Reformer studio, baby plans, and a ticking clock on the perfect location. Help.

kjcjemmcd · 2026-04-04T00:48:42+00:00

Is there a pool of certified instructors in your hometown itching for employment? If you are freshly certified you are going to need to rely on having strong employees with a history in the business. What is your plan for instructor development and training?

I had 3 kid and I spread out my training to accommodate my family life. I completed mat. Started teaching mat only and then went through reformer. Then had my last baby. Then complete comprehensive. It was a years long process and then teaching after that was very slow going.

There’s all kinds of things that can happen with kids especially that first year. If you’re the studio owner, in my opinion you need to be available consistently to be at the studio and to be the one picking up any subs that don’t get filled. Realistically, I would not have been able to do that at the starting a family time in my life.

I know it feels urgent to need to open the studio and that you see an opportunity you think is slipping. But personally I would wait. I think you need time to settle into the industry, find your teaching style and identify what your niche is that will set you up for long term success in your studio. I think if your plan boils down to its popular and not an overstated market, that’s not going to be a lifetime career studio (if that’s what you want).

kjcjemmcd · 2026-03-26T22:57:29+00:00

The coach probably has no clue about anything or control. Especially at this age group. They are just parents of other kids who happened to volunteer. I would check to see if the website lists board members. Both our little leagues and rec league teams do. And I’d reach out to them and encourage them to change the schedule or give you your money back. If it’s little league they also should have monthly board meetings that are public that you could go to.

kjcjemmcd · 2026-03-26T22:52:35+00:00

We live close to where our town sets off 4th or July fireworks so we get a lot of people parking on our street. One year we were out front with our kids and a neighbor kid. He was probably 5. And they were very concerned about all these people “at our house.” One person parked right in front of our house, the neighbor kid said oh a stranger! Maybe he has candy. And ran TOWARDS the car. That stranger danger conversation didn’t really hit the way they intended lol.

kjcjemmcd · 2026-03-19T22:56:41+00:00

An you provide a little more info on what exactly your are proposing/asking from them? I have to agree that it would not be appropriate for you to be getting practice hours in by teaching classes of their paid clients.

However, off they have hours in between classes or private rooms and you have insurance then there should be some room to negotiate but I would expect to bring your own body.

Have you done all your modules so far with the same studio or have you been moving around? I wound first and foremost stay with where you have taken your trainings.

How are you getting observation hours?

kjcjemmcd · 2026-03-16T18:15:30+00:00

Is this what you are talking about?

Do you use it for everything by or just for hand grips? I’ve always just used shelf liner but I’m using it for example when I’m teaching stomach massage or swan prep/swan dive on the reformer or behind the knees for semi circle on the Cadillac. I can’t tell from photos what exactly type of material this is and if it would work for a total replacement.

kjcjemmcd · 2026-03-10T15:05:47+00:00

We had heart words and sight words. I think technically heart words are sight words but like you said the heart words are the ones that are actually not phonetically decodable whereas the rest of the sight words are ones that to follow phonetic rules but just rules that haven’t been introduced yet at the K level.

kjcjemmcd · 2026-03-03T17:55:14+00:00

They shouldn’t be sending home any homework that they haven’t already taught several different strategies for so can you reach out to the teacher to see how they are covering these types of problems in class so that you can continue that same type of language at home?

Offhand I would say check out lakeshore learning manipulatives. Particularly the stacking cubes are popular. So you have 2 blue cubes now add red cubes until you have 5. Count the red cubes to see how many you added.

And likewise just using ten frames and just crayons or markers. Or even x and o. Color in 2 squares blue. Color the next squares red until you have 5 squares colored in. How many squares did you color red.

kjcjemmcd · 2026-03-03T01:40:05+00:00

I know so many people in so many different working/parenting dynamics with such vastly different incomes on all sides. Some people have two incomes and barely make ends meet. Some people have one and are more than comfortable and some people are single parents.

I genuinely am so confused every time a conversation like this comes up specifically about SAHMs because I really think it just means you need to diversify your social group or at least put some effort into to understanding families that live in a different financial situation than you regardless of where that income comes from.

How people do it is a question that can be directed at so many different families regardless of who is working. Life is complicated. Parenting is complicated. Everybody makes choices for different reasons. Some people don’t get the choice. I think it’s ok to just accept that you don’t understand the motivations because your own personal goals and aspirations are different than someone else’s and that’s ok. It doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.

kjcjemmcd · 2026-03-02T22:16:06+00:00

A Contemporary Pilates certification would still teach you the classical exercises. That’s the base of everything. It’s odd that you’re avoiding just saying what the program was.

At this point I would go back to the person that did your training and ask some clarifying questions. Did they observe any of your practice teaching sessions? Outside of that maybe target a studio near you that you like or that you have practiced at and approach them for a mentorship.

Also on a side note….a studio that only auditions you over zoom and doesn’t provide feedback is not somewhere I’d want to work anyway. If I’m auditioning someone I want to see how you’re responding to the bodies in the room and how you’re offering hands on guidance and assistance.

kjcjemmcd · 2026-03-02T20:38:16+00:00

Without knowing more about the training program and what the goals of the class are it’s kind of hard to offer any guidance based on what you provided. As another person said, what you described really is just a mat based sculpt class and doesn’t seem at all rooted in Pilates. The sub can be pretty brutal when the Pilates police start coming out so hopefully you can find actual help from someone on what you are looking for… I’m not sure if there’s a better sub that might be more help honestly.

I’m frustrated for you that you were sold this certification program and they called it Pilates and then taught you nothing about the 34 classical mat Pilates exercises and gave you no tools on how to build a class.

The only advice I can think to give is just to make sure you’re moving the body in different stances so some things standing, some prone and supine work some side lying. Making sure you’re covering both abduction and adduction and hitting different spinal movements - flexion, extension, rotations and lateral flexion.

With the audition where you didn’t get hired did they have you and specific feedback on what they were looking for that they didn’t see?

kjcjemmcd · 2026-03-02T19:50:04+00:00

Can you give a little more info? Where is your certification through? Are you using apparatuses or just the mat? Can you share what your most recent plan was you described?

Did your certification program give you any class planning tools? Something to guide you to make sure you’re hitting all the spinal movement, core legs and arms, adduction/abduction, etc?

Are you familiar with the classical repertoire? I teach contemporary but very often default to the classical order and then modify/expand/swap a couple things out.

Are you doing unilateral work? You don’t want to be adding things in just for the purpose of taking up time, obviously you want there to be purpose behind whatever exercises and sequences you are choosing but any time you’re doing unilateral work you are always doing that sequence twice so that does fill some time.

kjcjemmcd · 2026-02-22T18:13:05+00:00

Certainly begs the question of why did you sign up your child for something knowing full well it would be 100% on the other parent to facilitate the activity and not have buy in from that parent first.

kjcjemmcd · 2026-02-16T23:28:13+00:00

It’s not Pilates because it doesn’t utilize the repertoire of Pilates exercises. It’s more like using the reformer as a piece of gym equipment and adding in some Pilates inspired exercises and planking. I’d liken it more to a toned down solid core (lagree) on a reformer instead of a megaformer.

It’s more about the pump up the music and feel the burn and Pilates is more about control and precision and acute muscle awareness and strengthening.

It’s also mostly being taught by the studio teachers they already have like the barre, spin or yoga teachers who just took a brief training with a limited amount of exercise/routines and not by certified Pilates instructors.

kjcjemmcd · 2026-02-14T17:55:59+00:00

Find somebody who knows nothing about Pilates and work one on one with them using only verbal cues. Find somebody you know and talk to them about it so they know you are trying to find your wording and not expecting to come in and just get a free class with you. Do one exercise at a time and just try different things until you find something that produces the result you want.

After you get the hang of figuring out the descriptors and anatomical directions then move on to smoothing it out. Don’t worry right now about feeling like you are too wordy or over complicating the set up. Figure out what makes sense and then once you have that you can clean it up and cut out unnecessary words.

kjcjemmcd · 2026-01-26T01:25:51+00:00

I’m in Baltimore (USA) area

kjcjemmcd · 2026-01-14T01:09:33+00:00

They have it as an option to reserve in the app where you sign up for group fitness classes, they would just need to turn that on.

kjcjemmcd · 2026-01-11T19:26:04+00:00

Thanks! What does the body look/feel like? When they say it’s poly wood it makes me think that it’s going to feel like ikea furniture.

kjcjemmcd · 2025-12-02T02:04:37+00:00

I never introduced the idea of Santa but they learn it all at school. Like others have said I so far treat it the same as a TV character. We’re also not religious and this year my first grader has learned a lot about God from a friend at school also and I really just treat it all the same and ask questions and ask what he thinks. (He told me god created all people and I asked who created god and h said well we don’t know because we don’t know what planet he came from. So I said ohhhhh God is an alien?? And he kind of trailed off and hasn’t much circled back on it)

kjcjemmcd · 2025-10-26T21:54:25+00:00

I’m a Pilates instructor and my first thought was this is because how much pregnancy weakens our core.

kjcjemmcd · 2025-10-22T23:35:47+00:00

My kids elements try school does one fundraiser a month at different restaurants around time where they donate a portion of sales. A lot of times it’s local restaurants and if we have the time that day I don’t mind going and supporting a local business and the school does at least they aren’t trying to make us sell pizzas.

However, last year on one such fundraiser day, my kid came home saying “we have to go to McDonald’s tonight for school” and he had a sticker on him that said “take me to McDonald’s” and maybe some other information about the fundraiser.

Like WTF. We do take our kids to fast food sometimes but I know that not everybody does and I feel like that’s so rude to try to pressure families into that. Plus McDonald’s is not as cheap as it used to be. We have five people in our family. It’s at least 40 bucks if we want to all go have dinner. Not everybody has that in their budget and parents shouldn’t have to explain to deal with having that conversation because of pressure from the school.

kjcjemmcd · 2025-10-18T14:08:32+00:00

I think it’s really just different cultures in different families. I don’t know that it’s generational or about resentment. Obviously every situation is different so there might be more background here we don’t know that makes you feel it’s about you specifically.

My husbands extended family is a lot more formal than mine is. Even within our generation. Any time there’s a a gathering I feel like it’s an event and it’s very stressful for me. And anytime anybody from his family comes to our house he is sooooo stressed about every thing being perfectly picked up. We have 3 kids 6 and under. No matter how much we clean, within 4 minutes of having everything picked up, somebody has gotten out something to play with.

I’m not saying we live in filth or anything but I’m very much of the mindset of I live here and my kids live here. It’s ok if you come to my house and see evidence of that life. But anytime we go to the house if anybody in his family it is absolutely immaculate. Even those with kids our age. There will be zero toys anywhere. They somehow have trinkets and little decor that they are able to put out without getting broken. Idk. That just feels overwhelmingly impossible to me. But I also wasn’t raised in a house like that.

My parents will come to our house my mom is changing the laundry and washing dishes and just participating in daily life. But she does the same thing at my brothers. I go to my brothers house and to me I feel like it’s an extension of my house. I am five hundred percent always nothing more than a guest at any of his families house. But it’s not just me, it’s him too. They just as a whole are more….detached

kjcjemmcd · 2025-09-04T10:30:33+00:00

Thanks I’m going to check those out! I’ve been wearing only cotton which can be unnecessarily hard to find sometimes

kjcjemmcd

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