Why Reformer Pilates Has Become My New Favourite Exercise

Why I’m Loving Reformer—and Why You Might Too by TSME Co-founder Carly Barnes-Short.

Grip socks, trembling thighs and the latest chapter in my rather inconsistent relationship with fitness! My fitness journey has been a sort of low-budget history of women’s exercise. It began with Jane Fonda, progressed through Mr Motivator and continued via step aerobics, spinning, boot camps and several other regimes I have sensibly erased from memory.I have well and truly lunged through the decades. Not continuously, obviously. There have been lengthy sabbaticals!

And now, thanks to my latest venture with Laura and The School Mum Edit, I have entered my Reformer era. The School Mum Edit grew out of our friendship and the conversations, support and laughter that come from attempting to juggle children, careers, relationships and the beautiful chaos of school life. It turns out that adding a weekly Reformer class to that chaos was an excellent idea.

Why it works for The School Mum Edit

Our Thursday class at Flow has become an essential part of the school week. We book the whole studio for a weekly class during term time, carefully positioned after school drop-off. This term, we are adding a Friday lunchtime session before collection too.

Flow is only ten minutes from school and has easy parking directly outside, because wellness quickly loses its magic when it begins by circling a car park for 25 minutes. We book as a course, with the option to spread the payments. This means the same lovely ladies return each week, so it feels friendly and familiar rather than like wandering into a room of strangers and trying to identify the least publicly humiliating machine.

The Heyford is directly opposite and has also very kindly given TSME members a 10% discount. Exercise followed by coffee or lunch feels exactly like the sort of balanced lifestyle we can all support. We arrive. We chat. We dissect senior schools—academics, sport, sen provision, journey times and who has heard what from whom—in forensic detail.

Our classes have featured more senior school debate, conflicting evidence and strongly held positions than Brexit, but with considerably more kindness and usually a useful recommendation at the end of it. Then we climb onto the Reformers and spend an hour discovering entirely new ways in which a human thigh can shake. Afterwards, we reassemble ourselves and leave feeling ever so slightly pleased with ourselves. Nobody needs to know what happened during the final set of lunges.

What actually is Reformer Pilates?

If you haven’t been before, the machine can look slightly alarming. A Reformer resembles a cross between a rowing machine, a narrow bed and something Christian Grey might keep in the wellness wing of his Oxfordshire country house. It has springs, straps, bars and a sliding carriage that moves precisely when you would strongly prefer it not to.

The springs provide resistance and support, so exercises can be made gentler or more challenging. You might lie down, sit, kneel, stand or put your feet into straps and wonder whether you have misunderstood the entire situation. You don’t need to know how any of it works. The instructor explains the machine, adjusts the springs and shows you where your hands, feet and other miscellaneous body parts are supposed to go.

On Instagram, Reformer looks beautifully elegant: long legs, pointed toes and serene women performing tiny, controlled movements. Then I tried it……….There was shaking. There was wobbling. There was the discovery that I have no coordination, cannot follow even a relatively simple instruction and don’t appear to know my left from my right.

I was a gymnast when I was younger, which may surprise anybody who has watched me produce movements bearing absolutely no resemblance to the exercise being demonstrated. My body appears to remember gymnastics in much the same way that my mind remembers school algebra: I am basically only now aware it once happened. It has evaporated from my memory altogether. 

Fortunately, every instructor we have had at Flow has been warm, patient and encouraging. Immie, who has looked after so many of our classes, is particularly lovely and is returning to lead our classes next term. She will no doubt, in a very soothing way, need to ask me to use my “other right arm” on more than one occasion.

What should you wear?

Whatever makes you feel comfortable. Leggings or comfortable exercise trousers and a top you can move in are perfect. Something reasonably fitted helps the instructor see your alignment, but you do not need a crop top, a six-pack or an immaculate activewear wardrobe.

Grip socks are the one particularly Reformer-ish item. They help stop you sliding and make you feel as though you have been admitted to a rather stylish secret society. I have discovered that I am far more emotionally invested in coordination—and grip socks—than I realised. I like my leggings, top and socks to match with a precision normally reserved for Team GB. I may be trembling uncontrollably, but I shall be doing so in complementary pastel leggings.

Some of the other mums wear fabulous, loud leggings and look infinitely cooler. It has made me realise that individuality is bloody cool. Wear what makes you happy. Nobody cares—and I mean that in the nicest possible way. Everyone is far too busy wondering why their inner thighs are vibrating to examine anybody else’s outfit.

Why Flow?

I came to know Flow’s owners, Georgie and Emma, through Oxford United and my husband’s work there. Football has brought plenty of stress into our lives, but it has also introduced us to some wonderful people. I have always tried to support Craig’s colleagues and their families where I can, and I naturally love supporting young female founders turn a good idea into a beautiful business.

Flow caught my eye because Georgie and Emma had created something that looked genuinely special. The studio was gorgeous, their Instagram was fabulous, it was local, and I immediately thought, This would be perfect for The School Mum Edit. I introduced Laura to Emma and, as they say, the rest is history.

We have officially survived our first year.

The studio is stylish without being intimidating and beautifully run without feeling corporate. There is a NEOM diffuser and particularly lovely NEOM hand wash—which, if I am honest, may have played a disproportionate role in my decision-making.

There is ordinary soap, and then there is hand wash that makes me stand at the basin inhaling my own hands while mentally commissioning a new bathroom. The NEOM touches even helped inspire an upcoming School Mum Edit event with NEOM at Bicester Village, which Laura and I are now planning. More on that soon. It will, naturally, smell magnificent.

Why mums might love it

By our thirties, forties and fifties, many of us want more from exercise than simply burning calories. We would also like to remain strong enough to carry the shopping, lift a suitcase into an overhead locker and get up from the floor without making an involuntary noise.

Reformer is low impact, but definitely not low effort. The springs provide resistance while the slow, controlled movements challenge your muscles, core, balance, flexibility and coordination. It is adaptable, so you can begin gently and increase the resistance as you become stronger. You do not need to be fit, flexible or familiar with Pilates before joining.

I feel as though I have exercised properly, but I don’t leave completely flattened. I don’t generally get terribly sweaty either, so I can carry on with my day without requiring a shower, hair wash and full personal reconstruction. There is effort. There is trembling. There are moments when my expression suggests I may be attempting to pass through 1980’s customs checks with excess cigarettes in my handbag.

But afterwards, I feel stronger and strangely energised. Laura and I inevitably take photographs too. My 50th birthday appears to have been the point at which embarrassment packed a small bag and quietly left. Nobody else has to be photographed. You are perfectly entitled to exercise peacefully and remain absent from Instagram while we take 46 versions of exactly the same picture and insist they are all completely different.

More than just a class

The loveliest part has been the women. Some weeks I have felt strong and almost coordinated. On others, I have arrived after a dreadful morning and could not have been more grateful for a warm hug, a kind word or some excellent advice from the mums around me.

Nobody minds what sort of morning you have had, how you arrive or how well you perform. We are simply pleased to see one another and to have an hour that belongs to us. That is exactly what Laura and I wanted from a School Mum Edit class: something welcoming, enjoyable and genuinely supportive, built around the reality of women’s lives.

So, to every lovely lady who joined us last year: thank you for the laughter, the friendship, the support and the advice. You made the classes what they were, and many of you have become women I now consider genuine friends.

Thank you to Emma and Georgie for allowing The School Mum Edit to take over your beautiful studio each week—and for trusting us near the Reformers. And thank you to Immie and all the wonderful instructors who have taught us, encouraged us, untangled our straps and patiently reminded us which side is left.

We cannot wait to see familiar faces again this term, welcome some new ones and begin our new Friday lunchtime class before school collection. After Jane Fonda, Mr Motivator and everything in between, this is officially my Reformer era.

Come and join us. Grip socks encouraged. Coordination optional. Shaking and senior-school discussions almost guaranteed!

Carly x