What ten years of private Pilates can become

How consistency in private Pilates lessons supported a demanding career, golf, cycling, and healthy ageing.

Private Pilates can help you recover after an injury, move with less pain, prepare for a sport, or simply move more comfortably. But after years of teaching, I've found that its greatest value may lie somewhere else: in what happens when a Pilates practice continues to evolve with your life.

For more than ten years, one of the people I've had the privilege to work with has made two private Pilates sessions part of every week. During that time, he has led an international financial institution, travelled extensively across Europe, Asia, and the United States, lowered his golf handicap into the single digits, taken up endurance cycling, recovered from gluteal tendon pain, and is now preparing for retirement.

About a year after we started working together, he told me he had decided not to schedule one of his weekly executive meetings during our regular Pilates session. I remember smiling. Not because Pilates had become more important than his work, but because it had quietly become part of how he was able to do that work.

The power of a consistent Pilates practice

One of the smartest decisions we made happened before we ever stepped onto the Reformer. We found two moments in his week that worked and protected them. From then on, there was no weekly negotiation about whether he had time to exercise. We simply kept showing up. That consistency changed the way we worked together. We might move between the Reformer, Cadillac, Wunda Chair, Mat, and other Pilates apparatus, but we weren't starting from scratch every week; we could continue the conversation we'd begun the week before.At first, I explained everything. Years later, I could ask him to organise his ribcage differently or change his breathing strategy, and he immediately knew what I meant. Sometimes I could describe the same idea in a completely different way, and he would still recognise it. The understanding no longer depended on my words. It had become part of his movement. That wasn't built in a single lesson. It accumulated, one session at a time.

Pilates for golf, cycling, and an active life

When we first met, our private Pilates sessions often revolved around supporting his golf. Later, the practice became part of his preparation for endurance cycling. At one point we adapted them around gluteal tendon pain. Now we spend more time talking about healthy ageing: staying capable, active, and able to continue doing the things he enjoys well beyond retirement. Every stage of his life has asked different questions of his body. Our work has simply continued to answer them.

“I've Set You Up for Success.”

I remember saying to him once, "Don't worry. I've set you up for success."

It was right before asking him to do a movement that would have seemed completely unrealistic at the beginning of the lesson. We hadn't spent the previous forty-five minutes practising that exercise. We had spent them building everything it required. Using the Reformer, Cadillac, Wunda Chair and other Pilates apparatus gave us different ways to explore the movement, provide support or resistance, and gradually change the demands. By the time we arrived at the exercise, it no longer felt impossible.. We explored the movement in smaller parts, refined the mechanics, improved the coordination, and gradually increased the demands without necessarily announcing where we were heading.

I think that's one of the most important parts of my work. People often hold back from the full expression of movement because they believe they are too stiff, too weak, or because they're afraid they'll get injured. My role is to help them understand what a movement asks of their body, identify the skills it requires, and build those skills one step at a time. That's what I meant when I said, "Don't worry. I've set you up for success.”

Preparing for movement begins before the movement itself

Preparing someone for movement begins long before movement itself. It begins with understanding the person standing in front of me.

I don't start by asking, "How's your body?" I ask, "How are you?"

Those first few minutes tell me a great deal. We talk about the week that's just passed and the one ahead. He may have just returned from Asia, have a golf competition at the weekend, be preparing for a long ride, or simply be curious about a workshop I've attended and what I'm bringing back into the studio. By the time we start moving, I already know what his body has been adapting to, what demands are coming next, and where I want our attention to go that day.

The lesson rarely begins with the thing we're ultimately working towards. Before a golf competition, we rarely begin with the golf swing itself. We might spend the first part of the lesson exploring his feet, his ribcage, or how his pelvis and thoracic spine work together. Only later do we return to rotation. By then, the movement usually feels very different. Understanding the movement matters as much as performing it. If he understands where the movement comes from, he can recognise the same principles on the golf course, on the bike, or in everyday life.The goal isn't simply a better golf swing. It's a better understanding of how his body produces movement.

Attention as a movement skill

We also practise paying attention. One of the ideas that has become increasingly important in my teaching is that attention may be one of our best protections against injury. Rather than simply completing an exercise, I want him to notice where movement begins, how force travels through his body, and what changes when one small adjustment is made. My hope is that this awareness doesn't stay in the studio. It comes with him onto the golf course, onto the bike, and into everyday life.

A practice that keeps evolving

One of the things I enjoy most about working with him is his curiosity. He'll often ask what I've been studying lately or what I learned at a recent workshop. Before long, those ideas find their way into our sessions. Every workshop changes the lesson. After more than ten years, we aren't repeating the same programme. The practice keeps evolving because we're both still learning.

What can ten years of private Pilates achieve?

When people ask me what ten years of private Pilates can achieve, I don't think first about a lower golf handicap, a cycling event, or even a stronger body.

I think about someone who, after only a year of working together, decided that those two hours deserved a permanent place in his week.

Everything else — the golf, the cycling, the trust, the shared language — grew from protecting those two hours.

Building a Pilates practice for the long term

At Pilates Incorporated in Amsterdam West, this is how we think about Pilates: not as something you complete, but as a practice that can continue to evolve alongside your life.

For some people, that means private Pilates, with the continuity and individual attention to work towards specific goals and respond to changing needs. For others, small group Pilates becomes the rhythm that keeps them practising consistently. And sometimes the two become part of the same long-term practice.

Goals change. Bodies change. Work, sport, injuries, interests and priorities change too. A practice that has a permanent place in your life can change with them—supporting performance when that matters, recovery when it is needed, and healthy ageing over the years.

After more than ten years of working together, that may be the most important thing this personal story demonstrates: the goal was never simply to become better at Pilates. It was to build a practice that helps him keep doing the things that make his life his own.