SOUTH DEERFIELD — Like many college students, Whately resident Emily Coderre’s first career guess was not the right one.
“I started as a history major because I was like, ‘I have no idea what I want to do, but I like education.’ I knew I liked education, I knew I liked helping people,” Coderre, 30, recalled.
While taking a semester off from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in her hometown of Sutton, Coderre took a public speaking class at Worcester State University. Toward the end of the class, the professor pointed out that each of Coderre’s projects focused on public health.
“I had no idea what public health was,” Coderre said with a smile.
Back at home, she Googled public health and quickly fell down a rabbit hole of information about community health education.
“It just clicked,” Coderre said. She remembered flooding thoughts of, “This is the missing piece of my life. This is what I want to do.”
Memories of soccer and softball practices clearing her head during difficult periods in her childhood resurfaced as she recognized her passion for wellness, health and exercise.
“And then my parents dragged me to a spin class,” Coderre said with a laugh. Although she started the 5:30 a.m. class groaning, she left with a clear head. “As soon as I took that class, I was like, ‘I want to be up there teaching one day.'”
Coderre started the next semester with a new major, public health, and a new job at the campus gym teaching her first spin classes.
About 10 years, countless spin classes and 90 hours of reformer Pilates training later, Coderre opened her own reformer Pilates studio, Pursuit Pilates Club in the Mill Village Professional Building at 235 Greenfield Road in South Deerfield. There, she teaches reformer Pilates classes outside her hours as a wellness representative at the Massachusetts Interlocal Insurance Association (MIIA).
“The dream has taken form over time,” Coderre said, sitting on one of the three reformers in her 500-square-foot studio coated in emerald green.
The switch from spin to Pilates came later when Coderre worked as an assistant manager at Club Pilates in Connecticut. Pilates classes often fall into two types: mat Pilates and reformer Pilates. Both forms focus on strengthening the core and other “small, deep, stabilizing muscles” while honing a “mind-body connection with your breath,” she said.
“When people leave a Pilates class, they’re feeling taller, they notice their posture’s a little bit higher, their chest feels wide, their shoulders are down,” she explained.
Mat Pilates involves exercises on a mat with more cushion and density than a yoga mat and reformer Pilates take the exercises to a machine. Reformer Pilates exercises require a reformer, a bed-like contraption with springs, straps, a “tower” and a foot bar.
“I liked mat, but I fell in love with reformer,” Coderre said, beaming.
Hoping to bring more reformer Pilates classes to Franklin County, Coderre initially planned to run Pilates pop-up classes around the state, “But there was something inside me that was like, ‘Open up a brick-and-mortar. … I have to go for it.'”
On Oct. 1, she took the leap and opened Pursuit Pilates Club, kicking off morning and night classes a month later in November. While reformers, green walls and white flowers behind a bright “Pursuit Pilates Club” sign fill the studio, the space lacks a fitness room staple.
“You don’t see mirrors where you can see your body working out, because I know — at least personally, from my experience — if I’m looking in the mirror, I’m not looking at form, I’m judging myself,” Coderre said. “I want people to come in and not worry about ‘How do I look in this room?’ I don’t want people to worry about judging themselves; I want them to come in and enjoy the movement.”
Coderre stressed that her Pilates classes teach participants to aim for progress, not perfection, a lesson she learned years ago as a nervous new instructor.
“I want to be OK with making mistakes because it shows other people it’s OK to make mistakes,” Coderre said. “It’s OK if you’re confused, it’s OK if you’re like, ‘What is this girl talking about?’”
She said she resists perfectionism not only when leading exercises, but also when responding to the attitudes that enter her studio.
“If they’re here, they just want to not talk and chitchat, they just want to work out, I respect that. If there’s somebody who wants to laugh and have fun, I will laugh and have fun. However you show up, I’m OK with that,” Coderre said. She recalled a client once breaking down in tears on the reformer. Instead of asking the participant to step outside the studio, Coderre responded with, “Hey, no worries, cry away, just make sure you keep your pelvis neutral.”
“She’s got a wicked sense of humor,” said Frances Darling, who drives to Coderre’s classes from Easthampton.
Darling, a yoga instructor herself of 20 years, said that when it comes to a good fitness class, chemistry is key.
“It’s about personality. You have to click with the instructor,” Darling said. She would tell her yoga classes, “‘You’re going to find an instructor who speaks in a way that you receive.'”
“And that’s what happened when I met Emily,” she said.
Throughout the class, Coderre moves through the room watching participants and offering tips and instructions on the exercises. According to Coderre, the slightest shift makes or breaks the burn of a Pilates exercise. Tucking the tailbone rounds the spine, staring straight ahead instead of peering at the ceiling flattens the back and letting the shoulders fall helps with posture.
Coderre’s plans for the studio include a range of ideas, from steps like adding a fourth reformer and hiring other instructors to build a “robust” class schedule, to strides like holding community workshops and running retreats, or even expanding to other locations in nearby towns, thus stretching the identity of Pursuit Pilates Club — a company that got its name from another fateful online search and … cheetah print.
“I have been obsessed with cheetah print since I was a kid, so I was like, ‘If I’m going to do this, I need to have a cheetah in my logo,” Coderre said, giggling. With the cheetah logo decided, she searched “Pilates studio name ideas that reference a cheetah” using ChatGPT AI software and read “Pursuit Pilates.”
“Everything just fell into place,” she said.
To learn more about Pursuit Pilates Club, visit pursuitpilatesclub.com.