"I used to raise my eyebrows and think that Pilates was nothing... and then I discovered the power of it." - Louise Buttler
Every story has a starting point.
For Louise Buttler, founder of el be Pilates, it wasn’t a business plan - it was something far more personal.
What began during a difficult period in her family life became the moment everything shifted.
"I’m actually going to take you back right to the beginning," says Louise. "I feel like that part is really important.
"Back then, actually it was 2017, and in 2016 my mum was going through chemotherapy. She had breast cancer. She was really unwell actually, she was stage four. She had it in her lymph nodes, but she had been put on a trial drug and things were slowly turning a corner.
"And at that point Jos [Buttler] and I were boyfriend and girlfriend and I was working for Adidas. I was an account manager for them. We were living in Manchester, but I ended up going home to live with my mum during this time.
"And Pilates was one of those things that my mum did twice a week and actually Jos has always done Pilates as well. He and my mum used to bond over that. And I used to kind of raise my eyebrows and think that it was nothing, that they weren’t really doing any movement and I didn’t really understand the benefits of it at all back then.
"It was something that my mum felt really strongly about doing, doing it throughout her treatment. So her and I would go twice a week to Pilates and it was then that I discovered the power of it. What it did for you physically, mentally, emotionally. How it kind of healed so many people going through so many different challenges and different ailments."
That experience didn’t just change Louise's perspective - it started to shape what came next.
"It was a time in my life where Jos and I were getting quite serious," she says.
"I was thinking of my career and I was finally finding a passion for something, I sort of landed into something that I was really interested in. So I started training alongside working for Adidas. I had quite a few exams: the anatomy, the physiology, to get to a level where you can work with physios and osteopaths."
At this point, Pilates was no longer just something Louise had discovered. It was becoming part of her future.
In part two, Louise explains how that shift turned into a career move - and the first version of el be Pilates. Get the June edition of The Edge to find out more.
