About
We spent a whole evening trying to name this thing. Anchor Pilates. Ouse Pilates. The Ringmer Body Studio. Then Osho wrote both our names on the back of a receipt, crossed out the middle, and there it was.
01 · How it started
Gabby had been teaching one class a week at Ringmer Village Hall for three years, mostly to people who had been sent by a physiotherapist and did not know what else to do with themselves.
Osho had moved down from London the winter before, was driving to Brighton four days a week to teach reformer, and had begun to resent the A27 in a way he could not really justify to anyone.
They met at the hall because Gabby's class overran and Osho was waiting for the badminton. That is genuinely the whole origin story. By March there were six reformers in a flint barn on the edge of the village, bought secondhand from a studio in Tunbridge Wells that had run out of money and enthusiasm at the same time.
Four years on there are twenty two classes a week across three rooms. Nothing about the plan was clever. We just kept adding an hour whenever six people asked for the same one.
02 · The two of us
Ringmer born and, until she was twenty six, entirely certain she would play hockey until her knees gave out. A disc went instead, at a training session on a Tuesday, and took eleven months to come back.
The physiotherapist who got her walking properly again taught Pilates on the side and would not let her stop at walking properly. Gabby qualified four years later and has been teaching in East Sussex ever since.
She teaches Foundation, Restore, Bump & Back and Steady, which between them make up two thirds of the timetable. She is the reason our beginners class has stayed a beginners class rather than quietly becoming an intermediate one.
Ten years teaching reformer across three London studios, the last four of them running teacher training, before deciding that the view from Mount Caburn beat anything available on the Northern line.
He came to Pilates sideways, from strength and conditioning, and still thinks about it that way. Springs are load. Load is the point. The reason he keeps the Barn to six beds is that he cannot coach twelve people properly and refuses to pretend otherwise.
He teaches every reformer class on the timetable, plus Tuesday evening Flow when Gabby is on the school run. He will correct your foot position more times than you would like.
03 · What we hold to
Six on the reformer, sixteen on the mat, twelve in Restore. If a class outgrows the room we open another one rather than adding chairs.
Foundation runs the same repertoire every week forever. It is not a stepping stone unless you want it to be, and plenty of people never move.
Every number we charge is published. Nobody should have to ring a studio and be sold to before finding out what an hour costs.
There is music, quietly, and it is not there to set your tempo. You go at the speed the exercise needs, which is usually slower than you want.
04 · Three rooms
All three are within eight minutes of each other and all three have parking you do not have to think about, which sounds trivial until you have tried to get to a class in Brighton.
Anchor Field, Ringmer, BN8 5QU
Sprung floor, forty free spaces, mats and props provided. Twelve of our twenty two classes happen here.
Broyle Gate Farm, Ringmer, BN8 5AR
Six reformers in a converted flint barn with underfloor heating and swallows in the roof from April.
Spences Lane, Lewes, BN7 2HB
One Wednesday evening Flow class, added because eleven people from Lewes asked for it in the same fortnight.
05 · What people say
Three classes, three weeks, twenty four pounds. That is enough to know.