From Lockdown to Launch
How SPRING Movement’s Pilates Teacher Training Program Evolved from East River Pilates.
By Kimmy Kellum
If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that growth doesn’t always arrive with a grand announcement. Sometimes it begins unexpectedly, in long voice notes, in Zoom calls across time zones, in conversations about teaching that feel bigger than the moment you’re in.
At East River Pilates, we’ve always believed studios are more than places where people come to work out. They are communities where teachers grow, ideas evolve, and relationships quietly shape the future of our industry. SPRING didn’t begin somewhere else and arrive at ERP later. It began here.
What started as East River Pilates’ internal teacher training program slowly evolved into something much bigger. Over time, the mentorship model we were building inside our Brooklyn studios grew into a global Pilates education platform now known as SPRING Movement.
This story is about how that happened. And like many things in the Pilates world, it all began with a relationship.
Talia and Kimmy, Co-Founders of SPRING Movement
March 2020
In March 2020, New York City began shutting down.
At the time, East River Pilates had already grown into a thriving studio community across Brooklyn. Our classes were full, our instructor team was strong, and our teacher training program was already quietly shaping the next generation of ERP instructors. Then, almost overnight, everything stopped.
I had been home in Australia visiting family and was meant to be flying back to Brooklyn on March 16th. It was the exact same day Talia boarded her plane to join her husband and begin her new chapter in New York. We had decided to wait a couple of weeks and reassess, assuming this would be a short interruption before life resumed.
Looking back now, I still cannot quite comprehend how serendipitous that timing really was. Talia got on the plane. I didn’t.
While I stayed in Australia watching borders tighten and headlines escalate, Talia landed in New York at the exact moment the lockdown was enforced.
“My first experience of New York wasn’t the New York people talk about,” Talia tells me. “It wasn’t the energy or the constant movement. It was empty streets, uncertainty, and trying to figure out what daily life was going to look like.”
At the same time, East River Pilates had just closed its doors. We permanently closed our Broadway location. Reformers were completely still, and the streets were eerily quiet in a way no one on our team had experienced before.
It was one of the hardest and most vulnerable moments I have faced as an entrepreneur. I was locked into three ten-year leases, one of which I had signed only four months before lockdown. Landlords were still demanding rent, and at the same time we were not even allowed to open our doors to teach Pilates. At one point we found ourselves sitting with our legal team discussing the possibility of bankruptcy, after already having to let go of so many incredible members of our team.
Then, almost as suddenly as everything had shut down, we were given permission to reopen. With just one weekend’s notice. Everything shifted.
We returned to “business as usual,” except nothing about it was usual. Masks everywhere, hand sanitizer at every corner of the studio, six-foot spacing between reformers, spacing stickers all over the floor, single-person entry through the doors, no hands-on adjustments.
It was really wild. But our team stayed. The instructors who carried us through that time were extraordinary. They’ll probably never fully realize it, but they are still heroes in my eyes. Looking back now, that period completely reshaped the way I think about leadership, resilience, community, and what it takes to build something that lasts.
Somewhere between those two realities, one of us grounded in Australia and the other navigating a locked-down New York, the next chapter of East River Pilates quietly began to take shape.
Finding Each Other
SPRING’s Co-Founders: Kimmy and Talia Meeting for the first time at Good Times Pilates in Melbourne
During lockdown, we were searching for an experienced physical therapist who also taught Pilates and could support the instructor team at East River Pilates while deepening the culture of mentorship inside the studio. I’ve always believed that strong studios are built on strong teachers, and supporting instructors has always been just as important to me as supporting clients.
In the middle of global uncertainty, our marketing manager at the time, Hollie, connected with Talia on Instagram. I think the mention of Pilates and pizza in her handle helped. What became clear very quickly was how differently she approached movement.
“Where someone else might see a glute bridge, I’m immediately thinking about load transfer, compensation strategies, breathing patterns, and injury history,” she explains. “That’s just how a physiotherapist’s brain works.”
I noticed it immediately. From our very first conversation, I could tell Talia thought in layers. She asked questions that made you pause and rethink what you thought you understood.
What started as a few direct messages quickly turned into long voice notes. Then Zoom calls. Then hours talking about biomechanics, cueing, education, and what we both felt was missing in traditional Pilates certification. For nearly two years we worked closely together before ever meeting in person.
“It’s funny to say now,” Talia reflects, “but the distance almost made the collaboration stronger. We had to communicate really clearly. We had to explain exactly how we were thinking.”
East River Pilates: The Real Classroom
Long before SPRING existed as a formal education program, the philosophy behind it was already developing inside East River Pilates.
Talia leading a SPRING Apparatus Course at East River Pilates
ERP has always been more than a client-facing studio. It is a community, a laboratory, and a place where instructors grow up professionally.
Teachers were not just learning choreography. They were learning how to read a room, adjust for real bodies, communicate clearly under pressure, and lead with confidence. They were teaching everyday people. Not idealized textbook bodies.
“As a physiotherapist I’m always asking why,” Talia says. “Why does this exercise work? When would it not work? What does someone’s injury history tell us about how we should load them?”
Those questions began shaping the mentorship culture inside the studio. Certification gives you information. But confidence comes from practice, mentorship, and feedback over time.
“People didn’t just need the material,” Talia adds. “They needed support applying it in real situations.”
Over time it became clear that many instructors experienced a gap between completing their training and feeling ready to lead a room.
What Lockdown Revealed
When teaching moved online during lockdown, the reality of teaching became even clearer. Without hands-on adjustments or the natural energy of a studio to lean on, instructors had to rely on clarity and decision making. Cueing mattered more than ever, and you could immediately see the difference between someone who simply knew exercises and someone who truly understood how to teach.
Studios were being tested. Teachers were being tested. Leadership was being tested.
During that time, one question kept resurfacing in our conversations. How do we develop instructors who can think? Not just instructors who can deliver a beautiful sequence, but educators who understand load management, recognize red flags, and adapt programming in real time.
Talia’s physiotherapy background brought an important perspective to that question.
“From a clinical standpoint I’m always looking at the long game,” she explains. “Injury prevention, tissue tolerance, nervous system response, how someone adapts over time. Those things matter if you want teachers to have sustainable careers.”
My lens was a little different. I understood what it takes to hold a room full of clients week after week, to create a space where people feel supported and connected, and to make sure that when they walk back out into the world around them, they feel better than when they walked in. It’s not a magic trick either. It comes from very conscious forms of connection: a smile, a warm welcome, remembering people’s names, asking about their goals, cheering them on, celebrating their progress, and always highlighting ways to enjoy their bodies and have fun in the process.
When those two perspectives came together, the pieces started to fit.
When SPRING Took Shape
There was no dramatic launch moment. Instead, there was a growing awareness that the mentorship model developing inside East River Pilates had the potential to reach far beyond one studio. For years, East River Pilates had been running its own internal teacher training program.
Talia on set filming the SPRING Movement Mat Pilates Certification Video Resources.
What began as a way to support and mentor our instructors gradually grew into something much more substantial. Over time it became clear that what we were building inside ERP was not just a training program for our own team, but a model for how Pilates teachers could be developed more thoughtfully. That program has now been running for seven years.
During that time, instructors kept asking for more guidance and more structure. They did not just want a certification. They wanted clarity, confidence, and a deeper understanding of the craft.
“At some point we realized what we were building wasn’t just internal mentorship anymore,” Talia says. “It was actually a framework for how teachers could be educated.”
What had originally lived inside East River Pilates slowly evolved into something that could stand on its own.
SPRING emerged as a natural evolution of East River Pilates’ teacher training program. A comprehensive Pilates education platform rooted in real studio life and strengthened by clinical insight.
“Education should live inside real communities,” Talia says. “It should happen where teachers are actually teaching.”
What We Built
SPRING carries forward everything East River Pilates taught us. You are never teaching an idealized body. You are teaching the person in front of you, on that day.
SPRING emphasizes decision making over memorization, adaptability over rigidity, curiosity over ego, and mentorship over isolation. Clinical reasoning also plays a really important role.
“We’re not trying to turn Pilates instructors into physiotherapists,” Talia says. “But we do want them to understand the body more deeply so they can teach safely and sustainably.”
My role has always been about protecting the humanity in the work. The warmth, accessibility, and community that allow people to learn confidently.
SPRING lives at the intersection of those two perspectives. Clinical depth and studio culture.
Where We Are Now
Today, SPRING exists as a global teacher training program delivered in partnership with studios around the world. But East River Pilates will always be where it began.
Lucy, Founder of Scout Studios in Sydney, Australia with SPRING’s Co-Founders, Talia and Kimmy
Many of those partnerships, like our collaboration with Scout Studios, trace their roots directly back to the ERP community. Lucy Beaumont, Scout’s Founder and Director, first joined us as an instructor inside our Brooklyn studios years ago before later returning to Australia and building Scout Studios in Sydney’s Inner West.
What started in a slightly gritty basement studio under the Williamsburg Bridge has grown into something much bigger. Different cities. Different studios. But the same commitment to teaching everyday people really well.
Because if the Pilates world has taught us anything, it’s that the relationships you build inside one studio can ripple outward in ways you never expect. And sometimes those ripples end up crossing oceans.
The story of SPRING doesn’t begin and end in Brooklyn. Over the years, instructors who passed through what was originally East River Pilates’ Teacher Training Program and now, SPRING Movement’s Teacher Training Program, have gone on to open their own studios, build communities, and help shape the next generation of Pilates teachers around the world.
Curious about a career as a Pilates instructor?
East River Pilates is proud to be SPRING Movement’s exclusive Brooklyn home.
[Explore SPRING Movement’s Pilates Teacher Training at East River Pilates →]
Your Dream Career Starts Here.