Happy 5th 🎉Birthday The Pilates RX!
Our very first instagram post from March 2020, and our old studio space on Alpine Street in Somerville!
A memo from Allie and our founding story…
For those of you who have yet to meet me (which still seems wild that this business has grown so much outside of me!), my name is Dr. Allie Duffy, PT and I am the founder of The Pilates RX. In honor of our 5th birthday 🎂 I thought I’d take this opportunity to share our story about how this little gig became not so little…
The Pilates RX officially opened our first brick and mortar space in March of 2020, so If you’re looking for social proof that our method works just know that not only did we survive but we thrived despite having to close our operations within 2 weeks of opening and running a “virtual” business for over 3 months and limited capacity for many months afterward. It was an adventure to say the least!
I never saw myself as a “business” person, and going into this “business” I’d simply planned to open a small studio for myself to treat patients and see my private pilates clients, and that would be it! I was going to give it a try for a few months (I even signed a month-to-month lease… lesson #1 for a small brick and mortar business, don’t do this!) and if it didn’t work out I’d go back to what I was doing before. I had no fancy plans for expansion or taking over the world with pilates. I had no formal business training (and trust me, a lot of things would have been much easier if I did but we learned a lot along the way!). But while I didn’t have a super formal business plan, I did have very clear intentions around how I envisioned The Pilates RX, and the care I wanted to provide. I’ll back up and share a little bit about the “why” behind this vision ✨:
I was a physical therapist “first”, and quickly became certified to teach pilates in the first year after finishing PT school. For the first 6 years of my career I worked as a PT in “one life” and taught pilates in another. I loved what I did but started to find gaps in both worlds with the care provided.
In the traditional physical therapy world I found the prescribed exercises to be overly simple with crappy feedback about form (quality of movement matters!). The exercises lacked application to real life, functional movements and frankly, were boring. As the PT, I did not have enough time with each individual patient nor could I look at the body holistically when I knew the long term fix was more complex than just focusing on the “pain point” at hand. The whole process felt sterile, reactive and “unfun”- I could understand why many patients were not overly motivated or excited by their care. And while this wasn’t a huge issue, it felt like the physical spaces where care was provided were equally uninspiring and drab.
Separately, in the pilates world I found there was a ton of variance in the skill sets and styles of instruction even within the same studio. While I wanted to refer my patients to do pilates for fitness, I struggled to find a consistent studio to refer them to. Some teacher certification programs required over 500 hours of practice in addition to a year of learning, while others were completed in just a single weekend. In the group class setting, as the instructor, there was not enough time or space for detailed assessment to carefully design a program that is safe and effective for different bodies, and many clients were brand new to pilates without knowing how or when to modify the program. I wanted something more out of both of my roles. Slowly, the vision for The Pilates RX became clear.
Our name “The Pilates RX” comes from the idea that pilates can be medicine, and can (and should) be prescribed to you in a specific dose / format / intensity / sequence just like we do with pharmaceuticals. I envisioned the care provided being joy filled, positive, patient and emphasizing quality over quantity. I didn’t want our version of “healthcare” to feel like a chore. In fact, I wanted the experience to feel luxurious rather than laborious. The studio space itself would be light, warm and inviting 🌱. I knew that physical therapy works, and while it’s not always sexy, I specifically designed our programs to hold our clients accountable and consistent to FINALLY get the results you should be getting. In my eyes, rehabilitation and fitness cannot be separate entities, so The Pilates RX would blend these two worlds. The care would be personalized, one-on-one and integrate fun yet functional and exciting movements with the pilates method. And for our pilates clients, we’d offer an expert level of instruction guided by our medical background, the latest research, and a comprehensive 500+ hour pilates teacher training.
And while I originally pictured carrying out this vision alone, I never could’ve anticipated the demand very early on, and turning away clients and patients who were so desperately seeking better care seemed like a crime. I’d also met Dr. Jess Forgione during this time who had a very similar experience to mine. It seemed like fate, and Jess bravely joined the team as our first employee in January 2021 and we have never looked back. Our team has grown to 5 treating clinicians, we moved into a much larger (and prettier 😉 space), have worked with hundreds of lovely clients who’ve trusted us with their care, and we’re just getting started.
If you are looking to move better, get stronger and more flexible, feel better, breathe better, address your injuries from a holistic root cause and find a long term, sustainable fitness routine through pilates - this is your place. If you want your fitness routine to be luxurious, perfectly tailored to your body, taught by experts while still being engaging and fun, our programs are designed exactly for you. And for our current clients who already know, love and trust our method, thank you for believing in us 🩷! We wouldn’t be here celebrating 5 years without you. This is way too long, so if you are still reading this THANK YOU for being here in our circle. The Pilates RX would be nothing without our incredible community of clients, local referral sources, friends and family near and far (some of you are pictured above 👆). Cheers to the next 5 🥂 (and beyond!).
