Pilates vs. Strength Training: Can Pilates Replace Weight Lifting?
Pilates is great, but is it strength training?
Pilates has become extremely popular over the past few years, and rightfully so. It offers a lot of amazing benefits, including some that can be more difficult to target through traditional strength training alone.
Pilates is a great form of movement, but it cannot replace strength training entirely. Rather than swapping strength training for Pilates, use it as an excellent complement to a regular strength training routine.
So, if you're doing Pilates consistently a few times per week, is it enough? Are you missing out on some of the benefits of strength training? And do you still need to lift weights if you're already doing Pilates?
Let's break it down.
Does Pilates Count as Strength Training?
Pilates is not strength training, but it is a form of resistance training. Resistance training is when you move your body through a range of motion against resistance, whether it comes from your body weight, gravity, a reformer, springs, bands, or other equipment.
So if Pilates is providing resistance, does that mean it counts as strength training?
The short answer is no. Resistance training is an umbrella term for any exercise that challenges your muscles against some form of external force.
Strength training is a specific type of resistance training with the goal of progressively increasing your ability to produce force.
Traditional strength training uses loads that are 70% or higher than your estimated one-rep max and uses challenging loads between one and 12 reps. It involves principles like progressive overload, training close to muscular failure, and creating measurable increases in strength.
What Are the Benefits of Pilates?
Pilates can be extremely beneficial for core and trunk control, pelvic control, balance, coordination, body awareness, proprioception, mobility, flexibility, and muscular endurance. It is also a great low-impact form of exercise.
Pilates can be performed on the floor or with equipment like a reformer, tower, bands, rings, balls, and other tools that increase resistance and challenge.
Just like strength training, Pilates exists on a spectrum. A beginner mat Pilates class and an advanced reformer session can provide very different challenges.
Can Pilates Replace Strength Training?
Pilates sometimes gets a reputation for being "easy" or less beneficial than strength training. That's an unfair comparison.
The difference between Pilates and strength training lies in the different adaptations they are designed to produce, not the level of difficulty.
One of the biggest limitations of Pilates is the ability to progressively increase external load. You can make Pilates movements harder by changing leverage, slowing down a movement, adding repetitions, increasing spring resistance, or incorporating additional equipment. However, there are typically fewer opportunities to continually increase measurable external load compared with traditional strength training.
That matters because progressively exposing your muscles to greater loads is an important part of maximizing muscular strength and muscle growth.
Pilates vs. Strength Training for Bone Health
Another important consideration is bone health.
Research looking specifically at Pilates and bone mineral density is still limited, but one systematic review of postmenopausal women found that Pilates did not produce significant improvements in bone mineral density.
With women accounting for 80% of Americans with osteoporosis, increasing bone mineral density for this population is extremely important. Over 80% of frequent Pilates users are women, and if this is the only form of resistance training they are receiving, they are missing the essential bone-loading stimulus that strength training provides.
If Pilates completely replaces progressively loaded strength training, women may miss out on some of the most beneficial adaptations of heavier resistance training.
What Are the Benefits of Strength Training?
Strength training provides benefits that are difficult to attain through Pilates alone.
A well-designed strength training program can improve:
muscle mass and hypertrophy
muscle strength and power
bone health
body composition
metabolic health
insulin sensitivity
longevity and physical independence
These benefits become increasingly important as we age. Muscle mass, strength, and power naturally decline with age if we don’t actively train to maintain them. Losing these physical skills can eventually impact everyday tasks, quality of life, and independence.
Strength training gives a direct method to fight against this decline.
Pilates vs. Strength Training: What’s the Difference?
Pilates and strength training have two distinct and unique benefits.
Instead of asking “Should I do Pilates or strength training?” a better question is: “How much of each should I do based on my current goals?”
If your primary goals include improving core control, mobility, muscular endurance, balance, coordination, or body awareness, Pilates can be a fantastic tool.
If your goals include building muscle, maximizing strength and power, supporting bone health, changing your body composition, and progressively getting stronger over time, strength training should play a major role in your exercise routine.
Should You Do Pilates and Strength Training Together?
Pilates and strength training actually work extremely well together.
Strength training allows you to lift heavier loads, build muscle, increase strength and power, provide a greater loading stimulus to the body, and progressively overload your muscles over time.
Pilates can complement that by developing proprioception, muscular endurance, stability, mobility, coordination, and movement control.
These qualities support each other. Pilates can make you better at strength training, and getting stronger can make you better at Pilates.
How to Combine Pilates and Strength Training
At Inertia Fitness, strength training is the foundation of how we train.
We prioritize it because of its ability to build muscle and strength, develop power, support body composition, and help people maintain their physical capabilities as they age.
That doesn't mean strength training has to be the only thing you do.
For many people, performing 2–3 strength training sessions per week still leaves plenty of room for one or two Pilates sessions, depending on your goals, schedule, training experience, and ability to recover.
If your goal is to improve and maintain your health long-term, build a stronger body, improve your body composition, develop power, and maintain your physical capabilities as you age, strength training should be your foundation. Then, you can use Pilates to complement it.
Is Pilates Enough, or Do You Still Need Strength Training?
Your body doesn't know whether you're doing CrossFit, Pilates, powerlifting, barre, or working out in a traditional gym. And it honestly doesn’t care.
Your body responds to the stimulus you give it.
If you want to build muscle, get stronger, develop power, support your bones, and maintain those qualities as you age, you need to give your body the appropriate stimulus to create those adaptations.
That's why strength training will always be the foundation of what we do at Inertia Fitness.
But if you love Pilates, keep doing Pilates.
The most important concept to understand is knowing what Pilates is really good at, and what it isn’t designed to do.
Keep strength training as your foundation, and use Pilates to fill in the gaps.
