Studio Pilates in Maida Vale

Two women, 700 hours of rigorous training, one school: if you want to get fit, Studio Pilates in Maida Vale is the place to do it, writes Bella Blissett

Alexandra Halamish and Stéphanie Guimond have the flattest stomachs you’ve ever seen. No mean feat given that 31-year-old Alexandra is mother to two-year-old Isaac, and Stéphanie, 36, is nearly four months pregnant with her first child.

Their secret, they say, is Pilates – but not just any type of Pilates. The two have undergone 700 hours of rigorous training and multiple exams to qualify as teachers of the ‘true’ Pilates method. Now their new Maida Vale school Studio Pilates is attracting everyone from post-pregnant mums to super-fit men, all looking to tone up, realign their posture and enjoy a challenging workout.

‘What makes this form of Pilates different from some of the other disciplines is the training and precision,’ says French-Canadian-born Stéphanie when we meet in the light, airy studio above Baker and Spice. ‘As teachers, there is no rote learning – we have to be able to do every exercise ourselves and actually feel the movements through our own bodies.’

Pilates originated in the 1920s when trainer Joseph H. Pilates created the system as a way of rehabilitating WWI injured victims. Now the list of celebrities who swear by it, from Jennifer Aniston and Jamie Lee Curtis to Hugh Grant and Patrick Swayze, is endless.

Both Stéphanie and Alexandra are living, breathing proof that it works for ‘real’ people too. Sitting posture-perfect in their workout gear (Stéphanie is a big fan of Sweaty Betty), they don’t look as though they have an untoned muscle between them. Since training in New York under Romana Kryzanowska – one of the original protégées of Joseph Pilates – they have both watched their bodies transform. In fact, the two women met when Alexandra attended one of Stéphanie’s classes in Primrose Hill four years ago.

‘I was in the studio from 7am until 5pm every day, heavily pregnant, while training to be a teacher,’ says Alexandra, who gave up a career as a primary school teacher to follow her passion. ‘But being pregnant gave me a unique insight into how exercise could be adapted to the changes that were occurring in my own body at the time. I’m in better shape now than I was before I had a baby.’

It’s little wonder, then, that the Grove’s yummiest mummies are flocking to get their pelvic floors strengthened and tummies tightened under Alexandra and Stéphanie’s expert guidance. ‘We’re not doctors or physios, we’re Pilates teachers,’ stresses Stéphanie. ‘But Romana Pilates is a truly wonderful method that really gets results.’ And frankly, she should know. As a professional ballet dancer in Holland, Stéphanie stumbled upon Pilates late on in her career. ‘I was dancing over 35 hours a week, yet once I started Pilates, my body changed completely and my concentration improved. It was thorough and challenging, and gave me longer and leaner muscles and helped correct imbalances in my body.’

It’s all starting to sound a bit too good to be true – especially when both Stéphanie and Alexandra insist that doing just two hours a week is enough to see changes in your body shape. And, unlike other forms of exercise, it’s designed to be non-intimidating – no matter who you are.

‘We have trained everyone from an eight year-old to a 78 year-old; individual sessions are always tailored to the client’s particular needs,’ says Stéphanie. Whether you’re someone who cycles a lot and is very fit (they’ll stretch out your quads and relieve aches and pains), or someone who does no exercise and spends all day slumped in front of a computer screen (they’ll see to your posture), they believe they can help.

Even men, no doubt jealous of their wives’ and girlfriends’ new svelte figures, are swapping the grunting, sweaty glory of the bench press for a Pilates session. ‘Men tend to assume it’s all a bit girly,’ says Stéphanie. ‘But they come in, try it and see how tough it is – and then they’re hooked too.’

Dotted around the studio, the specialist New York-made apparatus looks like something you’d see in a torture chamber. Yet it’s the combination of mat-work and equipment-based exercises that they claim keeps the exercise challenging. ‘Both types of exercise complement one another,’ says Stéphanie. ‘Because Pilates can always be adapted, there will never be a finite number of exercises – so your body should never grow out if it. If a client does get bored, you have to seriously start questioning your ability as a teacher.’

In any case, neither of them, with their combined 14 years of Pilates training, seems to be getting bored. Both are quite openly obsessed with the discipline and can’t even envisage a time when they won’t practice Pilates themselves. At the moment, Alexandra does at least one session a week and Stéphanie squeezes in some time between the eight to 10 clients she can train in one day.

And Maida Vale has proved to be the perfect location for them: mothers come after dropping the kids off at school; workers whose homes or offices are nearby fit in sessions around their hours. There are, of course, the enticements of Baker and Spice below them on the ground floor (‘amazing bread’) and Raoul’s nearby (‘great cappuccino’). After a few sessions with Alexandra and Stéphanie, you’ll even be able to enjoy both – and look great in your bikini this summer.

Studio Pilates, Maida Vale, W9; 07866 509510 (Alexandra) or 07971 022041 (Stéphanie)