I'm getting trained on the reformer currently so I can start teaching it, hopefully in a few months. This machine is awesome; you can work your whole entire body on it. But I also have to admit, if you got a good personal trainer, who knows a bit about mat pilates, as well as working the muscles with resistance bands and stability ball, you can get about the same results. You may also want to check out a community gym, a lot of times they'll have the machine and you can hire a PT who knows how to use it. Getting into the gym is usually very inexpensive, so all you got to worry about the trainers fee. But even on the college campus, for students I still get $45 an hour, unless they have more then one session then they get so much off each session they sign up for at one time. A lot of times you can go in as a group and split the fee as long as you're willing to split the time. So $70 isn't all that expensive in my area, the bigger gyms around here if you want a PT it is $70 and up for an hour. And I don't live in New York, but I live in doctor infested town that has driven up everything because of it.
Keep checking around, as you might find something that is more in your price range. As the one thing I've notice with the reformer, it either makes the mat pilates easier to do on it, or harder. And it's not the same exercise. Like the dreaded roll-up(you lay on your back, flat on the floor arms extended above your head, and use your abs, to bring you up, and arms extended over toes), with the reformer it's easier, because you can have it hold down your feet, so you can actually use you hip flexor to get you up, rather then just your abs. Where as the one on the mat uses just your abs, making your abs work twice as hard, but only takes a handful to give you very intense ab burn.
I use to not like pilates as well until I started seeing results that I hadn’t been able to get with other types of exercises. I learned how weak my core was, 10 min session of pilates ab work felt like an hour with Cathe, and I was truly shocked, as I kept up with Cathe, added the medicine ball, etc. And those who don’t realize this, Cathe has had pilates in her ab work for quite a while, planks are from pilates, pikes, levation hold, supermans and the double leg stretch (where you lay on your back, stretch your arms above your head, legs out then curl in bring knees to the chest and your hands nearly touching toes, then back out again, keeping both arms and legs off floor.)
A lot of people don't like Pilates as it's too slow, and you really got to concentrate on what your doing and where you should be focusing. The reformer gives it more of an athletic feel but a lot of the stuff is the same slowness, as that’s what makes Pilates really work, kind of like Cathe’s S&H series. But one thing to watch for, there are a lot of dancers in both normal pilates and the reformer classes, they look awesome, but it has been years and years of training as well as genetics. And since NY has one of the biggest ballet groups in the US, you may be catching quite a few of the dancers come out of there. To teach mat pilates I actually had to take about 8 different dance classes, before I could even sign up to be trained. It really is based on dance, and slow fluid movements, that incorporate the whole body. Though you will see a lot of the normal people now taking Pilates but you can usually tell them apart from the dancers, or at least when they are all in class together. ;-)
Kit
