before anyone comes for me, let me be clear. i have nothing against pilates. if you love your reformer class and it makes you feel strong and mobile and centered, i am genuinely happy for you. keep going.
but if your goal is to look "toned," and pilates is the only thing you are doing to get there, we need to talk. because the result you are picturing in your head and the stimulus pilates provides to your muscles are not the same thing, and the fitness industry has done a fantastic job of making you believe otherwise.
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what âtonedâ actually means
the word "toned" gets thrown around constantly in women's fitness, and it almost never gets defined. when most women say they want to look toned, what they are describing is visible muscle definition. shoulders with shape, arms that look firm, glutes that are round, legs that have lines. that look requires two things:
enough muscle mass to create shape, and a low enough body fat percentage to see it.
there is no third option. there is no magic quality called "tone" that you can develop through specific movements. toning is not a physiological process. what people call toned is simply muscle plus leanness. and building muscle requires a certain type of stimulus that pilates, by design, does not provide enough of.
why pilates falls short for muscle building
muscle grows in response to mechanical tension. this is not an opinion, it is one of the most well-documented principles in exercise science. mechanical tension induced by resistance training is the primary driver of muscle hypertrophy, triggering the signaling pathways that increase protein synthesis and ultimately make your muscles grow.1 in other words, you need to load a muscle with enough resistance, progressively increase that resistance over time, and do enough volume to trigger adaptation and maintain that stimulus.2
this is what strength training with weights does. you squat heavier this month than last month, your muscles adapt by growing. and the evidence is clear that this works for women, not only for men. a recent systematic review and meta-analysis covering 126 studies and over 4,000 female participants found that resistance training significantly improves muscle mass and body composition in women across all ages.3
now, here's the thing. pilates uses bodyweight, springs, and bands. these can be challenging, especially for beginners, and they absolutely improve muscular endurance, core stability, and flexibility. but the resistance is limited, and the ability to progressively overload is minimal compared to a barbell or a set of dumbbells. you can only make a spring so much harder. you can add 2.5 kg to a barbell every week for months.
this does not make pilates bad. it makes it a different tool for a different job. a screwdriver is great, but if you need to hammer a nail, it is not the right choice.
the marketing problem
here is where i get frustrated. pilates is marketed to women as the path to a âlong, lean, sculptedâ body. studios use images of slim, defined women and imply that the reformer is what got them there. the language is always the same. lengthen, sculpt, tone. never âbuild muscleâ or âget stronger,â because that sounds too aggressive for the audience they are targeting.
and that is the real issue. it is not pilates itself, it is the story around it. women are steered toward low-resistance, low-intensity exercise and told it will give them the body they want, while the thing that would actually get them there (lifting heavy, eating enough protein, being patient for a year or two) gets positioned as too masculine, too bulky, too much.
the women in those pilates ads who look âtonedâ? most of them also lift weights. or they are naturally lean with a body type that shows definition easily. the reformer is part of their routine, not the whole thing.
if you pay enough attention youâll get what i mean. most pilates influencers have the same speech:
âi was doing a lot of strength training and i was bulky, and now iâm doing only pilates and my body completely changed.â
what theyâre not telling you is that they probably did a cut to lose fat so their muscles would show, the same muscles that were builtâguess how? lifting weights. but now they want to sell their pilates program, so they preach that the lean body they have was built only doing pilates đ
you can do pilates and strength training
if you love pilates, keep doing it. it is good for mobility, core strength, body awareness, and it can be a great complement to a strength training program. i am not asking you to quit.
but if you have been doing only pilates for months and wondering why your body is not changing the way you expected, this is probably why. you are missing the stimulus that builds muscle. adding two or three strength training sessions per week with actual weights, compound movements, and a plan for progressive overload will do more for the âtonedâ look in three months than another year of reformer classes alone.
you do not have to choose one or the other. but you do need to be honest about what each one can and cannot do. and right now, the industry is not being honest with you about that.
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Mechanisms of mechanical overload-induced skeletal muscle hypertrophy, Physiological Reviews, 2023 - (10.1152/physrev.00039.2022)
Resistance training variables for optimization of muscle hypertrophy: An umbrella review, Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 2022 - (10.3389/fspor.2022.949021)
It's never too late: The impact of resistance training on strength and body composition in females across the lifespan, systematic review and meta-analysis, 2026 - (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsams.2026.03.002)