Are you not entertained?

Photo: Neighbors of the Wasatch Back // Dana Klein.

There is a correct way to do and teach Pilates, according to Lesly Levy, founder of Pilates on Tap. An instructor for nearly three decades, she adheres to the original method developed by Joseph Pilates, a German-circus-performer-turned-fitness-luminary (whom she calls “Joe” throughout our conversation). Lesly is charmingly hardcore about preserving Classical Pilates the way Joe insisted it be practiced, and she is annoyed with Contemporary Pilates, to put it mildly.

“The unfortunate reality these days is that a teacher will try to entertain their student, and they’ll give them a different exercise every single time they come in, and that’s not the point of Pilates. The point of the method of Pilates is to learn to control your body with the basic exercises first,” she argues. “A new exercise is given to a student as a gift. It’s not to entertain them; it’s a gift because their body is now moving better, and they can handle this next exercise.”

Classical Pilates is rigorous and systematic, with an ethic familiar to anyone trained in traditional martial arts, ballet, or gymnastics. Since 2004, Lesly has been a teacher of teachers in this world, leading instructor certifications nationwide as far away as South Korea. She’s written curriculums, certification programs, and more than 20 workshops for Power Pilates, a global organization that certifies teachers in the classical method. 

Lesly’s beef with using Pilates for entertainment stems, in part, from life here in Park City. Everyone wants to keep skiing, biking, pickleballing, and golfing, but usually without doing the hard (and at times boring) work to maintain a body that can handle it. “I think in general with people, they want a quick fix,” she says. “That’s not what this is. This is a lifelong journey.”

For Lesly, that journey started when she stopped smoking cigarettes in 1984, on the day she wed her husband, Alan. “I quit smoking, gained a lot of weight really fast, and I said, ‘Either I go back to smoking, or I get fit.’ Once I joined the gym, I fell in love with fitness.”

One day at a gym in Westchester County, New York, a woman approached Lesly for training advice. Lesly said she couldn’t help; she wasn’t a trainer. The woman persisted. She wanted to learn from a mother of two, not from the young meatheads who staffed the gym. “So, I started thinking about it, and I became a personal trainer in 1992,” Lesly says. 

She taught it all: group fitness, step, weight training, and yoga. Then she discovered Pilates in 1997 and was hooked. “It was everything I’d been doing, but all in one compact unit.” 

In 2003, Lesly met Bob Leikens, who served as her mentor for the next 10 years. Bob was a student of Romana Kryzanowska, who trained under Joseph Pilates and was known as his protégé. 

“Contrology,” as Joe named his practice, is a method to strengthen and stretch the body through balanced, coordinated movements that start from the core. “It’s not about getting anywhere in Pilates or going anywhere,” Lesly says. “It’s just about doing your best and trying to balance your flexibility and your strength simultaneously while you move.”

Classical equipment, most famously the spring-loaded reformer, forces the body to work as an integrated whole. “If you don’t have classical equipment, you can’t teach Classical Pilates,” Lesly explains.

The instructor has a defined role. “First and foremost, you never get on the floor with your students,” Lesly insists. “You can’t see them if you’re exercising, and their alignment is going to be off by watching you instead of moving properly. You’re there to teach them, to watch them, to give them little subtleties that will help them get deeper into the work.”  

Classical Pilates starts with the beginner system, and every class opens with warmup movements from that foundation. Lesly gives the example of the Pilates Hundred, which resembles a hollow hold but with arm pumps and coordinated breathing. The Hundred is always the warmup in Classical mat classes because it prepares the body for subsequent movements. Lesly is genuinely bothered that Contemporary Pilates studios often skip it.  

Lesly became Park City’s Contrology missionary due, in part, to Covid. She and Alan were living in Manhattan when the pandemic hit. Shortly after, Alan was diagnosed with a brain tumor. After a 10-hour surgery and months of rehabilitation (including Pilates with Lesly), New York was still locked down. Alan began driving out to Westchester daily to play golf and realized he was done with the city.

“Okay, where would you like to move?” she remembers asking. 

Florida, suggested Alan. “I’m not going to Florida,” said Lesly, who was raised in Chicago. “Too humid, too hot. And you’re a skier. When are you going to be in Florida?”

Lesly pitched Colorado. It was too hard to get there, countered Alan. 

“What about Park City?” ventured Lesly. In 2021, they stayed at a friend’s home in Park City for 10 days, just to try it out. They bought a house during the trip.  

Today, Pilates on Tap operates from that home, in Lesly’s studio. In person, she offers private lessons only. Online, she teaches classes and privates.

Lesly’s family does Pilates, of course. Her daughter, Samantha, joins her mom’s virtual classes from Manhattan. Her son, Matthew, and daughter-in-law, Sofia, go to a Contemporary Pilates studio near their home in the Catskills (“I’m not real happy about it,” Lesly notes). Their daughter, Maya, will go Classical if her grandmother has anything to say about it. Gizmo, the Levys’ 11-pound, 11-year-old Maltese, is luckily safe from this debate. 

While Alan practices Pilates, “He says every time I give him a lesson, it hurts more,” Lesly shares with a mischievous grin. “I’m just a little bit more forceful, so he doesn’t like to study with me too much, because I push on him a little bit and get him to stretch a little bit more.”

A side note for the uninitiated reader: This is the quintessence of a Jewish marriage, a topic on which this writer is well-versed. Alan claims he’s being tortured while Lesly believes that Alan should be thanking her for it, not kvetching about it. 

The Classical method, Lesly believes, “is a way to balance your body, so that everything else you do outside of the studio gets better. And that was really the intention of Joe—not that you should only do Pilates.” It’s about developing “functional strength” for daily life and for the mountain sports many of us enjoy on the Wasatch Back. 

That motivates Lesly to keep on the journey. “As a teacher, as a student of Pilates, I am always looking to keep my body in that balance zone, balancing that stretch, that strength, that mindfulness, trying to keep my body in good functional shape at 65 so that I can then go out and ride a bike, so I can go hit a golf ball, so I can go skiing. So I can go hiking and live life fully.”

Isn’t that what every active person wants? To get there, perhaps we must resist the temptation to be entertained—and maybe complain less when our spouse tries to help.