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By Deborah Slade, APOGEE Pilates Instructor

While Joe Pilates didn’t coin the phrase “less is more,” it was a credo that informed his lifework. Those fortunate enough to have studied directly with the master recall him saying: “Never do ten pounds of effort for a five pound movement.” Not surprisingly, newcomers to the Pilates method are often skeptical about the efficacy of a workout during which the average exercise is performed fewer than ten times—that is, until they experience the physical and mental challenge of their first mat class or Reformer session. As students progress, they realize that “less is more” doesn’t only apply to beginners. For advanced Pilates students, completing just two repetitions of very complex movements may be the often unrealized ideal.

Why so few repetitions? One reason is Pilates’ emphasis on the mind-body connection. The mental aspects of a movement—awareness, intention, control, and concentration—are just as important as the physical, measurable ones, such as strength, stretch, and range of motion. Each exercise must be executed with precision and efficiency in order to realize the maximum benefit, and this requires extraordinary mental focus. If you bring your entire being to your workout you will not need to do many repetitions to reap the rewards.

There’s a physical reason as well: Because Pilates addresses the body as an integrated whole to develop long, lean, symmetrical muscles, each session includes a large number and a wide range of exercises (as many as 33!) that engage every muscle group. Conditioning methods that emphasize repetitions tend to focus on isolated muscle groups with a greater chance of overdeveloping them.

Joe Pilates believed that not only were endless repetitions unnecessary, they could turn a workout into a “fatiguing system of dull, boring, abhorred exercises” that ultimately became “mindless,” put undue wear and tear on the joints, and increased the chance for injury. For most of his career Pilates challenged the conventional wisdom; today he is considered a visionary. So, while Pilates’ exercises were designed for few repetitions, his words certainly bear repeating.