Pilates for PTs: How Do I Get Certified in Pilates as a Physical Therapist?

Last week, someone had emailed me, and the question was, “Hey Stephen, I'm a physical therapist, and how do I get certified in Pilates?” So, let’s go over the process, because this is something that's missed a lot on and it’s not so easy to find the answers out there because it can be complicated.

Let’s think about it this way: you went to school, and when you finished school, you had to take the board exam. That’s the whole idea of this process. When you go to your Pilates training, you do it with balanced body.

There are a lot of companies and you can do your training with any of them— your mat training, your reformer training, the full training, whatnot. But at the same time, it's just like you're getting your trained at school, and to get actually certified is to take your board exam. In PT, you take your board exam to get licensed.

The only certifying board and organization in Pilates is the Pilates Method Alliance.

 And to get certified, you basically finish your curriculum with whatever program and you need to have a certain number of hours to put in teaching, learning, observing, etc. Then you sit for a computer test to take the PMA exam, and you are certified. That's the certification process.

So again, think about PT school and taking the board exam with PMA. Now, the other question was, do I have to take the PMA exam as a PT? Well, it depends on your situation.

If you're going to be teaching someone on the reformer, it is best to go through a full process and a full training and get certified. Because you're going to be building a whole Pilates program and teaching it to build a side hustle in your studio that wasn't there before a wellness program, then you probably want to get certified. 

If not, you may just want to hire people that are certified to work with those programs and run them.