Joan Breibert discovered Pilates decades before it became popular and has been a driving force behind the explosive growth of the discipline over the past few decades.
Joan Breibert, founder of the Physical Mind Institute, is known as one of the pioneers of the Pilates movement that took hold in the 1990s, but her encounter with Pilates began much earlier, in the 1960s.
“I’m 83 years old, and I started doing Pilates in the ’60s,” Breibert told Athletics News. “Nobody knew what Pilates was. Everybody was pronouncing it wrong. I kind of discovered it by accident.”
Prior to helping revolutionize the Pilates industry, Breibert had a diverse career spanning publishing and beauty, spending 10 years in publishing and 20 years in the beauty and hair industry where she developed her passion for fitness and wellness.
In 1987, the stock market crash prompted Breibert and her husband to move from New York to Santa Fe in semi-early retirement, and it is here that Breibert’s Pilates journey began in earnest.
“I met Amy Gentry, who was Joe Pilates’ (widely known as the inventor of Pilates) first teacher,” she says. “It was really by chance that this whole thing happened.”
Inspired by her meeting with Gentry and a newspaper article about the decline of aerobics’ popularity, Breibert decided to found the Pilates Method Institute (now the Physical Mind Institute) on her 50th birthday in 1991.
The Institute claims to have introduced the first Pilates certification program, the first Pilates matwork video, “The Pilates Way Workout,” and the first Pilates encyclopedia, “The Reformer Exercise.” Breibert also invented other innovations, such as the patented “Mini Reformer,” a foldable home machine, and the MVe Chair.
“At some point, I wanted to emulate Joe Pilates, who invented many things, including the foot orthotics,” Breibert says. “He was prolific. Inventors can’t stop inventing. They just have an idea and keep going with it.”
The physical and mental power of Pilates
Today, Pilates is one of the most popular training methods alongside yoga in the burgeoning boutique fitness sector, surpassing techniques like barre and HIIT.
Xponential Fitness’ Club Pilates is leading the way, with more than 1,000 studios open worldwide, and JetSet Pilates is also expanding rapidly, targeting 600 studios across the U.S. Solidcore, billed as a more intense version of the standard Pilates workout, plans to open 250 studios by 2028.
Breibert attributes Pilates’ current popularity to its broad appeal.
“Pilates can be tailored to suit a variety of fitness levels and needs,” she says, “and its method’s focus on precision, control and breath makes it accessible to a wide range of people. Pilates is destined to become what WeightWatchers is in 2012. It’s becoming the church of exercise.”
Pilates’ advantage over other exercise methods is primarily due to its mental health benefits, Briebert argues.
“These are complex movements that have a profound effect on the brain,” she says. “What I do in the morning is something most people can’t do in a month, and I credit that to Pilates.”
Breibert also emphasized the intricacy of movements and the importance of breathing in Pilates.
“These complex movements benefit your body in ways that an Apple Watch can’t measure,” she says, “and they benefit your brain. Breathing and everything we teach is based on specific patterns of inhaling and exhaling. Pilates’ focus on the synergy between the mind and the body is what sets it apart from other fitness modalities.”
A look at GLP-1 and the durability of Pilates
Breibert also sees Pilates’ involvement in the weight-loss space — she founded 80Bites, a weight-loss program that focuses on eating less — and strongly believes that Ozempic and other weight-loss drugs won’t bring more consumers into the fitness space, despite some predictions.
“This is just a ridiculous excuse,” she says of consumers’ claims that losing weight will make them more comfortable in the fitness world. “It used to be all about burning calories, but now it’s not. You have to learn what’s going on with your body.”
As Pilates has grown from a little-known exercise to one of the most popular in the world, Breibert believes the method’s evolution highlights an important lesson for the fitness industry.
“People don’t adopt new things easily; it takes time for innovations to be adopted, but once you see the benefits, you realize how valuable new ways of doing things are,” she says. “Pilates is more than just exercise; it’s a way of moving and living that has a positive impact on both the body and the mind. If it continues to innovate and adapt, I believe Pilates will remain a vital and transformative practice for many years to come.”
