Peak Pilates is one of the leading Pilates equipment companies. They also have a significant Pilates education program, offering Pilates certification throughout the US and abroad. So in March of 2009, when Peak Pilates announced that it had been acquired by SPIN Fitness, a division of Mad Dog Athletics Inc, the announcement sent a big ripple through the Pilates community.
For some, the sale brought visions of stationary bikes in Pilates classes, and questions like Why?, What does this mean for the Pilates community?, and Is this the big dissolution of Pilates into a generalized fitness hybrid?. On a pretty spring day, just 3 weeks after the sale was announced, I sat down with Peak Pilates founder and president, Julie Lobdell, to get some insight.
If there is one thing I think Lobdell wants to get across about the sale is that fundamentally, "Nothing is going to change". Of course some things are going to change, that's the point, but I discover that Lobdell is legitimately covering a lot of territory when she says that.
Lobdell assures me that she, and Mad Dog Athletics, are committed to maintaining the integrity of Peak Pilates as a Pilates company. She is staying on as company president (a condition of the sale), Peak will continue to be based in Boulder, CO, and there were no big staff changes. Further, Peak Pilates products and education program are not going away, and much to my relief, it turns out that Peak Pilates is not getting into the Spinning business.
Basically, Lobdell says, Peak Pilates was ready to expand both in terms of equipment distribution and education, and needed a greater structure for doing that. Mad Dog Athletics, the company that brought the world Spinning®, had that structure to offer. What Mad Dog was looking for was a way into the Pilates market. They had made previous efforts (SPIN Pilates) but acquiring Peak Pilates allows them to step into Pilates at a much higher level.
The other side of the story is yes, Peak Pilates is going to have a lot more presence in the mainstream fitness world. Pilates has been flirting with mainstream fitness for a while now -- raising questions about Pilates' place in the fitness industry. But the sale of Peak Pilates to SPIN fitness may be the boldest move that connects the two yet.
That brings us to the big question, the same issue we've been grappling with for a while now: As Pilates moves into mainstream fitness, how does it maintain integrity as an exercise system? It's not up to one company to answer that question; and one might ponder how much responsibility any one company has for Pilates as a whole. My talk with Julie Lobdell, however, did reveal some of the ways Peak Pilates approaches this issue.
