How hard is a reformer class?
At most moderate for your heart and lungs, by every measurement so far, and not necessarily light for the muscles your lifting needs. Researchers grade effort in METs, multiples of resting energy use. On the 2024 Adult Compendium's scale, general Pilates is 2.8 METs, inside its light band, while weight training with several exercises of 8 to 15 reps is 3.5 and squats and deadlifts are 5.0, both only moderate. A heavy squat session and a class sit a couple of points apart on that scale, which shows what a MET leaves out: how hard one muscle group was worked.
Measured directly, Pilates comes out at about 3.0 METs. That is the most reliable estimate in a 2026 review by Vitor and colleagues of six small studies in healthy young adults, mostly women new to Pilates, and its certainty is low to very low. The reformer was tested once: 2.5 METs, against 1.8 on the mat, in 18 inactive young women doing single sets of ten with two-minute rests. Sessions with short rests measured higher than those with long ones, and no study has measured a fast, athletic class. The authors describe Pilates as primarily a form of localized muscular resistance exercise, and warn that heart rate may not reflect its metabolic intensity.
A class can ask little of your heart and lungs and still tire your thighs, glutes or trunk. That local fatigue, not the MET figure, is what the rest of this page schedules around. If your class is fast, with short rests and heavy springs under your legs, plan it as you would a leg session.
Pilates before or after weights?
No study has tested a reformer class followed by lifting, or the reverse. The nearest evidence comes from research on the order of exercises inside a lifting session, and it points one way: whatever comes first gets your best effort.
- First gets more. A 2012 review by Simão and colleagues found more total repetitions when an exercise is placed at the beginning of a session, and, over weeks of training, greater strength gains in untrained people for the first exercise of a sequence and smaller ones for the last.
- Strength follows the order; muscle growth does not. A 2021 meta-analysis of 11 studies by Nunes and colleagues concluded that strength gains are largest in the exercises done at the beginning of a session, while muscle growth was similar in either order.
- The position stand agrees. The American College of Sports Medicine's 2026 overview of 137 systematic reviews in healthy adults lists two things among those that enhanced strength: loads of 80% or more of your one-rep maximum, and doing the exercise at the beginning of the session.
The Simão review also suggests ordering exercises by priority, as your training goal sets it. Read across to a class, and the order follows the goal. If strength is the goal, lift first; a hard class before heavy squats spends some of the leg and trunk effort the bar needs. If the class is the session you care about most, take it first and make the lifting the lighter session that day. That is our reading; the order studies used lifts, not Pilates.
Long holds before lifting
If your class includes long held stretches, that is a small extra reason to lift first. A 2013 meta-analysis of 104 studies by Simic and colleagues found that static stretching before exercise cut strength by about 5.4% on average, more in held, isometric tests, with the smallest losses when the total stretch lasted 45 seconds or less. The effect did not depend on age, sex or fitness, and the authors advise against static stretching as the only warm-up. The same stretches after the lifting cost that session nothing. The one trial of Pilates stretching itself found no cost: in 102 trained young adults, three 30-second Pilates or static stretches for each muscle group before testing did not change knee strength, and the authors judged both fine before strength training. Treat long holds as a small, uncertain cost that matters most when heavy lifting comes straight after.
How long between them?
If both have to share a day, hours help, and the cost seems to fall on the muscles the first session used. In a study of 16 men by Sporer and Wenger, leg press repetitions were lower 4 and 8 hours after aerobic training and back to normal at 24, and the authors judged that the impairment appears "localized to the muscle groups involved". That was aerobic work, not a class, but the principle carries: a leg-heavy class costs your leg lifting most, and costs a pressing or pulling session very little.
In practice, lift first and take the class later. If the timetable puts the class first, leave as many hours as you can, or make that day's heavy lifting the upper body. Running has its own version of this question, answered in Pilates and running, and indoor cycling has its own in indoor cycling and weights. Other pairings are in crossovers.
Reformer the day after leg day?
A gentle class, yes. It is light work, and the springs can be set lighter. An athletic class that works the legs hard is different, and you will feel it.
- Sets to failure take a day or two to clear. When Morán-Navarro and colleagues had 10 resistance-trained men bench press and full squat, sets taken to failure slowed recovery for up to 24 to 48 hours compared with the same work stopped short of failure.
- Soreness costs range and force. A review of delayed onset muscle soreness by Cheung and colleagues notes that it can reduce joint range of motion and peak torque. It advises athletes who train daily to ease intensity and duration for 1 to 2 days after work that makes them sore, or to train the body parts less affected.
So the morning after heavy squats, an athletic leg-heavy class asks a lot of legs that are still recovering, and the class will feel harder than usual. Set the springs lighter, choose a class that leans on the trunk and upper body, or move it a day. The reverse holds too: an athletic leg class shortly before your heavy leg day means starting the squats tired.
The same review advises bringing in new or unfamiliar activities over 1 to 2 weeks. A lifter trying reformer for the first time, or a reformer regular starting to lift, should expect soreness in unfamiliar places and build up rather than jump in at full effort.
Does reformer replace lifting?
That depends on what you want from the class, and the question has its own page: is reformer Pilates enough strength training. This page assumes you lift to get stronger, so it treats the class and the lifting as two sessions to schedule, not one to choose between, and does not count the class as your lifting.
If you are training for HYROX alongside a studio habit, read HYROX and reformer Pilates.
What about barre?
The same logic, judged by how leg-heavy the class is. Researchers who ran a barre class for people with Parkinson disease described barre as combining elements of classical ballet with strength training, with high repetitions of low-impact movements. Classes vary in how much of the hour goes on the legs, so judge yours by how your thighs and hips feel at the end.
A barre class that leaves your legs burning sits with your leg work: after the lifting on a shared day, or on a different day from heavy squats and deadlifts. One that spreads the work across arms, trunk and legs behaves more like a gentle reformer class and fits most days.
The evidence here is thinner than for Pilates. We found no study measuring how hard a barre class is or how it sits next to lifting, and the 2024 Compendium has no barre entry. Treat this section as our reading of the reformer and lifting research, not as a measured result. For how barre and other classes compare, see the classes guide.
A weekly split with two classes and two lifts
Start with the class type and the lifting day it meets. The table below is the whole page in one place.
| Class | Heavy leg day | Upper-body day | Day with no lifting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gentle reformer: slow, long rests, mostly trunk and range | After the lifting, or another day | Before or after; the order barely matters | Fine. It makes an easy day |
| Athletic reformer: fast, short rests, lots of legs and trunk | Another day. If it must share, lift first and leave hours between | After the lifting, or before it if the class matters more | The best place for it |
| Barre | Another day, or after the lifting | Either order | A good place for it |
Then build the week. Here is one way to fit two classes and two lifting sessions around each other.
| Day | Session | Why it sits there |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Lift A, legs first: a squat and a hinge such as a Romanian deadlift, then a press | Fresh legs after the weekend, so the heaviest work gets your best effort |
| Tuesday | Rest | Soreness after heavy leg work is the reason to ease off for a day or two |
| Wednesday | Reformer class, any style | Two days after heavy legs, at the end of the day or two the soreness review advises easing off; if your legs are still sore, set the springs lighter |
| Thursday | Lift B, upper body: a press, a row, a pull-down, plus light split squats | Mostly upper body, so the leg and trunk work in the class the day before matters least |
| Friday | Rest | Nothing on it |
| Saturday | Reformer or barre class | Five days after Monday's heavy legs, with Sunday free before the next ones |
| Sunday | Rest | Nothing on it, so Monday starts fresh |
If your classes fall on other days, keep the shape rather than the days: heavy legs well away from a leg-heavy class, and lifting before the class on any day they share. If you lift more often or take more classes, the same two rules still sort the week.
Add your class on You: under SPORTS STACK, tap + ADD and look under GROUP CLASSES, where Reformer Pilates and Barre are both listed. 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. A 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.
With Pro or during your trial, adding a class, changing its settings or removing it rebuilds your plan. Moving a single session does not, and nothing is rewritten on a timer. More in When your plan changes.
With Pro or during your trial, if a lifting session sits somewhere you would rather it did not, ask your coach 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 and Apply a change from chat.
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.