New Pilates studio, first of its kind in Myrtle Beach, hopes to make fitness more accessible
Stefanie Josephson is a true evangelist for Pilates. Ask her, and she’ll tell you about how the style of fitness saved her from pain related to years of volleyball injuries.
Her love for Pilates is so deep it’s almost unsurprising to hear that she left her last job in the “corporate world” to open her own studio. All it took for her to decide, she said, was one suggestion, and within a couple weeks she was in talks with Club Pilates, a national chain of studios, to open up their first location in North Myrtle Beach.
“I’ve been doing Pilates for six years. I used to play competitive volleyball, and I killed my knees, killed everything. I actually had stem cell regeneration surgery,” she said. “I walked out of P.T. and I said, ‘OK, what do I do now?’”
In those six years, Josephson has completed 890 Club Pilates classes.
This week, Josephson is hosting her first full Pilates classes after a soft opening last week that featured free intro Pilates classes. The 30-minute sessions allowed anyone who was interested in learning more to visit the studio, learn about what Pilates is and even take part in a short exercise to experience it firsthand.
“The challenge is we don’t invest in ourselves,” she said. “When we look at holistically and traditionally in the South where we live in this gluttonous, vacation paradise, so to speak, and fried everywhere. Health is not always (prioritized), but yet I’m amazed at the importance of health and wellness.”
What is Pilates?
Josephson’s Club Pilates franchise is one of the only standalone Pilates studios in the Grand Strand.
There are also a few studios in the area, including Pawleys Island Pilates and CoreWorks Inc: The Pilates Place, that do small classes with just a few people each, whereas Club Pilates has classes that can host up to 12 people. Other full-service gyms also offer Pilates group classes, such as Core Fitness Club in Myrtle Beach, which offers separate Pilates class memberships. Josephson’s Club Pilates focuses exclusively on Pilates classes, whereas most other local businesses teach Pilates as one offering of many.
But what, exactly, is Pilates?
Pilates was developed by a man named Joseph Pilates nearly a century ago, primarily as a way to help soldiers recover from injuries after World War I, according to the U.S. Army. In the decades since, Pilates grew in popularity for people seeking further rehabilitation after completing traditional physical therapy.
Here’s how the Cleveland Clinic, a leading health nonprofit, describes Pilates:
“Some of the principles that guide the Pilates method include concentration on each movement, use of the abdomen and low back muscles, flowing movement patterns that are precise and a steady and controlled breathing. Depending on the exercise, Pilates routines can be performed on specially-designed apparatuses, including a bed-like structure called a reformer, or on a mat or blanket. Pilates focuses more on muscle tone than building muscles and it specifically focuses on your core.”
At Club Pilates, members use “reformers,” which are specially designed, elevated exercise mats with springs and other equipment that allow users to do abdominal exercises that engage different parts of their body, including muscles that they don’t often use, Josephson said.
Josephson seems to have found the right niche for her fledgling business. Health and wellness has generally been a lacking area of economic development in the Grand Strand — there are few smoothie or salad shops, and even fewer cycling studios.
But Josephson already had more than 150 people signed up as members before she held Club Pilates’ first class. Josephson herself doesn’t live in the Grand Strand. She’s in Huntersville, N.C., but plans to move to the region soon.
“We did a lot of advertising and social media,” she said. “And then a lot of times, being based in this area, they like to talk to the owner. So I made a lot of the calls at night ... and I’ll tell you, the reception has been off the charts.”
One benefit her business offers in the age of COVID-19 is cleanliness. Unlike gyms that are cleaned a couple times a day, her mats are cleaned and sanitized between every use.
She’s overjoyed at all the interest, but what she cares about most is helping people in her community with Pilates the way it has helped her. Whether someone comes in just wanting to improve their overall fitness or recover from an injury, Josephson wants to help.
And her customer base is broad. The majority of them are between the ages of 40 and 60, she said, but she has members in their 20s all the way up to their 90s. Her instructor, Alexandra Brown, herself got into Pilates in college to help balance out her growth and recover from dance-related injuries.
“You won’t catch me running, ever,” Brown said. Yet she loves Pilates, a form of exercise that can involve using “a grown-up trampoline.”
One challenge is explaining again and again to newcomers what Pilates truly is, but Brown says she appreciates the chance to teach about something she loves.
“One of the main questions I get is, ‘Don’t you have to be flexible to do that?’ Like, no. My 90-year-old grandma comes in here and lays down and has a grand time,” Brown said.
Community interest
Krysta Rose was scrolling through Facebook late at night one evening when she came across a notice about the Club Pilates studio opening. She immediately woke her husband, overjoyed that she’d be able to start classes again.
Previously, Rose had taken Pilates classes in Wilmington but had to give up on her beloved exercise after moving to the Grand Strand. She raced to sign up and visited the studio last Wednesday, when it was open to the public for an informational purposes but not to host any classes.
“It’s life changing. Anybody can do it,” Rose said.
People like Rose are why Josephson decided to open this Club Pilates franchise. She knew the melting pot of the Grand Strand, a place where most “locals” actually came from elsewhere, would be the perfect place to set up the studio. She knew there were people who likely had heard of Pilates in their previous home cities and missed being able to do it once they moved here.
Rose is also the shining example of what Josephson loves about Pilates. At 62, Rose herself admits she’s not the most prototypical fitness lover. But Pilates makes exercise accessible for herself and people like her.
“One thing that I love about it: It’s also social,” Rose said. “Typically, you make a lot of friends. It’s very family oriented, and Stephanie’s place is going to be very much a community.”
Any of the classes can be adapted to accommodate a person’s age, physical disabilities or strength level. Each exercise can be increased or decreased in difficulty. To Josephson, Pilates is “fitness for everyone.”
“At any age, you need movement, you need to lengthen and strengthen. You need to build your core, you need to build a better balance,” Josephson said. “So you may be sitting with a 90-year-old, a 20-year-old, a 30-year-old, and they’re all here for the same reason. But it’s their journey, nobody else’s.”
Each member at the new Club Pilates studio has to pay an enrollment fee of $59-99 and then will be charged each month at a rate of about $29 per class.
At 152 members, Josephson is nearly a third away to her goal of just over 400 members for the studio. The studio will start out by offering 33 classes a week and will add more as more people request them. And if Josephson reaches her goal for membership, she’ll look at opening another studio, likely farther south in the Grand Strand.
“It’s very important to me that we support where we live, and so then if it gets too big, then it’s time to look at opening another studio,” she said. “It’s not about me. It’s about them and their journeys. The minute I start losing sight of that I may as well walk away.”
Club Pilates is located at 1224 Hwy 17 N in North Myrtle Beach.
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to clarify that Josephson’s Club Pilates studio is the first of its kind — focusing only on Pilates and offering large group classes — in the Myrtle Beach area and noting that other full-service gyms locally offer their own Pilates classes.
This story was originally published August 29, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
