Julie
Erickson.

Julie came to classical Pilates not as a civilian, but as someone already deep in the fitness world. She had been teaching fitness since the 1990s — certified through Physical Mind Institute, one of the original and most respected classical Pilates certification bodies — long before Pilates became a household name, before reformer studios appeared on every corner, before the method was diluted into something the industry could sell at scale.

When she encountered classical Pilates in its full, unmodified form, she understood immediately that this was something different. Not a workout. Not a class. A system — one with internal logic, physical intelligence, and an integrity that most movement practices never come close to. She had the fitness knowledge to recognize what she was seeing. And what she saw changed everything.

She arrived at that first session already knowing her body — as a certified personal trainer and a serious endurance athlete who has run 25 marathons. She wasn’t looking for fitness. She had fitness. What she found in classical Pilates was something she hadn’t encountered anywhere else: a method that addressed not just strength or stamina, but the deep architecture of how the body actually moves.

She didn’t become a Pilates teacher because it seemed like a good career. She became one because she couldn’t imagine doing anything else. When you encounter something that genuinely transforms the way you live in your body, the only honest response is to spend your life sharing it.

The classical method — and why it matters

Julie teaches classical Pilates — the original, unmodified system developed by Joseph Pilates over the course of his lifetime. Not a contemporary interpretation. Not a hybrid. The real thing.

The distinction matters more than most people realize. The Pilates world has fractured over decades into hundreds of variations — some inspired, most diluted. Classical Pilates preserves the original sequence, the original progressions, and the original intention. The exercises are taught in order. The apparatus is authentic. Nothing is removed because it’s difficult, and nothing is added because it’s popular.

For Julie, the method and its integrity are inseparable. The purity is the point. The intellectual depth is part of what makes it work. And the results — the real, lasting, structural changes in how bodies move and feel — are only possible when the system is taught whole.

An athlete who teaches athletes.

Julie is not a theorist. She is a certified personal trainer and has completed 25 marathons — which means she has spent decades living inside a serious endurance athlete’s body, understanding its demands, its breaking points, and what it actually takes to keep it performing at the highest level across a lifetime.

That athletic background is not incidental to her teaching. It is central to it. When Julie assesses how your body moves, she brings something no certification program can teach: the embodied knowledge of someone who has trained hard, raced hard, and learned firsthand what intelligent movement — versus punishing movement — actually looks like over time.

She brings this perspective to every client she works with — whether you’re an athlete managing load, recovering from injury, or simply trying to move better for the rest of your life. She knows the difference between discomfort that builds and damage that breaks. And she knows how to walk that line with precision.

When Boston needed it most.

In the weeks and months after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, Julie received a call that would define what her work was truly capable of. Survivors needed rehabilitation. Not clinic rehabilitation — something more personal, more patient, more present. Julie brought classical Pilates into their homes.

She worked with Celeste Corcoran and her daughter Sydney — three times a week, in their home, as an alternative to conventional physical therapy during Celeste’s recovery. Their story, and Julie’s role in it, was covered by the Boston Globe and Boston Magazine. She worked with Jeff Bauman — one of the most recognized survivors of that day — at his home, with the Boston Globe documenting the work. And she worked with Jess Kensky and her husband Patrick Downes, bringing the same quiet, methodical, hands-on practice to two people rebuilding their bodies and their lives from the ground up.

This work was not incidental. It was proof. Proof that classical Pilates, taught with precision and care, can reach bodies that conventional rehabilitation struggles to address. That it can restore movement, rebuild confidence, and return a person to themselves — even after the most unimaginable circumstances.

Endurance Pilates & Yoga’s work with Boston Marathon bombing survivors was featured in an HBO documentary — a recognition not just of Julie’s role, but of what this method, practiced at its highest level, is capable of.

Julie does not speak of this work to promote herself. She speaks of it because it is the clearest answer to the question every prospective client eventually asks: does this actually work?

Read the original coverage from the Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, and HBO →

Trained by the best. Certified by everyone.

Julie’s classical Pilates training is anchored in an unbroken lineage tracing directly to Joseph Pilates — through master teachers Sari Mejia Santo and her daughter Daria Mejo Wiggins, Brooke Siler, and Cary Regan. These are not names from a brochure. They are the people who shaped how Julie sees and understands the body.

But Julie’s education has never stopped. She trains continuously — most recently completing a workshop with master teacher Peter Fiasca. Because the best instructors in any discipline know that mastery is not a destination. It is a practice.

Beyond her classical lineage, Julie holds a depth of certification that is genuinely rare in the Pilates and fitness world — and that separates her from every other instructor in Boston:

Most Pilates instructors know one method and teach it one way. Julie knows the classical system at its deepest level — and she has the biomechanical, anatomical, and coaching education to understand why it works, how to adapt it for each individual body, and how to make sure it actually lands. That is what her clients feel from the first session.

The studio she built

Julie founded Endurance Pilates & Yoga in 2009 and has been rooted in Boston’s South End for over 16 years. She built the studio around one non-negotiable: authentic Gratz equipment — the apparatus Joseph Pilates designed himself, built to his exact specifications, and the only equipment on which classical Pilates can be properly taught.

Her client roster spans the full range of what serious bodies require. She has trained Broadway and Cirque du Soleil performers; professional NHL players including Jack Eichel — a client since he was 19 years old at BU, through his entire professional career — and Tuukka Rask; NBA players including Mason Plumlee and the New York Knicks; supermodels Gisele Bündchen and Danielle Braga; and elite dancers across Boston and New York City. She has worked with individuals managing Parkinson’s disease, brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, autoimmune conditions, and prenatal and post-partum recovery. And she has provided extensive pro bono rehabilitation work with Boston Marathon bombing survivors and amputees.

The studio is intentionally small and intentionally private. Julie teaches each client personally. There are no crowded group classes, no revolving door of instructors, and no compromise on the quality of attention each body receives. Endurance has been recognized with a Best of Boston honor — a distinction that reflects not just Julie’s skill, but the loyalty of a client community that has experienced firsthand what real classical Pilates can do.

Her philosophy

Julie believes the body is not a problem to be managed. It is a system to be understood — and when you understand it correctly, and move it intelligently, it responds in ways that never stop surprising you.

She has watched people come to her studio with chronic pain, post-surgical bodies, athletic plateaus, and simple exhaustion — and leave with something they didn’t expect to find: a relationship with their own body that lasts.

She is not interested in quick results or trendy methods. She is interested in the truth about how the body moves — and in teaching it to the people who are ready to hear it.