If you feel like everyone is doing Pilates nowadays, well, you might be onto something. According to ClassPass’s 2024 Look Back Report, that was the number one booked class globally. Among the crew of Pilates devotees? The Kansas City Chiefs.
In fact, their studio, Pilates By Kahley in Overland Park, Kansas, went viral last year when ESPN shared a video of a few Chiefs players putting in the work on the reformer. But it wasn’t a one-and-done workout for the NFL stars: The players are still at it this year as they gear up for Super Bowl LIX, where they’ll be taking on the Philadelphia Eagles.
So what is it about the popular (yet surprising) exercise modality that has the Chiefs stretching for more? We tapped their instructor Kahley Schiller to find out.
There are actually a few good reasons football players should add Pilates to the mix.
Before we get into the benefits of Pilates for football players, let’s take a step back into the how—meaning, how did these top NFL athletes find their way into the studio in the first place?
It all began about eight years ago, when quarterback Trent Green’s wife, Julie, started taking classes at Schiller’s studio. “She convinced him to start doing Pilates, so that was my first big Chiefs person,” Schiller tells SELF. “Word of mouth is everything, and it kind of grew from there.”
Since then, she’s trained both offensive and defensive players, including Tershawn Wharton, a defensive tackle who’s been influential in introducing many of his fellow defensive linemen to Pilates over the last five years. As you can tell from a quick scroll of Schiller’s Instagram, you can also count on seeing players like Derrick Nnadi and Malik Herring frequenting the studio too.
When you think of NFL workouts, you probably think of agility drills or super heavy bench presses. So if you’ve never associated football with Pilates, you’re not alone. Schiller acknowledges there’s a misconception about who Pilates is typically thought to be “for”—and that NFL players are breaking these stereotypes.
“Joseph Pilates came [to the US] from Germany in the 1920s and opened a studio in New York City,” she says. Pilates soon became popular with dancers as a way to improve technique and rehab injuries. Initially most of the clientele were men, but as the modality grew, more women became involved. Now, if you take a quick scroll through social media—say, for instance, the Pilates tag on TikTok—you can see they’re heavily represented in that space. But tides are starting to change: “It’s taken a while for it to become where Pilates is for everybody.”
And that includes football players. Because the reality is, Pilates is extremely beneficial for performance on the field. In their everyday training—mainly lifting and HIIT workouts—football players work their larger muscles (say, glutes and quads) that prime them for explosion and momentum, Schiller explains. “Pilates comes in and creates symmetry and balance throughout their entire bodies so that their anterior chain [front of body] and their posterior chain [back of body] are equally as strong, which would make them more powerful,” she says.