Total Gym Pilates: Strength Meets Flow
Part 1: Building the Foundation
Maria Sollon, MS, CSCS, PES
If you’ve ever practiced Pilates on a mat or reformer, you already know the method is rooted in precision, control, and flow. But once you experience Pilates on the Total Gym, everything shifts – literally. The incline, the moving glideboard, and the pull of gravity create an entirely new relationship with your core.
As a Pilates professional who has trained clients across every format, I can confidently say this: The Total Gym offers one of the most dynamic and accessible ways to simulate reformer-style Pilates at home. You’ll move with intention, activate with control, and rediscover how even the most familiar exercises feel fresh, effective, and surprisingly challenging.
What Makes Pilates Different on the Total Gym
Pilates on the Total Gym blends the best of mat and reformer training into one seamless experience. The glideboard moves with your body. like a reformer carriage, while the adjustable incline uses your own bodyweight and gravity as resistance. This unique setup challenges balance, range of motion, and control, creating an adaptable workout that’s both supportive and dynamic.
Here’s how it compares:
- Mat Pilates: Stable surface, bodyweight resistance, focused on precision and control.
- Reformer Pilates: Moving carriage with spring resistance for added feedback and flow.
- Total Gym Pilates: Moving glideboard with incline-based bodyweight resistance for a reformer feel with a mat-style foundation.
How Resistance Works
Gravity becomes your training partner. The incline determines the level of challenge, while the glideboard’s movement demands constant core activation. Instead of just working on the equipment, you’re fully engaged with it… making every motion a full-body experience.
Pilates Principles
No matter the surface, the foundation of Pilates remains constant:
- Breath guides your movement.
- Control overrides momentum.
- Precision activates deep muscle layers.
- Flow connects one move to the next.
- Centering comes from your powerhouse (core)
Foundational Pilates Moves on your Total Gym
This short sequence builds a strong foundation while showing you how the glideboard, gravity, and your own bodyweight create a reformer-style workout at home. Be patient with yourself… Pilates mastery develops over time, with practice and presence.
Set Up:
- Incline: Low–Medium Level (lower incline increases core challenge)
- Accessory: Foot Bar or Squat Stand
- Key: Glideboard (GB)
Directions:
- Focus on precision, control, and deep core engagement.
- Move slowly and intentionally — quality over quantity.
- Apply the Pilates Principals:
- A – Alignment: Keep length and neutrality in the spine.
- B- Breath: Inhale to prepare, exhale to move.
- C- Core Control: Stabilize from the center to support every action.
The Foundation Sequence
- Roll-Up with Bent Knees (5–8 reps)
- Sit in the center of the GB with knees bent in hips width distance and feet flat. Holding onto the sides of the thighs and assume a C-curve shape of the spine. Use your arms to assist your core control as you articulate the spine into supine, exhale to roll up one vertebra at a time back to the starting position.
- Focus: Builds core control and spinal articulation while utilizing a solid breathing pattern.
- Hundred (100 pulses)
- From a supine position, legs in tabletop, lift head and shoulders. Pump arms vigorously while breathing in for 5 counts and out for 5, until you reach 100 reps.
- Focus: Utilize the GB to keep the lower spine imprinted while the legs are bent or extended. Add core intensity by using the incline to assist your upper spine to lift higher.
- Bicycle (10 reps per side)
- Hands behind head, legs in table top. Draw one knee in while twisting the torso toward it, alternating sides in a controlled pedaling motion. This exercise enhances oblique strength and coordination.
- Focus: Use the incline to lift the upper torso and fully engage the leg as it extends so one leg lengthens as the other draws into chest to contract the obliques.
- Bridge Articulation + Pulses (5–8 reps)
- Lie on your back with knees bent and feet grounded, hip-width apart. Maintain a neutral spine as you press into your feet to lift the hips, articulating through the spine one vertebra at a time. At the top, hold the lift and add small, controlled pulses before rolling down with the same precision.
- Focus: Glutes, hamstrings, and spinal mobility through segmental articulation.
- Side-Lying Leg Series (10 reps per movement)
- Lie on your side on the GB, legs long and parallel to the floor while keeping the waistline lifted and hips stacked throughout the movement.
- Variations: Straight Leg Lifts (top leg lifts and lowers, Leg Circles (top leg drawls circles in both directions), Inner Thigh Taps (top leg stays lifted while bottom leg lifts and lowers)
- Focus: Hip stability, inner and outer thigh strength, and improved balance.
- Swimming (10 reps per side)
- Lie prone on the GB, arms extended. Alternate lifting opposite arm and leg in a fluttering motion. Strengthens the posterior chain and builds total-body coordination.
- Focus: To strengthen the posterior chain activation, spinal extension, and utilize full-body coordination. Try to keep the head in neutral alignment by gazing towards floor without straining the neck.
Stretches: Child’s Pose, Cat-Cow, Roll Up to Stand
Mind-Body Takeaway
Pilates on the Total Gym isn’t just a substitute for studio equipment; It’s a smart, scalable way to deepen your practice at home. The dynamic movement of the glideboard, the pull of gravity, and the feedback from the cables transform Pilates into an experience that challenges the body while sharpening the mind-body connection.
Up Next… Part 2: Pilates and the Toe Bar
Get ready to elevate your practice. In Part 2, the toe bar transforms classic Pilates patterns into a full-body challenge that builds strength, balance, and seamless flow.
Until then, glide with intention, move with control, and build strength from your center out.
Best,
Maria
@GROOVYSWEAT
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