Does Pilates Improve Speed and Agility? What the Research Shows

The honest answer is: a little, in specific ways, and the evidence is still thin. A handful of small controlled trials in athletes have found real improvements in sprint times over short distances and in agility-test scores after a Pilates program, usually alongside the athletes' normal training rather than instead of it. What Pilates is not doing is turning anyone into a sprinter through brute force. The gains look like better movement efficiency, not bigger engines.

What the Research Actually Measured

As a physiotherapist, I care less about the word "performance" and more about which specific test improved, how it was tested, and who was in the study. Most of the research on Pilates and speed or agility comes from small randomized trials in a particular sport, published in physiotherapy or sports-science journals rather than headline fitness coverage. The tests themselves are concrete: timed 5-10 meter and 10-20 meter sprints, standardized agility drills like the German agility test, countermovement and broad jumps, and sport-specific skills like dribbling speed or passing accuracy. That's useful, because it means we're not relying on how fast someone felt after six weeks of mat work.

A Soccer Trial: Mat vs. Reformer

One of the more detailed trials split 30 soccer players into three groups of ten: reformer Pilates, mat Pilates, and a no-Pilates control, with physical and technical testing before and after. The reformer group improved significantly on measures including 10-20 meter sprint time, the German agility test, speed dribbling, and several jump and passing measures. The mat group also improved on balance, 5-10 meter sprint time, agility, and some passing measures, just across fewer tests than the reformer group. The control group showed no significant change on anything. When the two Pilates groups were compared directly, reformer training edged out mat work specifically on agility, passing accuracy, and single-leg hop performance.

That last point matters for anyone deciding between a mat class and a reformer studio for this particular goal: both moved the needle, but the reformer's adjustable spring resistance seems to translate a bit more directly into the kind of loaded, single-leg control that shows up in cutting and change-of-direction tests.

A Cricket Trial: Pilates Added to Normal Training

A separate randomized trial took 39 male state-level cricket players and split them into a conventional-training group and a group that added Pilates to the same conventional training, three sessions a week for six weeks. The Pilates-plus group showed significantly larger improvements than the conventional-only group in speed, agility, and power, alongside gains in trunk strength and hamstring flexibility. Both groups improved somewhat, which is normal with six weeks of any structured training, but the Pilates group improved more.

What I'd flag here, and what the published abstract doesn't give us, is the actual size of that difference or the specific tests used to measure "power." Statistically significant doesn't automatically mean large, and a study this size (under 40 participants) can't tell us how reproducible the effect is across other sports or athlete populations.

What a Wider Review of the Evidence Shows

A 2023 systematic review pulled together 12 studies on Pilates and sports performance, searched across PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus from 2010 to 2022, with intervention lengths ranging from four to fourteen weeks. Across that body of research, the pattern repeats: improvements turn up in sprint performance and agility, plus balance, flexibility, core strength, VO2 max, and coordination, depending on the study.

I want to be straightforward about the limits of that review rather than wave it around as proof. The published abstract doesn't report sample sizes, effect sizes, participant characteristics, or how rigorously each trial controlled for bias, so I can't tell you whether the "improvement" in any given study was clinically meaningful or barely above noise. Most of the individual trials I could track down, including the two above, involved fewer than 40 people, ran for a matter of weeks, and skewed toward young, already-active athletes. That's a real signal worth taking seriously. It is not the same as a large, well-controlled body of evidence.

Why Pilates Might Move These Numbers at All

The mechanism that makes anatomical sense to me isn't that Pilates builds raw muscular power the way sprint intervals or plyometrics do. It's that sprinting and changing direction both depend on transferring force efficiently through the trunk, pelvis, and hips into the ground, and a lot of athletes leak that force through poor pelvic control, asymmetric hip strength, or a trunk that can't resist rotation under load. Pilates trains exactly that: deep trunk and hip stabilizers, single-leg control, and the ability to hold a stable center while a limb moves fast. Tighten that chain, and a given amount of leg power shows up more fully as speed on the clock, instead of getting lost in wobble. That's consistent with the soccer trial's own detail: the biggest between-group advantage for reformer Pilates was in agility and single-leg hop control, not raw straight-line power output.

The Honest Verdict

If your goal is faster sprint times or sharper change-of-direction, Pilates is a reasonable addition to a training program, not a replacement for one. The research we have suggests it can meaningfully support speed and agility gains when layered onto sport-specific training, over periods as short as six weeks, with reformer work showing a slight edge over mat work on agility and single-leg measures specifically. It is not a substitute for sprint-specific conditioning, plyometrics, or progressive strength training if maximal speed is the target, and none of the available trials are large enough to tell you exactly how much faster you'll get.

In practice, I'd suggest two reformer or mat sessions a week, built around single-leg stability, hip control, and anti-rotation trunk work, run alongside whatever speed or sport training you're already doing, and give it a genuine six to twelve weeks before judging the result on a stopwatch rather than a feeling. If you're returning from an injury or have a diagnosed hip, knee, or back condition, check with your physiotherapist or clinician before adding load-bearing single-leg work, since the right starting point depends on what you're recovering from.

The gains in these trials look like better movement efficiency, not a bigger engine, and that's exactly the kind of improvement a stopwatch can miss until you actually test it.

Felix Okoye

Frequently asked

Will Pilates alone make me faster?

On its own, probably not by much. The trials that show speed gains paired Pilates with the athletes' existing sport or conditioning training rather than replacing it, so the fair expectation is a supporting role, not a stand-alone speed program.

Is reformer Pilates better than mat Pilates for agility?

In the one trial that compared them directly, reformer Pilates produced slightly larger gains in agility, passing accuracy, and single-leg hop control than mat Pilates, though both groups improved over the no-Pilates control group. Either is a reasonable starting point.

How soon might I notice a difference?

The trials that found measurable changes ran for six to fourteen weeks, with testing done before and after rather than tracked week to week. Expect to need at least six weeks of consistent sessions before judging results on a stopwatch or agility drill.

Can Pilates replace sprint or plyometric training?

No. The research suggests it complements that kind of training by improving trunk and hip stability, not that it replaces the specific power and speed adaptations that sprinting and plyometric work produce on their own.