SPRING Sessions • From Lockdown to Launch
SPRING’s Co-Founders, Talia Williams and Kimmy Kellum
How SPRING Evolved from
East River Pilates
In Conversation with SPRING’s Co-Founders
By Kimmy Kellum
If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that growth doesn’t always arrive with a grand announcement. Sometimes it begins unexpectedly, in long voice notes, in Zoom calls across time zones, in conversations about teaching that feel bigger than the moment you’re in.
SPRING didn’t begin with a curriculum. It grew out of a connection, and this is the story of how two people who had never met eventually found themselves building one of the world’s most trusted and inclusive Pilates teacher training platforms together.
March 2020
In March 2020, New York City began shutting down.
I had been home in Australia visiting family and was meant to be flying back to Brooklyn on March 16th. It was the exact same day Talia boarded her plane to join her husband and begin her new chapter in New York. We had decided to wait a couple of weeks and reassess, assuming this would be a short interruption before life resumed.
Looking back now, I still cannot quite comprehend how serendipitous that timing really was.
Talia got on the plane. I didn’t.
While I stayed in Australia watching borders tighten and headlines escalate, Talia landed in New York at the exact moment the lockdown was enforced.
Talia leading teaching labs at East River Pilates in Brooklyn, New York.
“My first experience of New York wasn’t the New York people talk about,” Talia tells me. “It wasn’t the energy or the constant movement. It was empty streets, uncertainty, and trying to figure out what daily life was going to look like.”
At the same time, East River Pilates had just closed its doors. We permanently closed our Broadway location. Reformers were completely still, and the streets were eerily quiet in a way no one on our team had experienced before.
It was one of the hardest and most vulnerable moments I have faced as an entrepreneur. I was locked into three ten-year leases, one of which I had signed only four months before lockdown. Landlords were still demanding rent, and at the same time we were not even allowed to open our doors to teach Pilates. At one point we found ourselves sitting with our legal team discussing the possibility of bankruptcy, after already having to let go of so many incredible members of our team.
Then, almost as suddenly as everything had shut down, we were given permission to reopen. With just one weekend’s notice, everything shifted and the direction of our future changed, forever.
We returned to “business as usual,” except nothing about it was usual. Masks everywhere, hand sanitizer at every corner of the studio, six-foot spacing between reformers, spacing stickers all over the floor, single-person entry through the doors, no hands-on adjustments. It was really wild. But our team stayed. The instructors who carried us through that time were extraordinary. They’ll probably never fully realize it, but they are still heroes in my eyes. Looking back now, that period completely reshaped the way I think about leadership, resilience, community, and what it takes to build something that lasts.
Somewhere between those two realities, one of us grounded in Australia, and the other navigating a locked-down New York, SPRING quietly began to take shape.
Finding Each Other
During lockdown, we were on the search for an experienced physical therapist that also taught Pilates, who could support the instructor team at East River Pilates and deepen our culture of mentorship inside the studio.
I’ve always believed that strong studios are built on strong teachers, and for me, supporting instructors has always been just as important as supporting clients, if not more.
SPRING’s Co-Founders: Kimmy and Talia Meeting for the first time at Good Times Pilates in Melbourne
In the middle of global uncertainty, our marketing manager at the time, Hollie, connected with Talia on Instagram. I think the mention of Pilates and pizza in her handle helped.
What became clear very quickly was how differently she approached movement.
“Where someone else might see a glute bridge, I’m immediately thinking about load transfer, compensation strategies, breathing patterns, and injury history,” she explains. “That’s just how a physiotherapist’s brain works.”
I noticed it immediately. From our very first conversation, I could tell Talia thought in layers. She asked questions that made you pause and rethink what you thought you understood.
What started as a few direct messages quickly turned into long voice notes. Then Zoom calls. Then hours talking about biomechanics, cueing, education, and what we both felt was missing in traditional Pilates certification.
For nearly two years we worked closely together before ever meeting in person.
“It’s funny to say now,” Talia reflects, “but the distance almost made the collaboration stronger. We had to communicate really clearly. We had to explain exactly how we were thinking.”
East River Pilates: The Real Classroom
Long before SPRING existed as a formal education program, the philosophy behind it was already developing inside East River Pilates.
Talia hosting a workshop with East River Pilates’ Teaching Team
ERP has always been more than a client-facing studio to me. It is a community, a laboratory, and a place where instructors grow up professionally. Teachers were not just learning choreography. They were learning how to read a room, adjust for real bodies, communicate clearly under pressure, and lead with confidence. They were teaching everyday people, not idealized textbook bodies.
“As a physiotherapist I’m always asking why,” Talia says. “Why does this exercise work? When would it not work? What does someone’s injury history tell us about how we should load them?”
Those questions began shaping the mentorship culture inside the studio. Certification gives you information. But confidence comes from practice, mentorship, and feedback over time.
“People didn’t just need the material,” Talia adds. “They needed support applying it in real situations.”
Over time it became clear that many instructors experienced a gap between completing their training and feeling ready to lead a room.
Talia with SPRING’s Reformer graduates
What Lockdown Revealed
When teaching moved online during lockdown, the reality of teaching became even clearer. Without hands-on adjustments or the natural energy of a studio to lean on, instructors had to rely on clarity and decision making. Cueing mattered more than ever, and you could immediately see the difference between someone who simply knew exercises and someone who truly understood how to teach.
Studios were being tested. Teachers were being tested. Leadership was being tested.
During that time, one question kept resurfacing in our conversations. How do we develop instructors who can think? Not just instructors who can deliver a beautiful sequence, but educators who understand load management, recognize red flags, and adapt programming in real time.
Talia’s physiotherapy background brought an important perspective to that question.
“From a clinical standpoint I’m always looking at the long game,” she explains. “Injury prevention, tissue tolerance, nervous system response, how someone adapts over time. Those things matter if you want teachers to have sustainable careers.”
My lens was a little different. I understood what it takes to hold a room full of clients week after week, to create a space where people feel supported and connected, and to make sure that when they walk back out into the world around them, they feel better than when they walked in. It’s not a magic trick either. It comes from very conscious forms of connection: a smile, a warm welcome, remembering people’s names, asking about their goals, cheering them on, celebrating their progress, and always highlighting ways to enjoy their bodies and have fun in the process.
When those two perspectives came together, the pieces started to fit, like a glove.
When SPRING Took Shape
Talia on set at SPRING’s Mat Pilates Video Shoot
There was no dramatic launch moment. Instead, there was a growing awareness that the mentorship model developing inside East River Pilates had the potential to reach far beyond one studio.
For years, East River Pilates had been running its own internal teacher training program. What began as a way to support and mentor our instructors gradually grew into something much more substantial. Over time it became clear that what we were building inside ERP was not just a training program for our own team, but a model for how Pilates teachers could be developed more thoughtfully. That program has now been running for seven years.
During that time, instructors kept asking for more guidance and more structure. They did not just want a certification. They wanted clarity, confidence, and a deeper understanding of the craft.
“At some point we realized what we were building wasn’t just internal mentorship anymore,” Talia says. “It was actually a framework for how teachers could be educated.”
What had originally lived inside East River Pilates slowly evolved into something that could stand on its own. SPRING emerged as a natural evolution of East River Pilates’ teacher training program. A comprehensive Pilates education platform rooted in real studio life and strengthened by clinical insight.
“Education should live inside real communities,” Talia says. “It should happen where teachers are actually teaching.”
What We Built
SPRING carries forward everything East River Pilates taught us.
You are never teaching an idealized body. You are teaching the person in front of you, on that day. SPRING emphasizes decision making over memorization, adaptability over rigidity, curiosity over ego, and mentorship over isolation.
Clinical reasoning also plays an important role.
“We’re not trying to turn Pilates instructors into physiotherapists,” Talia says. “But we do want them to understand the body more deeply so they can teach safely and sustainably.”
My role has always been about protecting the humanity in the work. The warmth, accessibility, and community that allow people to learn confidently.
SPRING lives at the intersection of those two perspectives. Clinical depth and studio culture.
Talia and Kimmy
Where We Are Now
Today, SPRING exists as its own global teacher training program delivered in partnership with studios around the world.
East River Pilates remains a thriving client-facing studio and an ongoing partner studio. Probably the proudest one of them all if you ask me.
The roles are distinct, but our roots are shared and go deep. When I look back now, it is remarkable to think where it all began.
“It started with Instagram messages during lockdown,” I say. “And a lot of voice notes,” Talia adds.
Between distance, time zones, and a global pause, a conversation slowly grew into something bigger.
The scale is different now but the intention is the same. So here we are celebrating, from lockdown to launch.
And this is only the beginning. 🌱
Inspired by this story?
SPRING’s Pilates Teacher Training is proud to call Brooklyn home, hosted exclusively at East River Pilates.
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