Music for Pilates class, used on purpose

Plenty of us pick music for Pilates class the way we'd pick it for a road trip. Something with a nice feel, shuffle on, volume a notch too low so nobody complains. Beat-Driven Musicality, Erin Schirack's 90-minute session on the Sunday of PLTS+ Collective, asks you to stop treating the speaker as furniture and start treating it as part of how you coach.

What the beat can do

Erin's description talks about intentional use of rhythm, tempo and musical structure. Her list of what that gets you: clearer cues, more confident clients, better motor learning and a group that moves as a group. If you've ever had a whole room land on the same count by accident, you know the last one.

Nobody is turning Pilates into dance cardio here. The session keeps control, precision, breath and flow first and fits the music around them.

What gets explored

In the room you look at what beat-driven music does to movement quality, to the nervous system, to pacing and to your cues. Then she gets practical about applying musical structure safely and sensibly across mat-based Pilates programming. Expect some theory, a good amount of practice and some time on teaching method.

A small test before you go

Here's a cheap experiment for this week. Take your standing warm-up and find one track at the pace you want, not the pace you usually slide into. Count the first eight out loud. Then notice whether your cues start falling on the beat by themselves. During the slow work, listen for a song that rushes the roll-down, and swap it, even if it's your favorite.

We'd build playlists by section of class, not by mood. Our guide on how to plan a Pilates class walks through those sections, and the one on how to cue Pilates helps with where your words land.

Who's teaching

Erin brings over 24 years of hands-on experience. At PLTS+ she's busy: she also leads the 12-hour Signature Group Fitness Pilates Teacher Training, by Erin Schirack in partnership with STRENGTH Collective, across both days, and a programming session in the virtual follow-up a month later. Her training is about how Pilates is actually taught in fast, full group rooms, so it makes sense that music sits near the middle of it.

If you teach with props as well as on the mat, Madeleine Conti's kettlebell Pilates workshop on Saturday pairs well with this one. Tempo matters even more once somebody's holding a bell.

Where it sits on Sunday

Sunday at PLTS+ is full. Holly Swanson's breath and posture session starts at 9:00, a mat class called Putting It All Together follows at 10:45, and the professional panel runs from 11:45 to 12:45. Erin's session starts at 1:00. If you're on the teacher training ticket, the training runs from 9 AM to 1 PM that day, so musicality comes straight after it with the same teacher.

When and where

Sunday, November 8, 2026, 1:00 to 2:30 PM Central, at 1809 Pearl St, Austin, TX 78701. It closes out the weekend. Everything else is on the PLTS+ Collective page.