Fit Calabasas: SPN Pilates

Angela Yonkers’ leg muscles were quivering as she held them aloft while lying on her back atop the reformer.

“I feel it in my arms, my legs, my butt—everywhere,” Yonkers says post-workout.

And that’s owner-instructor Brianne Anderson’s goal: “I try to make every class a total body workout. You’re here for 55 minutes, and we don’t want you to feel like after you come here, then you have to go work out somewhere else. If you can devote 55 minutes from your schedule to come here, we will give you that total body workout, and trust me, that’s all you’ll need.”

Though it resembles a medieval torture device—and, in fact, the expressions on the women’s faces would suggest it is, the reformer is a friend to everyone who wants a leaner, toned body.

“She won’t be able to walk tomorrow,” quips Yonkers’ friend Sheralee Smith, who has taken six classes already at SPN Pilates, which opened this weekend at the

Ironically, Anderson started a pilates regimen in the aftermath of a jet ski accident when she was 16 that left her wheelchair-bound and in pain for two years.

Traditional physical therapy only exacerbated the problem.

“Ii kept hurting and nothing was working. I was getting frustrated,” she recalls. “It had gotten to the point something serious needed to happen.” Surgery was one option. Pilates was another.

“It really brought me back to health,” Anderson says. “Without pilates, I’d probably be on painkillers.”

Pilates itself is an addiction, so say its practitioners.

“It’s really intense, it’s really hard, but it’s addicting,” Smith says. “After you do your first couple classes, you just want to go back and do more.”

Anderson has placed a one-class-a-day restriction on her clients and advises them not to take classes every day to avoid “overtraining.” She accommodates all levels in each class, modifying exercises for beginner and advanced practitioners. She says clients realistically can expect to see visible results after taking classes three or four times a week for six weeks, though Smith claims to have noticed a difference after only three classes.

Anderson, a pilates practitioner for almost 10 years, says the key to pilates is “muscle failure.”

“I group the muscles together—arms, legs, abs—and I target individual muscles to tire them. We don’t do things in repetitions, we do them for an amount of time, so we try to tire out that muscle and focus on that group” before moving onto the next, Anderson says.

“I do cardio all the time and this is so much more muscle usage,” Yonkers says. “You don’t stop the whole time, it keeps your heart up the whole time.”

Indeed, pilates has a cardio element.

“Because of the intensity and the duration that we do the moves, you are getting into some cardio work. Your body can only do a move so long before it needs to go into that aerobic zone.”

The muscle shakes are common, even for people in amazing shape.

“We work such different muscles that it really is a matter of muscle memory,” she says. “Until you’ve been coming a few times and your muscles learn how to do the moves, your muscles are going to shake.”

Some moves look similar to traditional gym equipment training, such as a chest press and rowing. Other moves are modifications of familiar exercises like oblique sit-ups and squats that use the body’s own resistance, only the reformer’s spring system provides the challenging yet stable resistance. Free weights are often incorporated into the routine.

“Whatever you put into it is what you’re going to get out of it,” Smith says, “so if you really push yourself and do exactly as the instructor’s telling you, you’re going to be able to tell the difference really quick.”

SPN Pilates is running a grand opening promotion of free classes through Sunday. No prior experience is necessary. The cost is $35 for drop-ins normally, and packages are available from $250 per month for unlimited pilates and spinning classes with a three-month contract. For more information visit spnpilates.com or call 818-878-9982.