What’s with the tower?

Joseph Pilates, the inventor of this method that was originally called Contrology, made multiple machines designed to strengthen, mobilise and rehabilitate all kinds of people. While access to mat and reformer Pilates is becoming increasingly common and affordable, many Pilates punters never get to experience the other joyful apparatus that exists.

The tower actually wasn’t one of Joe’s inventions. It is a modern solution for recreating about 90% of the exercises from the largest piece of equipment in the apparatus library, the trapeze table or “Cadillac” (supposedly named after “the best” car because it was “the best” of his machines). The issue with the trapeze table is that it’s about the size of and slightly taller than a single bed, has four posts and “canopy” overhead and requires about a metre of clearance around it and 3m ceilings if you want to be able to practice all the exercises unrestricted. It’s great fun, but requires an outrageous amount of real estate.

Exquisitely adaptable, fiendishly clever.

This apparatus rewards the curious with movements that feel amazing.

The tower lowers the surface and removes the canopy, condensing the attachments from each end to all originate from one end, meaning many of the exercises that would be done around the machine can now be done standing on it and no-one is going to hit their head on the ceiling. The reformer/tower combo machine combines two separate pieces of equipment. By allowing us to convert the reformer top to a full length mat surface the mat work, reformer and tower repertoire can all be performed in the same space. It also means that there’s opportunity to create hybrid classes where the springs from both the reformer and tower can be used simultaneously to create some wonderful opposition.

We’re excited to be the first Pilates studio in Canberra to offer group tower classes to our students. We think it opens up so much more opportunity to expose people to different aspects of the Pilates method and our combo machines allow us to do this at a more accessible price point. You can learn a little more about the tower over on our Classes page.