BodyLux Pilates will have their grand opening and establish themselves as the second pilates studio located on 1350 E. Pacheco Blvd on April 14. Founded by two young women, Amelia Toscano and Lauren Buttrey, these ladies are ready to bring their love of pilates to town.
Developed by Joseph Pilates, the studio specializes in reformer pilates, but there are many types of pilates. With every type it focuses on breath work, core stability, and alignment with your body.
Pilates revolves all around your core strength and BodyLux uses resistance with springs instead of weights, hence reformer pilates.
Toscano said, “We use state of the art reformer machines and wanted to be able to perform pilates in the way it is meant to be exercised. We created an environment to practice true pilates as it was designed.”
BodyLux practices classical pilates and revolves their classes around that concept. The environment of the studio gives a feeling where clients can practice their breath work and feel that mind-body connection. They want their clients to experience the true form of pilates and feel in touch with their inner selves.
So far there is only one location, but there are plans to expand in the near future. With the expansion, they would like to offer different types of pilates classes. The location they have fits their studio very well and they feel very fortunate that there is a supportive community in Los Banos to help support it.
Buttrey said, “We didn’t need anything that was extremely large because we knew that we mainly wanted to focus on reformer pilates for right now. There’s a really good community in this specific strip mall right here and all the owners are really nice and we just felt like it was a good place for us to be.”
When it comes to the workouts that are offered, BodyLux focuses more on beginner pilates as the community isn’t really familiar and use to the style of pilates workouts. There are introduction classes that go over the parts of the reformer, safety while using it, and how to use the reformer properly during workouts. These classes are available to all members.
To up the intensity, there is what they call ‘Jump Board’ which are classes for those who have tried reformer pilates before. Intermediate clients will be able to join that class knowing their abilities on the reformer.
For those who want to join, “We will have memberships available on a subscription basis, so you can pay monthly for a membership or you can buy them as class packs. This means you can buy a group of classes and use them within a year or even do a drop in class and pay for a single class,” said Toscano.
Toscano has been practicing fitness for most of her life and has done various forms of exercise such as Crossfit and is a certified spin and pilates instructor. She has found that pilates has been her favorite as it’s science based and all about movement.
She was a well loved chemistry teacher at Los Banos High School, but found more of a passion in fitness. Toscano had been teaching for three years, but will keep on instruction in a different atmosphere.
Her business partner Buttrey went to Fresno State and used to own a cold press juice business, which was open for a year, but then she decided to sell it. She is an athlete and played a lot of water sports in high school. One of her jobs at Orangetheory Fitness taught her a lot about fitness studios and how to work in them. Taking one pilates class made her fall in love with the workout style and she decided to take her love for it to the next level.
“Pilates is something that can be done long term and is not super hard on your joints and is low impact,” said Buttrey.
From start to finish, it took the ladies three months to open. Everything lined up for them perfectly and since they are really passionate about pilates, things worked out much easier for them.
One thing to note is that “Every body is a pilates body. Anyone can do it. Don’t be intimidated by the reformer. It is just a piece of equipment that is there to assist your body into becoming the best body possible,” said Toscano.
Don’t knock pilates out until you try it! Give everything a chance because some may reveal a passion for pilates that they never knew they had. Go out and support another one of Los Banos’ small businesses.
