 Happy Birthday, Pilates Native! The story behind Pilates Native is one of luck and timing. Fourteen years ago, in a city far, far away…I was living in Houston, laid-off from my engineering job and wondering what to do. My friends at Spine and Sports Therapy were hiring, and brought me on as their Sports Therapist. They sent me to get my Pilates and Stretch certifications and gave me free reign to design the Therapy programs for patients working through their sports injuries with chiro. A first year teacher will usually do a few sessions a week, building up their client base and gaining momentum. I hit the ground running, with a 40 hour a week workload. I loved the work and the clients, but the hours were killing me. After teaching literally thousands of sessions in just two years, I was burned out. When my old Engineering Manager called, I happily went back to Welding Engineering. Luckily, my brother owned “The Fit Box”, a local kickboxing studio in Denver, and I kept teaching Pilates and offering stretch sessions every time I came back home. When we moved back to Denver, I was able to teach and stretch regularly, something I had missed wholeheartedly. Four years ago, the evolution comethFour years ago, I was renting a small office space in Lakewood and working remotely as a Welding Engineer. The space was big enough to fit my personal reformer, so I brought it to the office, with the intention of working out during lunch breaks to help combat my terrible desk posture. After a few weeks, I figured I could probably teach a few sessions a week on Friday afternoons and cover the rent on the space fairly easily. One Facebook post later, I had three clients and three pre-paid six-week packages to fulfill. Suddenly, I was running a business…Cue scene: Late night research on small businesses, scrambling to put together an LLC, drafting a business plan, basically hitting the ground running…again… I named the first iteration of the studio “Engineered Evolution”, inspired by the idea that we weren’t just working out, we were intentionally evolving the way we moved and how we thought about movement. I had also learned a few things from my last go round and decided this business would run intentionally and be engineered towards my ambivert personality. No burn-out for this round. After a few weeks, those three clients told three friends and pretty soon, I had added lunch sessions to the schedule, three days a week. From there, the ball just kept rolling and “The Beast”, my first real commercial reformer, replaced the home reformer. Engineered Evolution rebranded as Pilates Native, a nod to my Grandparents, our Colorado roots and the idea that movement is native to the body. Pilates Native moved into The Green Mountain Wellness Center in July 2020, The Beast was replaced by Bumble Bee in ‘21, and I quit engineering to run Pilates Native full time in ‘22. We’ve added a few folks to the team, started running instructor training, made some friends and had a bang-up good time along the way. It is with a heart bursting that I’m so happy to announce that Pilates Native turns four on October 11th!!! To celebrate, I’m going full ‘90’s mode and making t-shirts! If you’d like to join me in this awesome milestone celebration and snag a t-shirt, here’s how. 1) Check out the t-shirt design and size chart below. 2) Venmo $30 to me @pilatesnative. Include your name & t-shirt size in the Venmo memo. Be sure to designate Men’s or Women’s sizing. *If you’re not local, shoot me a message first so we can figure out shipping. 3) Celebrate by eating chocolate and doing Pilates in your awesome new t-shirt. I’m ordering shirts on Monday Sept 25th. If you want one, please have your orders in by then. Have an awesome day! Cheers! -Rubecca    |
