Mat Pilates vs. Reformer Pilates: Why Choose One When You Can Learn Both?

A Reformer on the Mat class is a super fun way to learn Pilates, strengthen your reformer class experience and play with your strengths!

I’m a comprehensively-trained Pilates teacher who has taught hundreds of mat Pilates classes and 2,000+ hours on apparatus, including the reformer. My students range in age from 12 to 80+, and they learn to move their bodies with control and intention so that they get stronger and feel better all day.

Reformer on the Mat Pilates classes are fun, curious ways to go deeper with Pilates and understand it as a method and system of movement to feel better and stronger.

Discovering the connections between Mat Pilates and Reformer Pilates will empower you to approach every class with confidence and curiosity. Our unique Reformer on the Mat class bridges the gap, blending the powerful, traditional order of Mat exercises with the dynamic movements of over a dozen Reformer exercises—

achievable without the apparatus, instead using simple, portable props like elastic bands, exercise balls, foam rollers, and the Pilates Magic Circle.

What Does It Mean to “Do Reformer” on the Mat? Or Mat Pilates on the Reformer?

Learning and practicing Pilates since 2012, I’ve had countless “Aha!” moments—those light bulb flashes where I understand my body (or myself) and my students a little better.

One major insight, my "Pilates lightning bolt," struck while teaching online mat classes and completing my Cadillac teacher training. Though I describe my mat classes as "traditional" not "classical," I value the strategic, systematic order of the exercises in the Pilates Mat work as described in the book Return to Life by Joseph Pilates. This framework ensures we build a strong foundation: we breathe, warm up the spine, challenge its stability with arm and leg movements, and then explore its strength and mobility through flexion, rotation, and extension. This full-body approach avoids exhausting a single muscle group, keeping us moving and strengthening our core muscles in our relationship with gravity, which improves how you move all day.

Exercises on Pilates apparatus teach bodyweight awareness and control. Practicing mat exercises help us acquire these important skills (and maybe faster). (shown: Parakeet on the Tower (or Trapeze Table/Cadillac, also called Mini Reverse Tower or Shoulder Roll Down. It uses skills we learn in shoulder bridge and single straight leg stretch on the mat.)

The classical mat order became my essential blueprint for teaching on apparatus, too. And because my mat students also liked reformer classes, I was integrating "reformer exercises" into my mat classes with props.

While teaching group reformer classes, the second "Ah-ha!" hit: students who consistently did a little mat Pilates homework progressed noticeably faster than those who were "reformer-only." This reinforces that Pilates is both a mental and physical practice. While the Reformer offers fantastic tactile feedback, built-in resistance, and a somatic sensation of movement, mat exercises excel at cultivating internal control and body awareness. It teaches you to feel strong and in control of your own movement -- the ultimate goal.

I started challenging my students in group reformer classes to know and learn mat Pilates exercises, using the carriage and long box to take away surface area. When we have understanding of essential mat Pilates exercises, we are empowered to “do Pilates” wherever we are.

And: we all have learning and re-learning curves. To practice Pilates means to practice, re-learn exercises. I especially remember struggling to learn and re-learn Rowing 1 and 2, “rowing to the back” – because every Pilates teacher is still a Pilates student.

Creating Resistance: How We Transform Reformer Exercises into Bodyweight Challenges

In our “Reformer on the Mat” class, you get to experience the Mat and Reformer exercises as partners. We strategically use props to either add resistance (like the springs on a Reformer) or provide assistance (like the feedback of the carriage) depending on your body's needs.

For instance, in a familiar Mat exercise like the Single Leg Stretch, we add an elastic band for resistance and assistance, showing us where we want to engage as we bend and straighten our legs. Another way to challenge our core awareness is to add instability with a ball under our hips.

We transform dynamic Reformer exercises into powerful bodyweight challenges simply by removing the machine’s assistance. Without the Reformer, we can do exercises including:

• Footwork with an elastic band to mimic the pushing against the footbar

• Leg Circles, with the stabilizing support of a foam roller -- or instability of a ball

• Short Box abdominal exercises like Climb a Tree and Side Overs / Side Sit up

• Coordination with or without hand weights or an elastic band

• Backstroke.

  
  

These exercises are a fun and sneaky way to discover your strengths, revealing ways the Reformer may be helping you and encouraging you to play with your own power.

From Rowing to Chest Expansion: Bringing Reformer Resistance to the Mat

It’s fun to "borrow" the Reformer's unique resistance exercises for your Mat practice. For example, we bring exercises like:

• Rowing Front Series: Hug a Tree, Shaving, Serving

• Rowing Back 1 and 2, Chest Expansion, and Thigh Stretch

to the Mat! By using elastic bands, you can experience the same deep-seated strength and control as you would on the machine, even for single arm exercises like Swakate, Archer, Draw a Sword, and more.

Foam Roller Exercises Make Pilates Accessible Anytime

The foam roller is the perfect, versatile prop to fully explore "Reformer on the Mat," especially for mobility exercises such as Stomach Massage, Knee Stretches, and Pelvic Curls—creating that satisfying "heat and sizzle" in your muscles.

If you love the Reformer for its ability to deliver both strength and stretch, then you'll love how we borrow mobility movements from Reformer leg exercises such as Front Splits, Side Splits, and Eve’s Lunge. Doing them on the Mat helps you stretch and strengthen your hips, inner thighs, and the backs of your legs with incredible control, making Pilates accessible wherever you are.

The Goal: Teaching Your Body to Be the Machine is Pilates 2.0

What’s the ultimate point of blending Mat and Reformer? It's about achieving Control, Focus, and Connection. Your body is the machine —the apparatus is the tool.

Doing Pilates means committing to a journey of learning, and the more you learn, the more efficient and effective your movement becomes.

Practicing these bodyweight exercises—whether they originated on the Mat or the Reformer—teaches you the critical skills of creating your own internal resistance and assistance. This is how you cultivate the deep body awareness and control that are absolutely non-negotiable skills for moving confidently in life, even on a moving surface like a Reformer carriage.

For students wanting to advance in group reformer classes, adding a mat Pilates class is an affordable and efficient way to strengthen the skills required for a more advanced Pilates practice.

Curious about starting Pilates? Or want to level up to a 2.0 group reformer class?

Book a call with me (or a class) here.