By: PilatesBridge, Editorial Staff
Strength training has become one of the dominant conversations in women’s fitness. Women are being encouraged to lift heavier weights, preserve or gain muscle, support bone health, and prioritize resistance training as they age.
That advice has also created a question for the millions of people practicing Pilates: Does Pilates actually count as strength training?
Juanita Ostrem believes the answer is yes, but the question deserves a closer look.
Ostrem is the owner of Aspen & Pine Pilates, a Classical Pilates studio in Helena, Montana, and her perspective comes from more than Pilates alone. She has spent more than 25 years working in fitness and strength training and is an NSCA Certified Personal Trainer who was nominated for the organization’s Personal Trainer of the Year award in 2007. Her later education in Classical Pilates included extensive certification, apprenticeship, mentorship, reassessments, and advanced study with respected teachers in the method.
That combination has shaped a view that is less interested in whether an exercise uses a barbell, dumbbell, or Reformer and more interested in what the muscles are actually being asked to do.
Strength Is Not Defined by the Equipment
One reason the debate becomes confusing is that strength training is often pictured in a very specific way: heavy weights, barbells, racks, and gym machines.
Ostrem argues that equipment alone does not define strength.
“Strength is not defined by equipment. It is defined by force control, joint alignment, and the ability to manage load through movement,” she says.
A movement as familiar as stepping onto a platform can illustrate the point. The working leg has to generate force, control the body’s weight, stabilize the hip and knee, and manage the descent. Adding external weight can increase the challenge, but the strength demand already exists.
Resistance and progression are more useful measures than the type of equipment being used.
Muscles adapt when they are asked to work against sufficient resistance and when that challenge increases as the body becomes more capable. In exercise science, this is called overload. Traditional weight training provides one obvious way to accomplish that. Classical Pilates uses a different set of tools.
Classical Pilates training with an expert instructor is a form of strength training because resistance, leverage, body position, range of motion, and exercise difficulty can all be progressed over time.
The key is that the progression is intentional. Simply making an exercise exhausting is not the same as helping someone become stronger.
Pilates Springs Change the Strength Equation
One of the biggest misunderstandings about Pilates centers on the springs.
To someone accustomed to dumbbells or weight machines, springs can appear to offer relatively light resistance. Ostrem sees them as part of a much more sophisticated resistance system.
“Classical Pilates is something very different. It is a full variable-resistance strength system,” she says.
Unlike a dumbbell, which has the same mass from the beginning of an exercise to the end, spring tension changes as the spring lengthens. Resistance therefore changes through the movement.
Springs also create another important strength challenge: eccentric contraction, which occurs when a muscle produces force while lengthening. In a squat, this happens as the body lowers toward the floor. In Pilates, it happens when a client controls the return of the Reformer carriage or resists the pull of the springs instead of allowing them to snap back.
Eccentric contraction is essential in building strength for everyday life as well as improving athletic performance. Ostrem shares, “The eccentric phase is where many of the ‘real-world’ skills live: deceleration, joint centration under load, and controlling end ranges without collapsing.” As she explains in her discussion of eccentric training in Classical Pilates, “In Classical Pilates, springs make that eccentric phase unavoidable.” The body must continue producing force while controlling the movement back to its starting position.
That matters because strength is not only the ability to push, pull, or lift something. It also includes the ability to slow movement down and control force. Walking downstairs, lowering into a chair, changing direction, and absorbing impact all require this type of strength.
The resistance itself is only one variable in Pilates. An instructor can also change lever length, body position, range of motion, tempo, support, apparatus and exercise selection.
Sometimes a heavier spring makes an exercise harder. In other exercises, a lighter spring removes assistance and forces the body to do more of the work.
That combination of variable resistance and controlled eccentric movement is one reason judging Pilates simply by the amount of weight being moved misses much of what is happening.
Not Everything Called Pilates Produces the Same Result
Not every workout carrying the Pilates name provides the same training stimulus.
Today, Pilates can refer to everything from traditional Classical Pilates to large group Reformer workouts and fitness formats that borrow Pilates-inspired exercises. Instructor education, equipment, exercise selection, and progression can vary considerably.
Ostrem does not argue that attending any Pilates class automatically fulfills every strength-training goal. The quality of the instruction matters.
For strength to improve, the body eventually has to encounter a challenge beyond what it has already adapted to. Within Classical Pilates, that does not always mean adding more resistance.
An instructor may change the springs, extend a lever, reduce support, increase range of motion, alter the body’s position, or progress a client to a more demanding exercise on a different piece of Pilates apparatus.
That requires judgment.
A comprehensively trained Pilates instructor has to recognize what a client can control, where compensation is occurring, and when the body is ready for the next challenge. The goal is not simply to complete the same sequence repeatedly. It is to create appropriate demands while maintaining control and quality of movement.
Pilates Is More Than the Reformer
The popularity of Reformer classes has also created the impression that the Reformer and Pilates are essentially the same thing.
Classical Pilates is a larger system, and the strength work happens throughout that system rather than on the Reformer alone.
Joseph Pilates developed exercises using the Reformer, Cadillac, chairs, barrels, and other apparatus. Each gives the instructor another way to add resistance, provide assistance, change leverage, or help a client develop the strength needed for a particular movement.
At Aspen & Pine Pilates in Helena, Montana, Pilates classes and private training are taught within the Classical Pilates system using a fully equipped studio. This allows instructors to match exercises and apparatus to a client’s experience, abilities, and goals.
A client who struggles with a movement on one piece of equipment may build the necessary strength somewhere else in the system and then return to the original exercise with better control.
That ability to move through the complete system is one of the differences between expert Classical Pilates instruction and simply repeating a familiar Reformer workout.
Where Pilates and Traditional Weight Training Differ
Calling Pilates strength training does not mean Pilates and traditional weight training are identical.
Traditional resistance training can be particularly effective when the goal is to increase the amount of external weight a person can lift. Pilates approaches strength differently.
Classical Pilates places greater emphasis on combining strength with coordination, joint control, alignment, balance, and the ability to organize the whole body during movement.
For some women, well-programmed Pilates may serve as a primary form of resistance training. Others may benefit from combining Pilates with traditional lifting.
The right approach depends on the individual. A woman training for a powerlifting competition has different needs from someone who wants to feel strong enough to hike, ski, travel, garden, carry groceries, and move confidently for decades to come.
That distinction matters because strength is most useful when it supports the life a person actually wants to live.
Pilates Is Strength Training
The debate around whether Pilates “counts” as strength training often gets stuck on what strength training is supposed to look like.
Ostrem takes a broader view. If the body is working against resistance, controlling force, and being progressively challenged over time, strength is being trained.
Classical Pilates does exactly that.
The springs, apparatus, changing leverage, body position, and exercise progressions all create ways to increase demand as a client becomes stronger. What makes the method distinct is that strength is developed alongside alignment, coordination, balance, and control.
“At Aspen & Pine Pilates, we view Pilates as intelligent strength training, one that prioritizes alignment, control, and longevity,” Ostrem says.
That philosophy guides both the Pilates classes and private training offered at Aspen & Pine Pilates in Helena, Montana.
The goal is not simply to make an exercise harder. It is to build strength in a way that the body can use well, continue progressing, and sustain over time.
For Ostrem, that makes the answer to the original question clear.
Yes, Pilates is a form of strength training. Classical Pilates simply approaches strength through a more integrated system than many people expect.
Disclaimer: This article is intended for general informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered medical, fitness, rehabilitation, or other professional health advice. Exercise needs, abilities, and responses vary by individual, and Pilates or other forms of resistance training may not be appropriate for everyone. Readers should consult a qualified healthcare professional, physical therapist, or appropriately credentialed fitness professional before beginning or significantly changing an exercise program, particularly if they have an injury, medical condition, mobility limitation, are pregnant, or are recovering from surgery. Statements and opinions attributed to individuals or organizations in this article reflect their respective perspectives and should not be interpreted as guarantees of specific health, strength, or performance outcomes.
