Why Serious Athletes Are Adding Pilates to Their Training

It's Not What You Think

Let's get something out of the way. When most athletes hear "Pilates," they picture a room full of people doing gentle stretches to soft piano music. They assume it's easy. They assume it's not for them. They're wrong.

Joseph Pilates didn't design his method for people looking for a relaxing afternoon. He originally developed it to rehabilitate injured soldiers and interned civilians during World War I. The first apparatus he built? Made from hospital bed springs. The entire system was born from the need to rebuild broken bodies and make them functional again. That's about as far from "gentle stretching" as you can get.

Fast forward to today, and the athletes who are actually paying attention have figured this out. NFL linemen use Pilates to maintain hip mobility under 300+ pounds of body weight. NBA players use it to bulletproof their ankles and knees against the constant lateral stress of the court. Runners, swimmers, soccer players, MMA fighters, golfers -- the list goes on. These are not people chasing trends. They're chasing results, and reformer Pilates delivers them.

The reason most athletes dismiss Pilates is the same reason they'd benefit from it: it exposes weaknesses they didn't know they had. That first session on the reformer humbles just about everyone, regardless of how strong they think they are. And that's exactly the point.

The Core Stability Advantage

Every coach talks about core strength. Most of them are talking about it wrong. Core strength isn't how many sit-ups you can do or how long you can hold a plank. True core stability is the ability to maintain spinal control and transfer force efficiently through your trunk while your limbs are moving under load, at speed, in unpredictable positions.

That's a very different thing than a six-pack. And it's the thing that separates athletes who stay healthy from athletes who keep ending up on the sidelines.

The reformer is uniquely effective at building this kind of functional core stability because the carriage moves. Unlike a stable bench or floor, the reformer's sliding platform forces your deep stabilizers -- the transverse abdominis, the multifidus, the pelvic floor, the diaphragm -- to fire constantly just to keep you in position. You can't cheat. You can't rely on momentum. Either the deep stabilizing muscles are doing their job or you're sliding off track, and you'll feel the difference immediately.

For athletes, this translates directly to performance:

• A runner with better core stability wastes less energy on trunk rotation and maintains form deeper into a race when fatigue sets in.
• A football player with true spinal control can absorb contact and redirect force without compromising their position.
• A basketball player with deep stabilizer strength changes direction faster because their core is already braced before their feet hit the ground.
• A golfer or baseball player generates more rotational power because their core transfers force from the lower body to the upper body without energy leaking through a weak midsection.

This isn't theoretical. It's biomechanics. And the reformer trains this specific quality better than most tools in the gym because it forces stabilization under variable resistance in multiple planes of movement, every single rep.

Injury Prevention and Longevity

Here's a stat that should matter to every competitive athlete: the majority of non-contact injuries originate from muscular imbalances and movement compensations. Not freak accidents. Not bad luck. Patterns that build up over months and years of repetitive training and go unaddressed until something gives.

This is where reformer Pilates earns its keep in an athlete's program. The reformer works through full ranges of motion in positions that expose asymmetries and weaknesses that bilateral barbell work simply can't reach. Your left hip flexor is tighter than your right? You'll know within five minutes. Your right glute fires later than your left? The reformer doesn't let you hide it.

Dr. Kyle Richmond, the sports rehab specialist who oversees programming at REBUILT Pilates, puts it simply: "Most athletes are strong in the patterns they train and weak in everything else. The reformer fills in the gaps. That's where injuries live -- in the gaps."

The spring-based resistance system also matters here. Unlike gravity-dependent free weights, springs provide accommodating resistance -- the tension changes throughout the range of motion. This allows athletes to strengthen end ranges and transitional positions that are typically the most vulnerable. Think about the bottom of a squat, the full extension of a stride, or the deceleration phase of a throw. These are the positions where injuries happen, and the reformer lets you load and strengthen them safely.

For athletes who want a career that lasts -- not just a highlight reel that ends at 28 -- this kind of work isn't optional. It's maintenance. And skipping maintenance is how you end up broken down.

Mobility Without Losing Power

Athletes have a complicated relationship with flexibility. Too little and you can't get into the positions your sport demands. Too much and you lose the stiffness that generates force. Traditional static stretching has fallen out of favor in most performance circles for exactly this reason -- it can temporarily reduce power output and doesn't do much for dynamic movement quality.

Reformer Pilates solves this problem because it builds mobility under tension. You're not passively hanging out at end range hoping your hamstrings will cooperate. You're actively controlling movement through full ranges while the springs provide resistance. Your nervous system learns that these positions are safe and strong, not just reachable. That's the difference between flexibility (passive range) and mobility (usable range), and it's the reason athletes who add reformer work start moving better almost immediately.

Consider a hockey player who needs deep hip flexion and external rotation while also needing explosive power out of a skating stride. Or a tennis player who needs thoracic rotation to serve while maintaining shoulder stability. These demands seem contradictory, but the reformer trains them simultaneously -- length and strength, range and control, all in the same exercise.

"Mobility without strength is just instability. The reformer gives you both at the same time. That's what makes it different."
-- Dr. Kyle Richmond, REBUILT Performance

The result is an athlete who can access more positions on the field, court, or track without sacrificing the explosive capacity they've built in the weight room. That's not a compromise. That's an upgrade.

Recovery and Active Rest

If you train hard -- and you should -- you need to recover hard too. But most athletes are terrible at recovery. Rest days turn into couch days, and the body stiffens up even more. Or they go the other direction and hammer another workout because sitting still feels like falling behind.

Reformer Pilates fits into the recovery equation in a way that almost nothing else does. A well-programmed reformer session increases blood flow to recovering muscles, moves joints through full ranges to clear metabolic waste, and challenges the neuromuscular system at low-to-moderate intensities -- all without adding significant mechanical stress to tissues that are already rebuilding.

Think of it as active recovery with a purpose. You're not just spinning on a bike staring at a wall. You're doing real movement work that addresses the quality of your movement patterns, reinforces good positions, and keeps your body honest between heavy training days.

For athletes in-season, this is particularly valuable. The weekly cycle of practice, competition, and recovery leaves very little room for additional loading. But a strategically placed Pilates session can maintain mobility, reinforce core stability, and address compensations that creep in during competitive play -- all without digging into your recovery reserves.

Some of the most durable athletes in professional sports credit their longevity to exactly this kind of supplemental training. Not because Pilates replaced their main work, but because it filled in the gaps that their main work created.

How REBUILT Pilates Fits the Athlete's Schedule

Here's where the practical piece comes in. REBUILT Pilates exists inside REBUILT Performance -- a facility that already trains athletes, from high school competitors to weekend warriors to former collegiate players who still want to perform. This isn't a Pilates studio that decided to market to athletes. This is a performance facility that added Pilates because the coaches and practitioners saw the need firsthand.

Dr. Kyle Richmond built REBUILT Performance on over 20 years of sports rehab, chiropractic care, and hands-on athlete development. The Pilates programming at REBUILT reflects that background. Classes are designed with athletic movement in mind. The cueing is direct. The progressions make sense for bodies that are also lifting, sprinting, and competing. And the instructors understand that you're not here to relax -- you're here to get better at your sport.

For athletes already training at REBUILT Performance, adding Pilates is seamless. It's in the same building. You can stack sessions back to back, use it as a warm-up on training days, or plug it in on recovery days between lifts. For athletes training elsewhere, the class schedule is built for busy people who have other commitments -- because every athlete does.

The bottom line is this: the best athletes don't just train hard. They train smart. And adding reformer Pilates to your program is one of the smartest things you can do for your performance, your durability, and your career.

You don't have to take our word for it. Come in, get on the reformer, and see how your body responds. If you're as competitive as you say you are, the results will speak for themselves.