Let me say something that might surprise you… I have always loved lifting heavy things. I also love Pilates. And after years of working across both worlds, as an Exercise Physiologist and as a Mat and Reformer Pilates instructor, I’m convinced that the people who need Pilates most are the ones least likely to try it.
The range of motion you don’t have is the strength you’re missing
The range of motion that you don’t currently have is also the range you cannot produce force through. Every restricted hip, every locked thoracic spine, every ankle that can’t flex aren’t just mobility issues – they are gaps in your strength. Positions your body simply can’t load and therefore can’t develop.
Strength training develops and builds your capacity to produce force. Pilates helps you access and distribute that force across your full range of motion, not just the parts that already move well.
When you train both in conjunction with each other, you’re not collecting two separate outcomes. You’re building some more useful than either alone: strength that’s accessible across the full range of how your body moves
Why choose the combined approach?
When I first started Pilates alongside my own training, I wasn’t expecting it to change the way I lifted. It did. Not because it made me more flexible in some abstract sense, but because it genuinely changed my body awareness, my ability to feel where load was going, to notice patterns I’d been compensating around for years, to understand the difference between true stability and the kind of rigidity that looks strong but quietly limits you.
Pilates demands precise muscular control through full ranges. It asks your deep stabilisers and global movers to work together rather than defaulting to your dominant side. For a strength athlete, this translates directly. Better hip stability means a more effective squat. Better scapular control means more transfer in pressing movements. Better anterior core activation, without the held breath and white knuckle brace means your trunk is genuinely working with you under load, not just surviving it.
Strength training and Pilates are not opposites
I think the hesitation in the strength community around Pilates often comes from how it’s presented as something “soft”, or as a recovery tool for when you’re injured. While Pilates is genuinely wonderful in those contexts, that framing undersells it.
It isn’t about replacing anything you’re already doing. It’s about filling in what’s missing: the awareness, the load distribution, the stability through full range, so that everything you’re already doing works better.
Strong is better when its also controlled and controlled is better when it’s built on a genuine foundation of strength
The range of motion you don’t have is the strength you don’t have. The good news is, you can go looking for it and build it at the same time.
Annie Daly, Senior Exercise Physiologist