7 Pilates Mistakes Beginners Make (and How to Avoid Them)

You booked the class. You showed up. Now let’s make sure you’re actually doing it right.

You’ve heard the hype. Stronger core, better posture, the kind of body awareness that makes you stand differently in the supermarket and wonder if anyone else notices. You’ve booked your first class, and you’re going. Good. You’ve already done the hardest part.

Here’s what comes next: Pilates is a method. Not just a workout. It has principles, precision, and a surprisingly specific way of asking things of your body - and most beginners, through absolutely no fault of their own, fall into the same handful of patterns that limit what they get from their early sessions.

None of these mistakes are embarrassing. They’re all completely normal. And knowing what they are before you walk in means you can sidestep them from session one rather than spending three weeks undoing them.

Here are the seven we see most often at Rise - and exactly what to do instead.

Mistake 1: Showing Up Unprepared

The mistake: Rocking up in baggy joggers, no grip socks, five minutes late, mildly unsure which room you’re supposed to be in.

We say this with complete affection, because we’ve seen it many times: arriving unprepared to your first Pilates class adds a layer of mild chaos to an experience that’s already asking a lot of your attention. The class starts and you’re still working out where to put your water bottle.

The fix: A little preparation goes a long way.

Grip socks are required in all Rise classes and on all equipment - they keep you stable on the Reformer carriage, stop you sliding during standing exercises, and are considerably more hygienic for everyone in the room. Don’t have a pair? We sell them in studio.

Clothing matters too, and not for aesthetic reasons. Fitted leggings or shorts and a snug-fitting top allow your instructor to see your alignment and make corrections that actually help. Baggy layers hide what’s happening in your body - which means your instructor is working blind, and so are you. Avoid anything with zips on the back waistband or hard fastenings that will dig into you the moment you lie down.

And arrive five minutes early for your first class. Introduce yourself to your instructor, let them know you’re new, and have a look at the equipment before everyone else arrives. That two minutes of familiarity makes a meaningful difference to how the first session feels.

Rise tip: New client? Let us know before class, and we’ll take five minutes to show you the basics before we begin. We do this because it works.

Mistake 2: Rushing Through the Movements

The mistake: Treating Pilates like a HIIT class and trying to power through everything as fast as possible.

This is the mistake that comes from being good at other forms of exercise. If you’re used to working at intensity, the deliberate pace of Pilates can feel frustratingly slow at first - and the instinct is to compensate by adding speed.

Here’s why that’s counterproductive: Pilates was designed around slow, controlled movement for a specific physiological reason. When you move quickly, the prime movers - your large, powerful muscles - take over. They’re strong enough to get the job done without any help. The deep stabilising muscles, which are exactly what Pilates is training, don’t need to recruit.

When you slow down, those stabilisers have to engage. That’s where the burn comes from in Pilates - not from load or impact, but from sustained, precise engagement of muscles that aren’t used to being asked to work this way. It’s a completely different kind of effort, and it’s more effective for what Pilates is trying to achieve.

Joseph Pilates called his method Contrology. Every movement deliberate. Every inch of range controlled. That’s not a stylistic choice - it’s the mechanism through which the method works.

The fix: Slow down. Feel every inch of the movement. Let the effort come from control, not speed.

Rise tip: If an exercise feels too easy at full pace, the answer is usually to slow it down by half, not to add more repetitions.

Mistake 3: Breathing Without Intention

The mistake: Holding your breath during hard bits, or breathing shallowly up into the shoulders and chest.

Breath-holding during effort is almost universal in beginners, and it’s understandable - when something is challenging, the instinct is to brace, and bracing often involves holding the breath. The problem is that breath-holding creates tension throughout the body, raises blood pressure, and actually reduces core stability rather than increasing it.

Pilates uses lateral ribcage breathing - a specific pattern that expands the ribcage sideways and backwards rather than letting the belly rise or the shoulders lift. This keeps the core engaged while still allowing full, oxygenating breath. It’s the breath pattern that works with the method rather than against it.

The fix: Put your hands on the sides of your ribcage. Inhale and feel them expand outward, like an umbrella opening. Exhale and feel them draw back in. Your belly doesn’t need to move much. Your shoulders shouldn’t move at all.

In the early sessions, don’t worry too much about matching the specific breath pattern to every movement - that comes with time. The more important habit to establish first is simply: keep breathing. Don’t hold. Whatever is happening with the movement, the breath continues.

Over a few sessions, the lateral pattern becomes natural, and the coordination with movement develops automatically. But it starts with just not stopping the breath.

Rise tip: If you notice your shoulders rising when you inhale, that’s the breath going into the chest rather than the ribcage. Keep the shoulders still and direct the air sideways instead.

Mistake 4: Gripping the Neck During Core Work

The mistake: Lifting into abdominal work and immediately feeling it in the neck rather than the core.

This is probably the most common discomfort beginners experience, and it’s almost always caused by the same thing: trying to lift the head by pulling the chin toward the chest, which loads the neck muscles rather than the abdominals.

The neck isn’t where the work is supposed to happen. It’s a passenger. The work comes from the deep abdominals drawing the ribcage toward the pelvis - and the head lifts as a consequence of that, not as the initiator of it.

The fix: Imagine holding a piece of fruit between your chin and chest - a clementine, say. Enough space that it wouldn’t be squashed, but not so much that it would drop. That’s your chin position. Keep your gaze toward your knees, not at the ceiling, and think about lifting from the sternum rather than the face.

Still feeling it in the neck? Rest your head down for that exercise. This is not giving up - it’s working intelligently. Your neck muscles will not get stronger from being strained; your abdominals will get stronger from performing the exercise correctly without the neck compensating. Once your core is strong enough to lift without the neck gripping, the head comes up.

Most people find this resolves itself within a handful of sessions as core strength develops. Until then, use your hand to support the head if needed - your instructor can show you how.

Rise tip: If you’re unsure whether you’re loading the neck, try the exercise with your head resting down. If your core feels it, the exercise is working. If nothing feels it, you’ve found where the work actually needs to come from.

Mistake 5: Shoulders Creeping Up to the Ears

The mistake: Tension accumulating in the shoulders and upper traps throughout the class - often without noticing.

This one is almost universal, and it makes complete sense. Most people carry chronic tension in the shoulders and upper trapezius from desk work, driving, phone use, and the general accumulated stress of daily life. Walking into a Pilates class doesn’t automatically switch that tension off - and when a new physical challenge is added, the body’s default is often to grip harder everywhere, including the shoulders.

Elevated shoulders affect everything: they limit the range of motion of the arms, create neck tension, interfere with thoracic spine mobility, and prevent the deep core from doing its job properly. Pilates is specifically designed to counteract the postural patterns that cause this - but only if you can find your way out of them during class.

The fix: Roll your shoulders up, back, and down - and actively keep them there. Think about widening across the collarbones and drawing the shoulder blades down the back, as though they’re sliding into your back pockets. A useful image: warm butter melting slowly down a warm surface.

Check in with your shoulders regularly during class, especially during any exercise that involves the arms or core. It’s normal for them to creep up again - the pattern is deeply ingrained for most people. Just bring them back down when you notice, without judgement.

Over time, and with consistent Pilates practice, the thoracic mobility and deep stabiliser strength that Pilates builds genuinely changes this pattern. People who train regularly often find the shoulder tension they’ve carried for years begins to ease. That’s not a coincidence - it’s the method working.

Rise tip: Before the class starts, take a moment to roll your shoulders back and down and breathe into a wide chest. Set yourself up before the first exercise begins rather than trying to find the position mid-movement.

Mistake 6: Confusing Abdominal Strength With Core Stability

The mistake: Believing that because you do sit-ups, crunches, or have visible abs, your core is strong.

This one surprises people. It’s entirely possible - common, in fact - to have strong superficial abdominal muscles and genuinely poor deep core stability. The muscles are different. The six-pack (rectus abdominis) is a surface muscle designed for flexion. The deep core - the transverse abdominis, multifidus, pelvic floor, and diaphragm - is an entirely different system, designed for stabilisation.

Conventional ab training largely bypasses the deep system. Pilates specifically targets it. This is why people with impressive gym fitness often find Pilates unexpectedly challenging - the strength they have isn’t the strength being asked for.

The fix: Focus on drawing your lower belly gently inward and upward, as though your lower abdominals are moving away from the waistband of your leggings. This isn’t a brace or a suck - it’s a subtle, internal lift. Think of it as your body’s natural corset switching on.

This engagement should feel sustainable and compatible with breathing. If you’re holding your breath to maintain it, you’re working too hard. The deep core is designed to engage at a relatively low level of effort for long durations - it’s endurance work, not max effort.

The B-line cue from your draft is worth keeping for this: place your fingertips two to three inches below your belly button. Gently draw away from them. That’s the direction of the engagement. Not out, not down - in and up.

Rise tip: If you’ve been told you have a strong core but find Pilates harder than expected - this is almost certainly why. Welcome to your actual core. It’s been waiting.

Mistake 7: Over-Tucking the Pelvis

The mistake: Gripping the glutes and flattening the lower back aggressively in an effort to ‘engage the core.’

Pelvic position is one of the subtler concepts in Pilates and one of the most frequently misapplied. The desire to ‘protect the lower back’ during core work is well-intentioned - but when it results in a forceful posterior tuck of the pelvis, it creates its own set of problems: compression at the base of the spine, gripping in the hip flexors and glutes, and a loss of the spinal length that Pilates is designed to develop.

There’s an important distinction between imprinting the spine - a gentle, abdominal-driven flattening of the lumbar curve used appropriately during certain exercises - and a full pelvic tuck, which is driven by the glutes and collapses the spine rather than supporting it. The first is a tool. The second is a compensation.

The fix: Think about length rather than tuck. Your spine should feel long even when your pelvis is moving. Use the B-line method: gently draw your lower abdominals in and up, without gripping the bottom or flattening the back aggressively. If your glutes are working hard during core exercises, that’s a signal to release and find the engagement from the abdominals instead.

In neutral spine, there is a small natural gap between your lower back and the mat. That gap is not a problem to be eliminated. Your instructor will tell you when imprint is appropriate for a specific exercise - and when it is, it’s a gentle shift, not a muscular clench.

Understanding the difference between neutral and imprinted spine is one of the most useful things a Pilates beginner can learn. We have a full post breaking both down in detail - worth reading if this one resonates.

Rise tip: If you’re ever unsure whether you’re tucking or imprinting, check your glutes. Imprint = abdominals working. Tuck = glutes working. They’re not the same thing.

One More Thing: The Studio Is a Safe Space

Don’t know what ‘tabletop’ means? Not sure if you’re in neutral or imprint? Confused by the spring settings? That’s not just fine - that’s exactly where you’re supposed to be in your first few sessions.

Every instructor at Rise is here to help you feel informed, confident, and capable - not to assess you or expect you to arrive knowing things you couldn’t possibly know yet. Ask questions before class, ask them during if you need to, and don’t worry about slowing things down. The small class sizes at Rise exist precisely so that individual support is always available.

Pilates can feel like a full-body tongue twister at first. You’re coordinating breath, position, movement, and intention simultaneously, often on a piece of equipment you’ve never used before. That complexity is normal, and it resolves faster than you’d expect. By session three or four, most people find the cues start landing in the body rather than requiring conscious processing.

You don’t need to be perfect. You don’t need to be fit enough. You don’t need to know anything before you arrive. You just need to show up - and let us take it from there.

Rise Pilates Studio is at 9 & 9a The Square, Keyworth, Nottinghamshire - with free parking on Bunny Lane. Browse our timetable and book your first class here.

The seven mistakes are avoidable. The only real mistake is not coming at all.

FAQs

I’m completely new to Pilates - is that okay?

Absolutely. All Rise classes welcome complete beginners, and our instructors will guide you through everything. Arriving a few minutes early for your first class so your instructor can introduce you to the equipment and the basics makes a real difference to how comfortable you feel.

What if I can’t do an exercise correctly?

Tell your instructor, and they’ll offer a modification. In Pilates, a modified exercise done correctly is always more valuable than a full exercise done with poor form. There is no version of this where struggling through something incorrectly is the right approach.

How long until Pilates starts to feel natural?

Most people reach a tipping point somewhere around sessions three to five, where the cues start to make sense in the body, and the class stops feeling like a constant mental calculation. By session ten, most beginners feel genuinely comfortable. The complexity of those early sessions is part of the process, not a sign that you’re doing it wrong.

Should I feel sore after my first Pilates class?

You might, particularly in muscles you don’t usually work - the deep abdominals, the inner thighs, the hip rotators. This is normal and tends to be more ‘awareness’ soreness than acute pain. If anything feels sharp, unusual, or persists beyond 48 hours, mention it to your instructor.