Pilates Rampant
by Jennie Rose Halperin
For a glorious year or so around 2015, $125 a month got you unlimited, VC-subsidized access to practically every fitness studio in the U.S. through Classpass, a deal that got me hooked on expensive boutique fitness. Since then, I’ve tried every fitness trend from trampolines (fun!) to boxing (hurt my knuckles). Like everything else, ClassPass has been enshittified, proving bad for studio owners, instructors, and consumers, but the app’s heyday ushered in the age of the Instagram fitness influencer, a frequently pilloried subculture known for bright colors, flattering lighting, and a smoothie bar to pose in at the end.
Nowadays I mostly lift weights and teach spin classes at the YMCA—though I do pay for a local spin studio—and save the fancy fitness classes for a treat. I’ve found that being a fitness tourist is extremely enjoyable, and when I’m traveling for work it’s a chance to do something fun for myself. Last week, I was staying in a conference hotel in Manhattan with a gym so small I accidentally and unnervingly touched butts with a jacked French man at 7 a.m., so I opened up Google Maps to check out some alternatives. I was surprised that every single studio within a 20-block radius was offering Pilates: Praxis Pilates, Pilates circuit, The Pilates Room, Pilates Reforming, Authentic Pilates, United Pilates, and Club Pilates, etc.
At least twelve new Pilates studios have opened on the Upper West Side in the last year alone. Walking down Madison Avenue, I saw them everywhere: one was selling sweatshirts reading, “Who the hell is Joseph Pilates?” (great question, see below), and multiple varieties of the $20 “grippy socks” that they require you to buy in addition to the $45 class fee. In June 2026, the “World’s Largest Pilates Studio” will open in Flatiron. New York, apparently, has “entered its Pilates era.”
Joseph Pilates, a German gymnast, police trainer, and circus performer, developed his method while interned by the British government on the Isle of Man in 1914, having been identified as an “enemy alien” due to his German last name. In captivity for the whole duration of WWI, he began to refine a series of exercises influenced in part, he said, by the lithe and graceful movement of Manx cats around the camp. Around 1925, he moved to the United States with his wife Clara and more fully developed his popular, low-equipment stretching and strengthening program into a “system of healthy mind and body” called Contrology. His 1945 book, Return to Life Through Contrology, contains detailed instructions and photos for 34 mat exercises as well as advice for sleeping (no pillows!) and achieving “thorough cleanliness” in bathing, using only “a good stiff brush (no handle).” In time he would patent dozens of mechanical devices, including the most famous, the Reformer, to aid students in the practice of his methods.
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