Last Updated on February 22, 2025 by Pilates Power
Can Pilates Build Muscles?
‘Pilates is not just exercise it’s a lifestyle that changes the world’
Brent Anderson, founder of Polestar Pilates
Pilates builds the strength that helps you move safer and more effectively.
Pilates and strength building.
Does Pilates Build Muscles?
Basically, yes. Pilates absolutely builds muscle. It is, after all, an exercise system. However, everything about Pilates feels and looks a little different from other strength training or exercise systems. If you have ever done weight training or other workouts, Pilates may seem different and very elusive at the beginning.
First, there is the studio Pilates with Studio equipment…..looks a bit medieval with large machines with devices with straps or ropes, springs, and barrels with rounded tops. Then, there is the weight of the equipment and springs. Much lighter resistance (for core strength) than most people are used to when they are doing weight lifting or modern machine workouts. The equipment in Pilates is designed to be supportive. The springs definitely provide some resistance when required, but they also provide support.
Then we have matwork Pilates, again it begins gently and slowly builds the resistance through the session often using small props to challenge the body with many different types of movement. You are challenged to connect with the movement rather than focus on pure repetitions.
How Does Pilates Build Muscle
Pilates works very differently from most other systems in that we use the support of the equipment to coax muscles that tend to be over-developed into relaxing while we target less developed muscles for recruitment. We further lengthen the muscles and increase our range of motion while using our muscles, which is very different from passive stretching or strength training which focuses on contracting muscles and pushing against increasingly heavy weights.
Over time, we train all the muscles to work together supportively, versus targeting single muscles or muscle groups individually.
The look of a “Pilates body”, someone who does Pilates consistently and with skill, is long and lean. The Pilates Method builds endurance, strength, and flexibility at the same time, resulting in muscles that are supple and long versus ‘bulked’ up.
Most people new to Pilates report working muscles they didn’t even know they had. This is because a well-trained Pilates instructor will guide you to work the least developed muscles and the exercises themselves tend to target deeper, less developed muscles than other systems.
In the Classical Pilates system, exercises are done in a specific order, which causes you to constantly move through spinal flexion, extension, rotation, and other positions that move you from one muscle group to the next after just a few repitions.
We stop just shy of fatigue and move to another type of movement, then circle back to similar movements, and so on. All of this works and strengthens our muscles without creating a lot of toxic build-ups or going for the ‘burn’.
How does this work?
First, the more well-trained and balanced your muscles are, the more you get from doing Pilates. If you have a few muscle groups that tend to over-work (because, for example, you sit at a desk 60 hours per week and get on a cross trainer when you have time, or maybe your passion in life is running and every day you rely on the same muscle groups over & over in your runs), you will naturally have a lot of muscles that are underdeveloped. Underdevelopment happens simply because muscles don’t get used, they don’t get called on to activate.
For this reason, it takes most people around 10 sessions to start really feeling the work of Pilates. If there is pain, injury, or a chronic condition, it can take even longer. Sometimes it feels like we aren’t doing anything when we first start doing Pilates!
Benefits of Pilates!
Pilates should be an amazing workout that leaves you feeling stronger, taller, and invigorated. It should be challenging in the moment, and may leave you sore after working some muscles that were previously sleepy. But it isn’t meant to be a constant struggle!
As you become more familiar with the work and how to use the correct muscles in the work, it typically becomes easier to find the right muscles, which means your Pilates classes become simultaneously ‘easier’ and more difficult.
