Pilates and Lagree are frequently compared, but the founder of the latter says the debate misses the point, as the two serve different purposes.
“There’s really no beef. I don’t see them in competition,” Sebastien Lagree tells The National during a recent trip to the UAE, where the toning fitness technique is establishing a firm base, with more studios opening. “Dubai’s personality matches mine. People here like things bigger and better. Most of the craziest things I’ll do will probably happen here first,” says the French-American Lagree founder.
Pilates focuses on restoring balance and improving mobility, while Lagree is designed to push muscular endurance and strength through sustained, high-intensity movements. While both draw on reformer-based principles, they are built for different outcomes and are often used together rather than interchangeably.
“Pilates is a restorative technique. When you look at the creation of Pilates, you look at the early 1900s, when Joseph Pilates started to put together his reformer. And the original machine looked very different from what you see today,” adds Sebastien, who is also the inventor of the Megaformer machine on which Lagree Fitness is performed.
Sebastien adds that much of the comparison drama is driven online rather than in studios. “People who have never done Pilates or Lagree chime in, but they are misinformed. So to the Pilates community: I love Pilates. I do it on the Megaformer myself, so I believe in a combination of the two.”
Alternative to weightlifting
For Sebastien, the distinction matters. His method was never intended to replace Pilates or even sit alongside it as a rival discipline. “Pilates started as a healing method. Joseph Pilates believed a balanced body is a healthy body. That is the premise of Pilates, and I agree with this. I’m not doing that because Pilates is already doing it.
“The reason why Lagree came to be is because in 1998, when I was teaching Pilates, I realised within 30 days that a lot of people were complaining that they were not getting enough effort in the class.”
Sebastien noticed a growing interest in something more physically demanding, especially among female clients. The wider fitness landscape of the era helps explain that shift. He says that, at the time, women typically didn’t go to the gym to lift but rather do cardio.
“They were not doing weight-lifting like today. Today a lot has changed. Thirty years later, women are working out just as aggressively as men,” says Sebastien.
However, he says, back then, strength training carried its own stigma. “A lot of women thought that weightlifting would make them bulky. So I knew they needed the intensity of weight-lifting without taking them into the weights room.”
For him, the answer lay in rethinking the reformer itself. “I picked the reformer because it has the most application fitness-wise,” he says. “And I decided to essentially use bodybuilding exercise and training techniques. But instead of using weights, I used the reformer.”
The response was immediate. “It didn’t wait a year, two months or even a month. It just took off,” he says. “The first week, I was maybe teaching 12 to 15 hours. Within three weeks, I was doing 60 hours a week.”
With that growth came attention from beyond the studio. “I had the press coming in, celebrities were coming in. Everybody was curious about this method.”
Initially, the style didn’t even bear his name. “At the beginning, I didn’t call it Lagree. I called it Pilates-plus,” he says, adding that fitness was not his original career plan. “When I moved to LA, my intention was to become an actor. I didn’t move to do fitness.”
That period was followed by a series of professional setbacks that ultimately pushed Sebastien towards forging his own path. After the studio where he was teaching changed ownership, he was asked to leave, largely because his classes no longer aligned with traditional Pilates.
Not long after, he found himself shut out of other studios across Los Angeles, effectively unable to teach as his approach fell outside established definitions of the discipline. “So, I opened my own studio, started to develop my own method and eventually decided to make my own machine,” he says.
Evolution is the name of the game
From there, the method continued to evolve, a process Sebastien says is far from complete. “I’ve never stopped evolving the machine and the method,” he says.
He describes the current iteration as part of a longer journey. “I’m still at about a 40 per cent completion rate from the original vision that I want,” he says. “So you’re going to see a huge innovation, a huge evolution of the machine and the method.”
This will extend beyond hardware into how the workout itself is structured. Sebastien says new movements are constantly being developed in collaboration with other instructors. “I work with different teachers,” he says. “And I’ll put it on the machine and explore new movements.”
Those explorations have already resulted in four new training series: flying, floating, leading and hinging.
Technology is also playing an increasingly central role in shaping what comes next. While the movements may look familiar to seasoned clients, the way resistance and intensity are managed is shifting. Sebastien says that Lagree 2.0 and 3.0 are expected to be released this year.
“Lagree 2.0 is about muscular insurance,” he says. “To do that, you need the remote control that allows you to change the springs wirelessly.” The aim is to keep people in motion longer. “It’s like doing a drop set, but I’m dropping the weight for you. You keep moving.
“Lagree 3.0 is about time under tension, but also anti-inflammation. Because if I have you stay in a movement longer, I don't want the additional time to create inflammation in your joints.”
Future versions will continue to build on that principle, introducing other forms of resistance and eventually exploring different planes of motion, he says, describing his vision of machines that tilt during exercises.
For Sebastien, the method’s trajectory is not just physical. “When you start to do this, then come other parts of mental health. We go more into the mind aspects of the workout. So there’s a whole evolution planned out.”
He says while variety is important in fitness, the ability to progress intensity is even more so. “I don’t understand people who today do routine A, tomorrow do routine B, then routine C and repeat. The body doesn’t work that way. If you want to continue to improve, you have to challenge your body in new ways. That’s why I’m pushing the evolution of this method.”
