Community Business: The Pilates Center for Fitness and Therapeutic Conditioning | Williamsburg Yorktown Daily

Mary-Jane Bell Amrein has been a fitness instructor since 1981. She owned a gym, Aerobics Plus, for 20 years before introducing Pilates to the mix.

“The last three years I had the business I thought it was just another form of exercise like water aerobics, step aerobics, circuit training, aerobics classes, and then I discovered it was very different.” Amrein continued, “People who were having problems with their backs weren’t having pain anymore, when I introduced the reformer Pilates workout into the gym, nobody had heard of it, including the staff and members.”

In 2002 Amrein decided to narrow her focus and opened the Pilates Center for Fitness and Therapeutic Conditioning, “We were actually the third place in Virginia to offer Pilates, and as you can see, it has really grown exponentially countrywide because of the benefits and how good it feels for people.”

With a mission to improve health and fitness, the studio provides education to both staff and clients through a number of opportunities. Many of the instructors have traveled all over the country to obtain training.

Through muscle testing and then activating, Amrein can determine how many exercise repetitions will actually strengthen a muscle (and conversely not weaken that muscle). MAT “turns on the muscle” but it doesn’t strengthen the muscle — that is the job of pilates. With the MAT process, the cause of the problem can typically be determined in as few as three sessions, she explains.

This technique can be an effective and quick approach to “turning on muscles that aren’t working”, said Amrein. “Then Pilates will strengthen those muscles that weren’t working, so it is a wonderful two-part system for helping people improve your fitness and health.”

The studio serves a wide variety of ages; from high school athletes to people in their 90s.

“Pilates is so versatile that it can meet the needs of those recovering from surgery or trying to avoid surgery to those who are very fit and competitive athletes. We are able to help those with multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, recovering from stroke, golfers, gardeners, Pickleball players. In other words, meeting the needs of a huge variety of people (and) a huge variety of fitness levels.”

The majority of the clients work one-on-one with instructors for training.