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Does Pilates Count as Strength Training?
Does pilates count as strength training? It builds real strength and control, but progressive overload is more limited than with external loads.
August 16, 2026 · 6 min read
“Pilates isn’t real strength training, it’s just stretching with springs.” That line circulates in every gym old enough to have one, and like almost every categorical claim about exercise, it falls short.
There’s no single word that settles the question here: pilates does build strength, muscular endurance, and control, measurably. But progressive overload (the variable that matters most for continuing to gain strength over time) is more limited than in training with growing external loads. Both things are true at once, and understanding them separately avoids promising too much or too little.
What the guidelines say about “strength training”
The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans (2018 edition) call for adults to do muscle-strengthening activities, of moderate or greater intensity, working the major muscle groups, at least two days a week. They don’t specify it has to be with weights: they ask for the stimulus, not the tool.
Under that definition, a well-taught pilates class (with enough intensity, not a gentle stretching version) can count as one of those sessions. The nuance is in “enough intensity”: a class focused on mobility and relaxation doesn’t produce the same stimulus as a demanding mat session with core, glute, and upper-body work against your own body weight.
A simple way to gauge your real intensity, no equipment needed: if you finish class able to hold a full conversation without pausing, it was probably a low-intensity session. If you need to break up your sentences to breathe at several points, you’re already in the moderate-or-higher range the guidelines call for.
Source: Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, 2nd edition
Why mat is harder than it looks
If you’ve never taken a mat class and assumed “it’s just the floor, no equipment, it must be the gentlest thing in the studio,” your first class usually corrects that fast.
Without springs assisting the movement, your own body weight is the only load from the first exercise on. Moving your legs while your abs control your lower back, holding a plank with the right breathing, stringing together reps with no external support: it’s real strength work, just with a technical learning curve before it feels “easy.” Technique doesn’t replace the demand; it makes the demand possible without hurting yourself in the process.
If you have a lower-back or wrist injury, or any recent discomfort, tell your instructor before class: several mat exercises load those areas directly, and modifying them is simple when the instructor knows ahead of time.
Where the real limit is: progressive overload
Here’s where we need to be honest and not oversell it.
The principle that most determines whether you keep gaining strength and muscle mass over time is progressive overload: gradually increasing the demand on the muscle, typically with more weight, more reps, or more sets. The systematic review and meta-analysis by Schoenfeld, Ogborn, and Krieger (2017), published in the Journal of Sports Sciences, analyzed the relationship between weekly resistance-training volume and muscle-mass gains across 15 studies. They found a clear dose-response relationship: more weekly sets per muscle group, greater the gain, within the range they were able to study. The group doing ten or more weekly sets gained the most.
The same study shows that relationship isn’t flat: each additional weekly set adds, on average, a bit more muscle growth. Where it stops adding is something that review wasn’t able to establish. That’s why a serious strength program structures weekly volume deliberately, something a single pilates class, however well taught, isn’t designed to do on its own.
Pilates, even in its most demanding version, has a relatively low ceiling for continuing to push that variable year after year. You can progress the difficulty (springs, ranges of motion, more advanced variations, less support), but there’s a point where that progress becomes more about control and technique than absolute load. With weights, the ceiling for continuing to progress the load is, in practice, much higher.
So when should you combine it with external loads?
If your goal is specifically to keep gaining maximum strength or muscle mass, pilates alone probably won’t get you as far as you’d like, and not because it’s poorly designed: it’s a different tool than the one that best solves that specific goal.
The reasonable combination, based on what the dose-response evidence on volume shows: use pilates for control, stability, and muscular endurance, and add training with growing external loads (weights, machines, or a format like HIIT with a strength component) for the progressive-overload piece pilates doesn’t cover as well.
Neither one “replaces” the other. They’re complementary stimuli, not competitors.
The pendulum swings the other way too
Worth stating clearly, because some people say “pilates doesn’t do anything for strength,” and that’s not honest either.
Pilates develops muscular endurance strength (the ability to sustain a submaximal effort for longer) and real, measurable neuromuscular control, useful in daily life and in any other sport you practice. It isn’t “toning” in the vague sense used to sell classes: it’s genuine muscle adaptation, just with a different progression curve than weight training.
One more nuance worth naming: bodyweight resistance, progressed well (more reps, less support, longer levers), does produce real adaptation. That progress has a different ceiling than adding external load, though. It’s a difference of degree, not of whether it “works or doesn’t work.”
Three things people always ask us
Can pilates fully replace weight training?
For most long-term strength goals, not entirely: the progressive overload external loads offer is higher than what pilates can sustain over time. It can be your only strength training if your goal is control, muscular endurance, and general health, not maximizing strength or muscle mass.
Does the reformer build more strength than mat, or the other way around?
Neither is absolutely superior: the reformer lets you adjust resistance with springs and is more approachable to start with; mat depends entirely on your own body weight from day one, which sometimes makes it more demanding in certain exercises.
Does combining pilates with HIIT in the same week make sense?
Yes, it’s a common combination: pilates brings control and muscular endurance, HIIT brings a different cardiometabolic stimulus. Avoid stacking both at maximum intensity on the same day if you’re just starting out.
The entry point with the least outside assistance is Pilates Mat: your own body weight as the only load from the first exercise, and it counts toward the two weekly strengthening sessions the activity guidelines call for. For the progressive overload pilates doesn’t cover the same way, Naü Hiit adds the missing strength component. And if the real question is how many times a week you need to come to see results, here’s the answer, along with the full reformer-vs-mat comparison.