Does reformer Pilates count as strength training?
By the public-health definition, yes. The NHS guidelines for adults list Pilates among their examples of muscle-strengthening activities, next to lifting weights, resistance bands and body-weight exercises such as push-ups. The listing is the NHS's own: the World Health Organization's 2020 guidelines name no class at all.
The NHS attaches conditions that matter more than the name on the timetable. Strengthening should happen on at least two days a week and work all the major muscle groups: legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders and arms. And to get the health benefit, you work to the point where you need a short rest before repeating the movement. A class that ends every set comfortably, or spends the hour on the trunk alone, carries the label without meeting the conditions.
The machine qualifies too. The ACSM defines resistance training as muscles working against external resistance, and its examples include free weights, machines, resistance bands, water and body weight. On a reformer the resistance is your body weight plus a set of springs of different strengths, which is resistance training by that definition.
So the useful question is not whether it counts. It is whether it is enough for what you want from it, and that answer changes with the goal.
Does it build strength and muscle?
It builds strength, mostly in people who started with little. One randomised reformer trial assigned 47 sedentary women aged 30 to 60, all with a body mass index of 25 or more, to eight weeks of reformer classes, three a week, or to no exercise. The programme added repetitions and spring resistance as it went, finishing at two sets of 15. Right-hand grip rose from about 20.9 to 23.4 kg, roughly 2.5 kg, while the control group's fell slightly. Trunk endurance moved most: the time the women could hold a front trunk position went from about 15 to 27 seconds. The authors say their result applies only to the group they studied.
Wider reviews say the gains are real but not special. A 2022 review of 11 randomised trials, mostly in older adults (mean age 60) and one in adolescents, found no difference between Pilates and other exercise for strength, balance or flexibility, with very low to low certainty. It did not separate mat classes from apparatus classes. One of its trials, in 60 women aged 60 to 80, set a Pilates programme against a resistance programme of elastic bands and dumbbells for 18 weeks: Pilates did better on held hip and trunk extension strength, resistance training on strength through a movement, and neither was significantly better than the other. Neither used a reformer, and neither was heavy lifting.
That fits the wider evidence on resistance training. Much of what the ACSM reviewed came from people new to it, and its authors note that untrained people benefit from many kinds of programme, as long as the work progresses and they keep at it. In our view, for a beginner a progressive reformer class can be one of those programmes.
A 2026 review is the one that tempers the claim. It reviewed 12 studies of about 540 adult women and found no significant pooled effect on handgrip strength (3 studies, 163 women), vertical jump (2 studies, 56 women) or lean body mass (2 studies, 60 women). Its narrative synthesis did suggest gains in muscular strength and endurance in single studies.
It does not say how many of its 12 programmes used a reformer. Its table labels one as mat-based, another is titled mat Pilates, and the authors name the mix of mat and equipment programmes as one reason the results varied. Their suggested explanation for the flat results is load: most Pilates relies on body weight and controlled movement, which may not be enough to add muscle mass or explosive power.
The strength gains on this page come from sedentary women, older adults and young amateur footballers. None of these trials set a reformer against heavy lifting in people who already train with weights. If you lift already, they say little about what a class adds on top.
What kind of strength does your sport need?
Strength is several qualities, and each responds to different training. The ACSM's 2026 position stand, an overview of 137 systematic reviews covering more than 30,000 healthy adults, separates them:
- Maximal strength rose most with heavier loads, 80% or more of your one-rep maximum, and more load brought more gain.
- Muscle size followed weekly volume and eccentric overload, and was similar across loads from 30% to 100% of one-rep maximum.
- Power rose with moderate loads of 30 to 70% moved fast, and with Olympic-style lifts.
- Muscular endurance improved with resistance training, with too little data to say which load suits it best.
- Progress depends on progressive overload: the stimulus has to keep rising.
That is where the springs come in. A reformer adds resistance through a set of springs, and the authors of the 2026 review put Pilates' flat results on strength and muscle down to the low external loading of most programmes. A barbell keeps taking plates; a reformer stops at its stiffest springs. For endurance and general strength that ceiling may never matter. For a sport that asks you to move something heavy, or to move fast, it is the reason the class is not the whole answer.
| What you need | Is reformer enough? | Evidence, and who was measured | What to add |
|---|---|---|---|
| General health | Yes, for the strengthening part | The NHS lists Pilates among muscle-strengthening activities, done to the point where you need a short rest and working all the major muscle groups (UK guidelines, adults aged 19 to 64). | Aerobic activity: the WHO asks adults for 150 to 300 moderate minutes a week, and a steady class with full rests is light. |
| Strength endurance | Yes, from a low base | Eight weeks of progressive reformer raised grip by about 2.5 kg and lengthened trunk holds (Gökalp 2025: 47 sedentary women aged 30 to 60 with a BMI of 25 or more). | Stiffer springs or more reps as it gets easy; the ACSM calls progressive overload fundamental. |
| Heavy strength, as in grappling or pushing in a scrum | Not on its own | Strength rises most with loads of 80% or more of one-rep maximum (ACSM 2026: 137 reviews, healthy adults). No significant pooled effect of Pilates on grip (Bajčetić 2026: 3 studies, 163 adult women). | Heavy lifting with free weights or machines. |
| Speed and power, as in sprinting, jumping or changing direction | Not on its own, though reformer beat mat in one team | Power rises with moderate loads moved fast (ACSM 2026, healthy adults). No significant pooled effect of Pilates on vertical jump (Bajčetić 2026: 2 studies, 56 adult women). Reformer beat mat on single-leg hops and agility (Yılmaz 2025: 30 amateur male footballers aged about 20). | Jumps, sprints or fast lifts at moderate loads. |
| Muscle growth | Unproven for Pilates | Growth follows weekly sets and was similar across loads from 30 to 100% of one-rep maximum (ACSM 2026, healthy adults). No significant pooled effect of Pilates on lean mass (Bajčetić 2026: 2 studies, 60 adult women). | More sets per muscle each week, from weights, machines or springs heavy enough to challenge you. |
Heavy does not have to mean a barbell. The ACSM counts machines as resistance training, and across the reviews it found strength was no different with free weights or machines; what moved maximal strength was the load. If a gym floor is new to you, machines are a fair place to start, in our view.
Is your class building strength?
- Hard sets. The last reps of each set are hard enough that you need a short rest before going again, which is the NHS condition for a strengthening activity.
- The whole body. Across your week, legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders and arms all get work. The ACSM authors suggest pushing and pulling with the upper and the lower body as enough to cover the major muscle groups.
- Progression. The springs or the repetitions go up over the weeks, as they did in the reformer trial above. The ACSM calls progressive overload fundamental.
- Your sport's demands. If your sport needs heavy or fast strength, that work happens somewhere in your week. If it does not, the table above shows the gap.
When the answer is to add lifting, the next question is where it goes in a week that already has classes in it. That has its own page: weight training and reformer Pilates. If running is your other sport, read Pilates and running. Dancers have their own page on what strength work outside class adds.
Does reformer help a footballer?
One small trial asked exactly this. Thirty amateur male footballers aged about 20, from a local league, were split into a reformer group, a mat group and a control group of ten each. For eight weeks of pre-season, the two Pilates groups swapped half their team training days for Pilates, while the controls trained as usual.
Over the eight weeks the reformer group improved its jumps, 10 and 20 m sprints, agility, balance and passing. The mat group improved on fewer tests, and the controls on none. Head to head, though, the reformer group beat the mat group on only three things: single-leg triple hops, an agility test and a passing test. On every other measure, the countermovement jump and the sprints included, the paper reports no significant difference between the groups.
Ten players a group is small, the controls came from a different team, and no group in the trial did heavy lifting, so it cannot say whether a reformer does more for a footballer than a squat rack. What it does suggest is narrower: if the choice is between a reformer and a mat, the reformer may be the better use of the hour for a player. The rest of the football week is on our football page.
Is it cardio, or an easy day?
Light, in the one session measured on the reformer alone, and nearer moderate when the rests are short. Researchers rate effort in METs, multiples of your energy use at rest. The 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities calls 1.6 to 2.9 light and 3.0 to 5.9 moderate, and both of its Pilates codes, 1.8 for traditional mat work and 2.8 for Pilates in general, fall in the light band.
A 2026 review gathered the six studies that have measured Pilates this way, each in 10 to 33 healthy young adults, mostly women. Only one put the same people on both: 18 physically inactive young women new to Pilates averaged about 2.5 METs on the reformer and 1.8 on the mat, in single sets of ten with two minutes' rest between exercises. A session across several machines, the reformer among them, came out far higher, at 9.2 METs, but that figure was estimated from heart rate and the review treats it as an outlier. Across the six, mostly mat classes, the review's most reliable estimate, from the four with the soundest methods, was about 3.0 METs, and sessions with rests of a minute or less ran at about 3.4 against about 2.0 with longer rests. The authors place Pilates at light to moderate, with low to very low certainty.
The WHO's aerobic minutes, 150 to 300 moderate or 75 to 150 vigorous a week for adults, count activity above 3 METs. The session measured on the reformer alone falls short of that; a class with little rest may reach the bottom of the moderate band. The WHO is clear that light activity instead of sitting brings health benefits; it is not part of those minutes.
For an athlete, that makes a steady class with full rests an easy day: real training for control and endurance, light for the heart and lungs. A rest day has nothing on it, not even a gentle class. That is our view, and the classes guide sets out which classes fall where. If your class keeps you moving with little rest and leaves you breathless, count it as harder than these figures. If you are training for HYROX, HYROX and reformer Pilates looks at the race next to a studio habit.
Keeping the classes, adding what they cannot
Our view, from the evidence above: keep the classes for what they measurably give, and add what your goal needs that springs cannot supply. Whether that is heavy lifting, fast work or nothing extra depends on which row of the table you are in.
Add Reformer Pilates as a class: on You, under SPORTS STACK, tap + ADD and find it under GROUP CLASSES. A class starts on Fixed days, because a timetable decides when it happens, so you pick the days yours runs; each day you pick is one session a week. Flexible lets the app pick the days instead. You also set a usual length.
Your class counts as training you have done, so with Pro or during your trial your coach adjusts what it gives you instead of adding on top. More in Add a sport or a class.
Turn on Coach warm-up and cool-down in the class's settings and, with Pro or during your trial, it offers a short activation routine to do before the class, since the class brings its own warm-up. More in Sport settings.
Exercises are shown as clean illustrations: the movement on a plain background, with nothing extra, so you see what to do at a glance. The team is exploring video and moving images. More in Exercise illustrations.
And with Pro or during your trial, you can ask your coach about any of this in chat. It already knows your week, and any change it suggests arrives on a card you Confirm. More in What you can ask your coach.