doing works.


The Teacher’s Own Competence

Ask how long their training took. If it was only a month long then you need to wonder how much they actually learnt. Does your teacher keep studying? Do they regularly take classes? Do they keep developing their teaching skills? Can they practice what they preach?

A trainer who did their mat certification over four weekends and now prefers to do yoga or Zumba to keep fit is going to be quite different from someone who did a year long, full apparatus certification of 1000 hours and trains in Pilates 3 or 4 times a week.

“In 10 sessions you will feel the difference, in 20 you will see a difference and in 30 you’ll have a whole new body” Joseph Pilates

Pilates Produces Results

The Pilates method has lasted while other systems from 100 years ago have gone for one simple reason: it works. Pilates can change your body and make you feel and look better. Most people start to get results fairly fast.

Based on the idea that a student was having private sessions with him three times a week, Pilates claimed that in 10 sessions you feel a difference, in 20 you see a difference and after 30 you have a new body.

10 Sessions to Feel a Difference  

You will feel your “power house” in the first few classes, but over the course of your first 10 sessions you should start to experience what pilates can do for you overall in lessening of pain and reshaping your body.

20 Sessions to See a Difference 

Over the next sessions the way that you stand and move should change enough for you to notice a visible difference in your appearance, and perhaps for others to notice too. Before you start classes take some pictures and compare them to you 20 sessions later.

30 Sessions to a Whole New Body 

Obviously you won’t get a perfect body in 30 sessions, and you have decades of Pilates improvement ahead of you. However, thirty classes should give you enough understanding that you have a different relationship with your body.

Measurable Improvement

The 10-20-30 formula is not a promise: the exact speed that your body will change depends on many factors (group vs private classes, 3 times a week vs 3 times a month etc). However, you will find you stick with pilates because you can measure a difference, not because it is “good for you” in some vague, undefined way.

Feel the difference in 10 sessions
See the difference in 20 session
A new body in 30 sessions

Pilates is about exercises as much as literature is about words. Pilates is a way of moving and living in the body: it’s not about leg kicks.

 Joseph Pilates´ method of training is a set of principles of how to use the body in a way which creates health and happiness. The exercises and the different studio apparatus are tools which are there to help you reach particular goals.

Like all tools, the exercises need to be used correctly for them to do you any good. Just think of the difference between a kitchen knife in the hands of a trained chef and in the hands of a 4 year old who has had too much sugar.

Everything you find inside the studio is a tool to help you live better outside the studio, so that when you finish your session you can return to life stronger and more able to cope with what it throws at you.