Does Pilates actually help you build muscle? The truth, from experts
As the popularity of Pilates—and those oh-so-Instagram-able reformer classes—has increased over the past few years, so too has the hype surrounding the method’s benefits. ('Build long and lean lines! Lift your booty! Snatch your obliques!') Some social media-savvy instructors would have you believe you’ll be leaving with six-pack abs practically overnight. And as strong has largely replaced skinny as the goal of exercising (thank goodness, amiright?), who wouldn’t want to walk out of class with bangin’ bis and tris as evidence of all that hard work?
But how true are some of these claims related to building visible muscle and growing certain body parts? Can Pilates really help you build strength in a significant way? Or should we focus more on its other body benefits? Here’s everything you need to know about Pilates’ role in muscle hypertrophy.
Meet the experts: Rachel Miller, PT, DPT, is a physical therapist, certified Pilates instructor, and founder of the Pilates PT. Shannon Ritchey, PT, DPT, is a physical therapist, fitness trainer, and host of The Dr. Shannon Show podcast.
The type of Pilates you do will influence whether it can help with muscle growth.
It’s difficult to make broad, sweeping generalisations about what Pilates can and can’t do for your body. The method was devised a century ago by Joseph Pilates, but the term “Pilates” itself is not trademarked, so really any fitness instructor can claim they teach the modality, even if they haven’t gone through a specialised training programme.
Within the Pilates industry, there are classical studios that hew closely to the original teachings and techniques of Joseph Pilates, then there are contemporary studios that have updated and modernised many of the exercises, and may be higher intensity, or incorporate other aerobic exercise or strength training elements. Any of these modernizations would affect whether a particular class is impactful for muscle growth.
Pilates can also use a host of apparatuses: You can do Pilates on a mat, on a reformer, on a tower, or on a chair. And they all work your body in slightly different ways.
Mat, for instance, uses gravity and your own body weight as resistance, while the reformer uses spring resistance to intensify some exercises and assist with others. (Unlike in strength training, adding resistance doesn’t automatically make an exercise harder in Pilates.) And let’s not forget all the studio off-shoots that use 'Pilates-inspired' equipment to move you through muscle-quivering choreography. So, yeah, there’s a lot to consider when you talk about Pilates.
Here’s what classical Pilates does to your muscles.
For our purposes, we’ll approach the Pilates method with the same mindset as its founder—one rooted in precision and control, with exercises that can be done on a mat or on a piece of equipment. 'In Pilates, exercises are usually performed slowly and with a smaller number of repetitions to focus on quality over quantity,' explains Rachel Miller, PT, DPT, a physical therapist and certified Pilates instructor.
Because Pilates exercises are done in a slow, low-repetition manner, they typically work what are known as type 1, or slow-twitch, muscles, says Shannon Ritchey, a physical therapist and fitness trainer.
'Those types of methods generally target the smaller muscle fibers that are responsible for muscular endurance,' Ritchey says. 'Muscular endurance, in Pilates specifically, is your ability to hold positions for longer. Basically, you're improving your body's stamina.'
There could be instances, however, in which you work the type 2 or fast-twitch muscles in a Pilates class. Say you’re performing the classic ab series exercise known as criss-cross (essentially bicycle crunches) and your instructor tells you to double your pace. That short, quick burst of effort may be enough to target those fast-twitch fibers. Miller adds that by incorporating a prop like a jumpboard (a platform that allows you to jump while lying down on the carriage) into your reformer work , you could also potentially target type 2 muscles. Generally speaking, however, those instances will be few and far between.
Now for the truth about whether Pilates can lead to muscle growth...
Now, it’s important to clarify that building muscle endurance is not the same as building muscle (a.k.a., hypertrophy). For hypertrophy to occur, several criteria must be met.
To start, to train for hypertrophy, traditionally the muscles have to be worked to failure in 30 reps or less. 'If you’re not approaching muscular failure—even though the exercise feels hard and burns and you may shake and tremble—science shows that you generally won't see much muscle growth because the load is too light,' Ritchey says. 'Typically because you're not using enough load, you won't see much muscle growth from Pilates.'
That said, if you are going from a sedentary lifestyle to one incorporating daily movement and exercise, you may notice small gains from Pilates in the beginning.
For instance, when researchers put nine, non-active women on a regimen of Pilates twice a week for nine months, they observed hypertrophy in the muscles of the abdominal wall (especially the rectus abdominis), according to a study published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. A similar (albeit uncontrolled) clinical trial in The Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies also noted an increase in abdominal wall thickness among previously sedentary women who began doing Pilates. (But when the researchers from the first study took the same approach in measuring potential hypertrophy of the quads and glutes, they found a 'small, nonsignificant difference' in the before and after, according to the separate study published in Sports Health.)
'Generally, when you go from something to nothing, you're going to see what's called "newbie gains",' Ritchey explains. But, eventually, you’ll hit a plateau and need to increase the effort to continue to see results. And that’s where it gets tricky with Pilates because not only does more spring tension often make an exercise easier, but even for the exercises in which spring tension increases the effort, the load is finite.
'Pilates is almost the opposite of strength-training principles because lighter is often harder for people,' Miller says. 'For any muscle hypertrophy, we have to challenge it…But there is a limit. We only have so many springs.'
Miller's bottom line: 'If your goal is to enter a bodybuilding competition or bench press 200 pounds, Pilates is not going to get you there all by itself.'
Pilates has tons of benefits *beyond* changing your muscles.
While Pilates alone isn’t going to make you swole, there are still plenty of benefits to reserving your spot in that Saturday morning reformer class.
'I love the concept of strengthening and dynamically stretching at the same time, which is incorporated into quite a few Pilates exercises on the equipment,' Miller says. 'I feel like there's also a focus on creating balance in the body.'
Ritchey agrees: 'One of the really good benefits of Pilates is neuromuscular control and improving your body awareness, especially if you go to a good teacher. The cues are very specific. The body positions are very specific. You're instructed on what you should be feeling, how you should be feeling it, how to breathe, how to move, how to connect to your body.'
There’s also a solid body of research that indicates Pilates may help with aches and pains. Pilates was found to help alleviate lower back pain better than other singularly focused exercise modalities (such as general strengthening and aerobics), according to a 2021 meta analysis. (Ritchey cautions that not all back ailments are the same, so what may relieve pain for one person may cause it for another—so proceed with caution, and when in doubt, check with your doc!)
You can certainly incorporate Pilates into a hypertrophy routine—here's how.
If your primary focus is hypertrophy but you love the way Pilates makes you feel, you certainly shouldn’t (and don’t have to!) give it up. You’ll just need to be smart about how and when you incorporate it into your routine, says Ritchey.
'I generally recommend, if your goal is to build muscle, having a hypertrophy routine as your cornerstone, and then building in everything else with the time that you have left,' she says.
Ritchey suggests working each muscle group of the body two-ish times per week, aiming for four to five sets over the course of that week. After that, get in at least 150 minutes of light to moderate-intensity cardio, such as walking or cycling. She also recommends incorporating a tiny bit of high-intensity interval training (HIIT)—the equivalent of a 10- to 15-minute class per week. Then, with your free day, you can incorporate Pilates as an active recovery. Emphasis on recovery.
'If you're going to a class that's kind of annihilating you, it might not be enough or the right stimulus to build muscle, and yet it could still be interfering with your recovery and your results overall,' Ritchey says.
Adds Miller: 'I think Pilates is a great adjunct because it's going to strengthen the deep core, it's going to help you with movement patterns, and it's going to help you decrease your risk of injury as well as enhance your performance in multiple sports.'
So while Pilates isn’t going to give you a head-to-toe muscle transformation in two months, there’s still plenty of reasons to continue embracing your Pilates Girlie Era.
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