LA Fitness opened its 200th reformer Pilates studio last week. They sit inside its own gyms, across 16 states and Canada, and it took about two and a half years to get there.
Two hundred rooms is not a pilot any more. It makes a big-box chain one of the larger reformer operators in North America. It got there while the industry was still arguing about whether a gym could do Pilates properly.
But the number that matters is not 200.
Is this actually a threat to a boutique Pilates studio?
Not in the way the headline suggests, and not because of the classes. One reformer class a day on a gym floor is a different product from a studio session, and most members will not switch on that alone. The threat is the price, and where LA Fitness has put it. At the club we checked, Pilates is not a paid add-on sitting above the membership. It is inside the cheapest tier. That changes what a prospect believes reformer Pilates costs before they ever walk into your consultation.
What it costs, and what we could actually verify
We pulled this from LA Fitness's own signup flow rather than a pricing aggregator. At a club in San Bernardino, California, the BASIC tier runs $79 a month. Pilates by LA Fitness is listed inside it. There is also a $199 initiation fee and a $69 annual fee. The fine print caps specialty studios at one class per day each.
Two honest caveats. LA Fitness's own terms say prices vary by location. They also say specialty studios are included "if included in the membership". So neither the rate nor the inclusion is national. And most clubs we checked do not publish rates online at all. So treat $79 as one verified data point, not a price list.
For comparison, Club Pilates publishes no national pricing either. Studio-reported rates collected by pricing sites put unlimited memberships somewhere around $259 a month, with a wide spread. That figure comes from aggregators rather than the company, so hold it loosely.
| Pilates by LA Fitness | A dedicated reformer studio | |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay | $79/mo at the club we checked, gym included | Commonly $200+/mo for unlimited |
| How much Pilates | One class per day, capped | Unlimited or a class pack |
| Equipment | Balanced Body Reformers | Usually reformers, sometimes full apparatus |
| What else is in it | Weights, cardio, pool, other studios | Pilates |
| Published nationally | No, varies by club | No, varies by studio |
Why this is an entry tier and not an amenity
We have covered big-box chains adding reformers twice before, and both times the move was an amenity. Crunch put reformers into 20 locations in July. Crunch Select bundled five boutique formats into one premium membership in August. In both cases Pilates was something extra you got for paying more.
LA Fitness has done the opposite. The reformer is in the cheapest door. That makes it closer to a loss leader (something sold cheaply, or given away, because it brings in customers who pay for everything else) than a perk. LA Fitness is not trying to win the Pilates market. It is using reformers to sell $79 gym memberships, and a gym membership is a product you cannot sell back at them.
They are not competing with your studio. They are using your category to sell something you do not have.
— The Run RateThat is also why the one-class-a-day cap matters more than it looks. A cap would be a problem if Pilates were the product. It is not a problem at all if Pilates is the hook and the gym is the product.
What to do about it
Stop defending the format and start pricing the difference. Charge for what LA Fitness structurally cannot do at $79. Class size. An instructor who knows your history. Apparatus beyond the reformer. Progression that goes somewhere over a year.
Second, expect the comparison in your consultations whether or not anyone says it out loud. The useful answer is specific. "They cap you at one class a day on a gym floor with whoever is teaching that hour" is an answer. "We are a premium experience" is not.
Third, watch your own 200. The format conversion we tracked in yoga studios was the same move at smaller scale, and it ran faster than most operators noticed. This one is running at 80 studios a year inside an estate of 600 clubs, so there is a lot of room left.
The reformer stopped being the differentiator a while ago. What you do with the hour is all that is left, and that has always been the part a chain cannot buy.