Happy 5th Birthday Pilates Native!
originally posted on Oct 28 2024
Oct 11th marked Pilates Native’s official 5th bday!
The story behind Pilates Native is one of luck and timing.
Fifteen years ago, in a city far, far away…I was living in Houston, laid-off from my engineering job and wondering what to do. My friends at Spine and Sports Therapy were hiring, and brought me on as their Sports Therapist. They sent me to get my Pilates and Stretch certifications and gave me free reign to design the Therapy programs for patients working through their sports injuries with chiro.
A first year teacher will usually do a few sessions a week, building up their client base and gaining momentum. I hit the ground running, with a 40 hour a week workload. I loved the work and the clients, but the hours were killing me. After teaching literally thousands of sessions in just two years, I was burned out. When my old Engineering Manager called, I happily went back to Welding Engineering.
Luckily, my brother owned “The Fit Box”, a local kickboxing studio in Denver, and I kept teaching Pilates and offering stretch sessions every time I came back home. When we moved back to Denver, I was able to teach and stretch regularly, something I had missed wholeheartedly.
The evolution cometh
Five years ago, I was renting a small office space in Lakewood and working remotely as a Welding Engineer. The space was big enough to fit my personal reformer, so I brought it to the office, with the intention of working out during lunch breaks to help combat my terrible desk posture.
After a few weeks, I figured I could probably teach a few sessions a week on Friday afternoons and cover the rent on the space fairly easily.
One Facebook post later, I had three clients and three pre-paid six-week packages to fulfill.
Suddenly, I was running a business…Cue scene: Late night research on small businesses, scrambling to put together an LLC, drafting a business plan, basically hitting the ground running…again…
I named the first iteration of the studio “Engineered Evolution”, inspired by the idea that we weren’t just working out, we were intentionally evolving the way we moved and how we thought about movement. I had also learned a few things from my last go round and decided this business would run intentionally and be engineered towards my ambivert personality. No burn-out for this round.
After a few weeks, those three clients told three friends and pretty soon, I had added lunch sessions to the schedule, three days a week.
From there, the ball just kept rolling and “The Beast”, my first real commercial reformer, replaced the home reformer. Engineered Evolution rebranded as Pilates Native, a nod to my Grandparents, our Colorado roots and the idea that movement is native to the body.
Pilates Native moved into The Green Mountain Wellness Center in July 2020, The Beast was replaced by Bumble Bee in ‘21, and I quit engineering to run Pilates Native full time in Jan ‘22. We’ve added a few folks to the team, started running instructor training, made some friends and had a bang-up good time along the way.
It is with a heart bursting that I’m so happy to announce that Pilates Native celebrates another birthday on October 11th!!!
Happy 4th Birthday Pilates Native!
Happy Birthday, Pilates Native!
The story behind Pilates Native is one of luck and timing.
Fourteen years ago, in a city far, far away…I was living in Houston, laid-off from my engineering job and wondering what to do. My friends at Spine and Sports Therapy were hiring, and brought me on as their Sports Therapist. They sent me to get my Pilates and Stretch certifications and gave me free reign to design the Therapy programs for patients working through their sports injuries with chiro.
A first year teacher will usually do a few sessions a week, building up their client base and gaining momentum. I hit the ground running, with a 40 hour a week workload. I loved the work and the clients, but the hours were killing me. After teaching literally thousands of sessions in just two years, I was burned out. When my old Engineering Manager called, I happily went back to Welding Engineering.
Luckily, my brother owned “The Fit Box”, a local kickboxing studio in Denver, and I kept teaching Pilates and offering stretch sessions every time I came back home. When we moved back to Denver, I was able to teach and stretch regularly, something I had missed wholeheartedly.
Four years ago, the evolution cometh
Four years ago, I was renting a small office space in Lakewood and working remotely as a Welding Engineer. The space was big enough to fit my personal reformer, so I brought it to the office, with the intention of working out during lunch breaks to help combat my terrible desk posture.
After a few weeks, I figured I could probably teach a few sessions a week on Friday afternoons and cover the rent on the space fairly easily.
One Facebook post later, I had three clients and three pre-paid six-week packages to fulfill.
Suddenly, I was running a business…Cue scene: Late night research on small businesses, scrambling to put together an LLC, drafting a business plan, basically hitting the ground running…again…
I named the first iteration of the studio “Engineered Evolution”, inspired by the idea that we weren’t just working out, we were intentionally evolving the way we moved and how we thought about movement. I had also learned a few things from my last go round and decided this business would run intentionally and be engineered towards my ambivert personality. No burn-out for this round.
After a few weeks, those three clients told three friends and pretty soon, I had added lunch sessions to the schedule, three days a week.
From there, the ball just kept rolling and “The Beast”, my first real commercial reformer, replaced the home reformer. Engineered Evolution rebranded as Pilates Native, a nod to my Grandparents, our Colorado roots and the idea that movement is native to the body.
Pilates Native moved into The Green Mountain Wellness Center in July 2020, The Beast was replaced by Bumble Bee in ‘21, and I quit engineering to run Pilates Native full time in ‘22. We’ve added a few folks to the team, started running instructor training, made some friends and had a bang-up good time along the way.
It is with a heart bursting that I’m so happy to announce that Pilates Native turns four on October 11th!!!
To celebrate, I’m going full ‘90’s mode and making t-shirts! If you’d like to join me in this awesome milestone celebration and snag a t-shirt, let me know. Until then, I’ll be eating chocolate and doing Pilates in my awesome new t-shirt.
Have an awesome day!
Cheers!
-Rubecca
Cheers to our first 3 years!
And just like that…it’s October!(and we’ve been open for 3 years!!!!)
What is up? How is it going? How are you?
This month’s newsletter will be short-n-sweet. I had a great post on Recovery started in my brain, but September was crazy pants and I’ve yet to put words to paper. And I can’t stop outside-ing while the weather is this nice! We’ll catch that thread when it swings back this way.
Oct 11th marks Pilates Native’s official 3rd bday!
While I’ve been teaching for well over a decade, I took my first three clients as an independent studio in my own space on Oct 11th, 2019. What an amazing three years it has been! So much fun!!! There’s nothing quite like looking at the schedule and knowing that I just cannot wait to see every single person on that list. Thank you all so very much for making the studio a part of your lives!
While we’re marking milestones, July was the one year anniversary of me leaving a full time engineering job and going full time Pilates! Hah! What a wild ride!
Thank you for your help!
I’d like to extend a great big heartfelt thank you to everyone who has joined us so far as practice clients for instructor training! When planning the program, I knew I wanted to teach using real bodies with real movement patterns. If nothing else, I hope to teach that there is no “normal” and every body has its own way of moving.The power of the Pilates repertoire is just how much of the work is applicable and available to bodies across the spectrum of ability. We do still have quite a few hours to fill and the schedule is curlet me know.
On a side note, if you’re interested in instructor training, shoot me an email. I run a rolling training program, meaning we start when you’re ready.
Have a great day!
-Rubecca