It’s Monday night in Banchory, and my Pilates class is going as expected.
That’s to say, I’m lying lengthways on a foam roller, desperately trying not to fall off, my stomach muscles are on fire and the instructor has twice reminded me to breathe.
So far, so Pilates.
But uncomfortable positions and aching abs notwithstanding, there is something different about this class at the Pilates Hut next to Banchory golf course.
Around me, also trying not to fall off their big foam rollers, is a room filled entirely with men.
Pilates and its Harry Styles moment
Pilates is having a gender reckoning. Long considered the reserve of women, the fitness regime created by a World War I German airman is increasingly becoming a man’s world.
Top sports stars such as tennis player Andy Murray swear by its core-strengthening exercises, spiking interest among men looking to improve their own performances on the pitch, road or squat rack.
Then, earlier this year, Pilates for men reached its peak. A video on Instagram showed cultural icon of the moment Harry Styles taking a class in a London gym.
Suddenly, everyone wanted in.
But has Pilates fever has reached the men of the north-east? To find out, I signed on for a men-only session at the Pilates Hut.
At Pilates for men, it is come as you are
That the Pilates Hut even has a men-only session is a sign that something is going on.
Michelle Fottrell, who founded the Banchory business about a decade ago, started running a gent’s class on Tuesday mornings after noticing an increase in male customers.
As that filled up, she added the Monday 5pm slot that I’m booked in for.
She tells me all this when I turn up a few minutes early at the Pilates Hut on a beautiful sunny evening.
But I’m only half listening because I’m looking at a poster of the 100 core Pilates moves. All of them look uncomfortable.
You see, to my shame, I am afflicted by extraordinarily tight hamstrings, a condition that has caused embarrassment at the handful of yoga classes I’ve been to.
Yoga teachers, after watching me flail around like an upturned turtle for 60 minutes, always end up looking at me in the same way doctors view patients with rare and exotic diseases – with concern, but also professional excitement that maybe they could get a book out of this.
Michelle, however, waves away my concerns (just as all those yoga teachers did!) and says I’ll be fine.
The beauty of Pilates, she tells me, is that it is suitable for everyone. All of the movements can be scaled to suit any level of strength and flexibility.
My fears are soothed. I’m further reassured when the class starts and the man on the mat next to me shows up in jeans. It’s safe to assume none of us will be doing the splits.
Pilates trains the mind and the body
But what exactly is Pilates?
Michelle kindly gave me a potted history of the exercise – how it was invented by Joseph Pilates as a method for training both the mind and the body. Amazingly, Pilates used his time in the UK interned as a prisoner of the First World War to refine his exercises, bringing them to the US when he emigrated in 1925.
Michelle also told me how Pilates uses small movements under tension to strengthen muscles, particularly the core, which Joseph saw as crucial to maintaining balance and posture.
‘It certainly didn’t immediately click’
I get a more succinct definition from one of my classmates, Simon Richard, who has been going to the Pilates Hut for the past four years.
Speaking to me by phone before the class, Simon says Pilates is a lot like yoga, “but with less of the incense and chanting”.
This, Simon adds, is very much to his liking. The 70-year-old, who lives just outside Banchory in Strachan, is retired but keeps very active. I get the impression he would have little patience for the spiritual associations that come with some meditative exercises.
He tells me that his idea of a fun weekend is racing his grandchildren down a mountain bike trail or carving out turns on his snowboard.
Pilates, then, with its controlled movements and slower pace was initially difficult for him to understand.
“It certainly didn’t immediately click,” he says. “But it was after a couple of months, I thought, actually, yeah, I’m now starting to get there.”
He started Pilates because although he wanted to stay fit into old age, “the though of going to a gym and pumping weights didn’t really appeal”.
After four years, what he has gained is more than just a stronger body (though that is a plus – he says he’s much better these days at snapping his ski boots on).
He has also found a new mindset for exercise, one that men perhaps find more difficult to arrive at than women.
“[Pilates is] not about beating people,” Simon says. “It’s about taking your time, it’s about doing it properly, it’s about thinking it through, it’s about getting the breathing, right.
“Unlike playing squash or badminton or fighting to be faster up the hill than you were last time, it’s a very measured form of exercise, and it took me a while to get my head around that.”
The fearsome Reformer Pilates machine
Back in the class, Michelle sends me through to the room where the Pilates Hut keeps its equipment.
Pilates is designed to be a floor exercise but creator Joseph designed a range of machines to help his students work out.
Those machines are still in use today, carrying slightly archaic-sounding names such as the Cadillac and the Wunda Chair.
The Pilates Hut is one of the few gyms in the north of Scotland to have a full range of machines.
As instructor Rebecca shows me around I spot the Reformer, which is reportedly what Harry Styles likes to work out on.
It’s a fearsome looking implement – like a cross between a dog sled and a squat rack. And though it probably costs a few thousands pounds, with its chunky springs and wooden slats it still carries the ghost of something knocked up in a World War I internment camp.
I try it out and am soon grunting in pain as Rebecca takes me through some plank and pike moves.
The machine slides out underneath me and I somehow manage to remain bridged over my elbows and feet. Maybe I’m getting the hang of this.
A foundation to more bragging rights
The next piece of equipment goes less well. Rebecca makes me stretch out over the aptly named Ladder and Barrel (it comprises a ladder and a barrel).
But my hamstrings have other ideas and I can’t look Rebecca in the eye.
It’s those yoga classes all over again.
But Rebecca, a 20-year Pilates veteran, does help me get to the bottom of why the exercise is becoming more popular with men.
“People use it as a foundation for other sports,” she says. Pilates gives you the core strength to be better at whatever you like doing outside of the class.
So basically, what she’s saying is that Pilates gets you bragging rights over your rivals.
Yep, sounds like a man’s game to me.
The Pilates Hut is next to Banchory Golf Club. For information on joining and the men-only classes, click here.
