Pilates Teacher Training Through a Neurodivergent Lens
Written by Georgia Nash
This is the beginning of the rest of my life
Wow, this is harder than I thought it would be. That was my first thought after my first day of Pilates teacher training. It was a freezing cold day in January, and I had spent the entire day listening to my teacher trainer, Kerry, explain classical Mat Pilates and all the beginner exercises. I started on the fundamentals course with Everybody Pilates to get a sense of what Pilates was and whether I could be the person to teach it.
I had come to Pilates around a year earlier, when I was diagnosed with hypermobility. I thought it was the end of the world when my doctor told me I would have to start Pilates and stop running. "Isn't Pilates for older people?” Turns out, Pilates was gaining popularity fast. It had become the cool girl sport, plastered all over celebrity Instagrams. Studios were popping up everywhere and they all taught their own different variations.
I had previously taken Pilates classes at a different studio. It was fun and the teachers were great, but something always felt missing. The music made it hard to concentrate, my back pain wasn't getting better, and I wasn't really connecting with my body. I searched for hours for a training course. With ADHD, I go into hyperfocus and study obsessively to find exactly what I'm looking for, which is one of the genuine pros of being neurodivergent. Location mattered to me too. I don't like new things, I hate change, and I'm rubbish with directions. I needed somewhere relatively nearby, but I still wanted to be trained by the best. I also knew straight away that I needed a longer training course, because it takes my brain more time to process and absorb information.
Finding the Right Pilates Teacher and Apparatus
Luckily, I found Amy's studio, Everybody Pilates, and I knew immediately it was the place for me. The teachers were warm, the studio was bright and spacious, and the equipment was tomato red and looked exciting, new things always light up my brain. I had never seen a Tower or a Wunda Chair before. An aluminum Reformer, revolutionary! Gratz, of course.
Falling in Love with Gratz
I discovered two loves on my first day of training: Classical Pilates and Gratz apparatus. OK, maybe that's a lie. The first time I tried a Classical Reformer, I hated it. I thought it was rough and mean, hard and unforgiving. Approximately four months later, I would have a small studio in my back garden with my own Classical Apparatus. It wasn't love at first sight, but it's a forever kind of love.
What makes Gratz so special is that they have been manufacturing Joseph Pilates' original apparatus since the late 1960s, building the equipment exactly as Joseph Pilates intended. The company's motto says it all: "Joe invented it. Gratz makes it." Founded in 1929 as a precision metalworking shop in New York City, every piece is still handcrafted in their Philadelphia workshop, with each Reformer taking around fifty hours to build. Nothing is modified and the original specifications haven't changed. That integrity is something you feel the moment you get on the apparatus, it's a direct, unbroken line back to the original work.
The Work Behind Becoming a Pilates Teacher
If they can do it, so can I
My fundamentals training lasted two days and I swear I learnt more in those two days than in some school subjects. It was a lot of information to process, and I went home with my book and a positive mindset. The thing about being neurodivergent is that we start something with real energy and enthusiasm, and then when it gets hard, it can quickly become boring and uninspiring. Staying interested when you have ADHD is a daily battle.
We had a trainee group chat that helped me stay on track, and everyone was genuinely invested in helping one another. Kerry kept me going too; without her support, I'm not sure I would have moved on to my comprehensive. Every day I would wake up, do my practice hours, log observation hours, and teach my friends and family. Then I would spend my weekends travelling an hour to Everybody Pilates Southsea to take part in classes, usually fitting in three a day.
We had recently built a small studio in the back garden, and I knew that if I invested in equipment, it would give me the extra motivation I needed. The apparatus arrived one by one; Ladder Barrel, Wunda Chair, Tower, High Mat, Reformer, Spine Corrector. My collection grew by one almost every month. I spent hours scouring Facebook Marketplace for second-hand equipment. Classical equipment was hard to find at the time, probably because it's so durable and so loved that people rarely have reason to sell. I especially love the Gratz apparatus because I always feel safe and secure on it. It's built to last and it never lets you down.
Learning became easier once my apparatus arrived. I could teach my friends and family on everything, which was always funny as they had never seen anything like it. In April 2025, I signed up for my classical comprehensive Pilates teacher training with Amy Kellow at Everybody Pilates. I knew I didn't want to spend the rest of my life at a desk; it didn't stimulate my brain or bring me any joy. Teaching felt like waking up again. It was exciting, there were always new problems to solve and exercises to dive deeper into.
The training was twelve in-person days over the course of 14 months, progressing from beginner to advanced. We had set hours for personal practice, teaching, and observations. It required deep organization, dedication, and commitment. Some days I couldn't find that, but what kept me going was watching the other women on my course show up with complete dedication, every single time.
Yes, I'm neurodivergent and it's sometimes a struggle, but I don't have children, I wasn't already teaching full-time, and I was living at home with my mum with fewer responsibilities than most. Most of the women on my course had children and homes to manage, full client books and waitlists, and far bigger responsibilities than mine. And they still turned up. They still put the work in and never complained. That was genuinely inspiring and kicked me into gear every time I needed it.
What Everybody Pilates got right
The in-person training days were some of the best days of my life. The others on my course and I got two full days with Amy every module, cramming in as much as our brains could hold. We received detailed books with demonstration images for each module, which I found especially helpful as a visual learner. I find it hard to absorb written information immediately, the images helped me identify which exercise was which and where I was going wrong. The days were long, but never boring. I appreciated the course being split up the way it was, 4 days for each level with 2 months in between every module. Comprehensive training is tough but the length of time it’s over made it easier for my brain to process all the new things I was learning, I don’t think I could have tolerated a shorter course.
The classical syllabus itself helped enormously. It's sequential and cumulative by design, each exercise building logically on the one before it, which meant I wasn't trying to hold the entire method in my head at once. I only ever needed to know what came next. One minute we were sitting, the next we were trying out the exercise and teaching each other. The variety was exactly what I needed, I find it hard to stay in one place for more than a couple of hours.
Learning Through the Classical Pilates Community
I especially loved how small our group was. With only around fourteen of us, it felt intimate and we got to know each other well. Being surrounded by a support system matters enormously for neurodivergent people. We thrive on connection and on knowing people want to help. We all had the chance to ask the questions that felt silly without feeling silly for asking them.
Amy's knowledge and skill amazed me. She always had an answer and never made anyone feel bad for not knowing something yet. If she asked a question back and you didn't know the answer, that was fine, there were always more opportunities to learn. Even though most of the other trainees had been teaching for years, they never made me feel less experienced. They shared what they knew and told me how much they loved watching me grow.
My brain was always fried by the end of the last day. I'd go home, recharge, and then put what I'd learnt into practice. If I ever needed someone, they were always at the end of the phone, happy to explain something again or offer extra tips. We would send in videos of exercises we were struggling with, and an influx of suggestions and help would come back. I may have struggled with learning at times, but I never felt lonely. We had built a real community in a short space of time and friendships that will last a lifetime.
Training to be a classical Pilates teacher was one of the best decisions I have ever made, not just because of the teaching, but because of the people I have met along the way. Everyone in the classical Pilates world shares that same passion. We all have deep respect for Joseph Pilates and the first- and second-generation teachers who carried his work forward. The pride I feel telling people I'm a third-generation teacher, trained by Amy Kellow, who was trained by Jay Grimes, who was trained by Joseph Pilates himself is something I still can't quite put into words. This training was a real gift, and I'm grateful that Everybody Pilates showed up in my search that day.
From the community: what other neurodivergent teachers experienced
I put a call out on my Instagram asking other neurodivergent Pilates teachers to share what training had been like for them. The response was immediate. What came back was generous, honest, and in places uncomfortable reading.
The Challenges They Faced during Pilates Teacher Training
The first thing that struck me was how many people hadn't disclosed. Of the teachers who responded, the majority hadn't told their training provider they were neurodivergent at all, and the reasons varied. Some hadn't yet received a formal diagnosis. Some assumed it wouldn't change anything. One had simply learned over the years not to expect much to change even if they did say something. The one teacher who did disclose had their reasonable adjustments, specifically scheduled breaks, ignored on their very first training weekend. When they eventually had to take themselves out of the room, they were told off.
They later had to fight hard to get a funded retake for an assessment conducted under conditions that would have challenged any trainee: two assessments running simultaneously in the same room, no breaks, hours of noise and overstimulation. They got there in the end, but they had to push every step of the way. That story stayed with me. Asking for what you need should not cost that much.
The second theme running through almost every response was the gap between in-room learning and everything else. Theory-heavy content; anatomy, physiology, online modules, recorded video, came up repeatedly as where attention fractured, focus dropped, and brain fog moved in. One teacher described turning on closed captions so she could watch training videos while doing something else simultaneously, just to stay engaged. Another said she simply could not have completed her training online; the practical, in-person, hands-on element was the only thing that made the content stick. This tracks closely with what we know about how ADHD and many other neurodivergent profiles process information: the body often gets there faster than the eyes-on-a-screen ever will.
Several teachers mentioned the sheer cognitive and physical exhaustion of training weekends; the information density, the lack of recovery time, the sense of being asked to absorb more than any brain could reasonably hold in a single session. As one teacher noted, it wasn't just the neurodivergent trainees struggling by the end of those days. When everyone is running on empty, the format has probably asked too much of everyone.
There was also something quieter that one teacher named that I haven't been able to stop thinking about: the social difficulty of being surrounded by neurotypical peers. Feeling alien in the room. That particular loneliness isn't solved by a break policy or a structured timetable; it speaks to something about how training cultures talk about difference or mostly don't.
What Helped Them Succeed
And yet, and this is important, several of these same teachers described finding their footing through exactly the things classical training does well: hands-on time, strong mentorship, content broken into small achievable chunks, and the particular intensity of in-studio days where everything else drops away and there is only the work and the body in front of you.
One teacher described how her ADHD hyperfocus had, against all odds, become her greatest asset as an instructor, the thing that makes her exceptional at reading bodies and responding to what she sees. Another had rebuilt an entire training programme for herself, almost entirely through self-directed study and community, after a provider all but disappeared mid-training. She taught herself how to teach. The method held even when the scaffolding around it didn't.
What could make Pilates teacher training better for neurodivergent trainees
People who run teacher training programmes need to be listening to the people who are paying for their courses. Ignoring neurodivergent trainees won't make the problem go away. Reasonable adjustments should be in place, and extra support offered where needed. The ideas below are just some of the ways you can help your trainees.
Offer instruction in more than one format. A trainee with ADHD, dyslexia, or auditory processing differences may absorb a sequence beautifully through demonstration and hands-on correction but lose it entirely if it's only ever delivered as a long verbal cue. Pairing verbal instruction with visual reference and written summaries, even brief ones, gives different brains different entry points into the same information.
Build in processing time and movement breaks during theory-heavy stretches. Anatomy, history, and method philosophy matter enormously in classical training, but long seated stretches of listening are exactly where ADHD attention tends to fragment. Permission to stand, stretch, or fidget without it being read as disengagement makes a real difference, and normalizing that for everyone, not just the neurodivergent trainees who ask, removes the stigma of needing it at all.
Consider the sensory environment. Studio lighting, background noise, and the general sensory load of a space all affect how available someone's attention is, particularly for trainees who are also autistic or sensory-sensitive. Small adjustments here cost very little and open the room up considerably.
Record sessions where possible. A working memory that drops information quickly benefits enormously from being able to revisit something, rather than relying on a single verbal pass that may not have landed the first time.
And most importantly: ask. Not every neurodivergent trainee will self-identify, and not every accommodation looks the same from one ADHD brain to the next. A simple, low-pressure invitation; "tell us how you learn best, and we'll work with that" does more than any single structural change, because it puts the trainee in charge of naming what they need rather than hoping the provider guesses correctly.
The future of teacher training needs to be broader than one kind of brain
What strikes me most, looking back, is that I never felt the need to ask for accommodations because the support and the right structure were there from day one. It was just good teaching: embodied, responsive, built on real-time feedback rather than rote memorization. Classical Pilates, taught well on equipment as precise and honest as Gratz's, already has a lot of what a neurodivergent learner needs built into its bones.
The opportunity now is to make that intentional rather than incidental, to design training that works this well for neurodivergent teachers on purpose, not by happy accident. Because the next person walking into a classical comprehensive training with a neurodiverse mind deserves training providers who've already thought about this, not ones who are figuring it out in real time because a trainee finally said something.
My ADHD brain learned to teach Pilates not despite the method, but because of it. I'd love to see training providers build on that on purpose, so the next neurodivergent teacher doesn't have to be the one explaining why it worked.
About Georgia Nash
Georgia Nash is a 3rd generation classical Pilates teacher based in York, UK, comprehensively trained through Everybody Pilates Southsea by 2nd generation teacher Amy Kellow. She loves teaching outdoor mat classes and creating a real community. Alongside her ADHD, she discusses her lipedema and hEDS openly online to encourage more conversations around them. You can find her at @georgiamaypilates
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