Colleen Naus arrived at Pilates through dance. She grew up in a military family, spent most of her childhood in Alaska, and had been lifting weights since she was sixteen, but it was the dance world that shaped how she understood the body. When a friend described healing her back through Pilates roughly twenty-five years ago, Naus initially resisted the idea of teaching it. Within a day, she reversed course and pursued certification as both a Pilates instructor and a personal trainer, a pairing that was rare at the time. Most professionals then chose one lane. She built her career, and eventually her Carlsbad studio, on refusing to choose.
pillarPERFORMANCE opened in 2006 and has now operated for twenty years, through the 2008 downturn and the disruptions of 2020. Over the past four years, Naus deliberately reduced the studio from 2,300 square feet to a working space of roughly 1,100, trading size for intimacy. That decision tells you most of what you need to know about the model. This is a practice that has grown by going deeper, not wider.
In practice, one hour can hold both disciplines. A client may start with classical repertoire on the Stott reformers and Cadillac conversions, then shift to floor-based strength work using weights, cables, and stability training, with the same instructor guiding both halves. The programming leans on full-body, everyday patterns such as getting up from the floor, and each is scrutinized for what the knees, feet, and spine are doing.
Location: Carlsbad, California
Founder / Interview Source: Colleen Naus
Business Type: Boutique Pilates and functional strength training studio
Training Focus: Classical Pilates on Stott equipment, functional strength training, one-on-one instruction, and classes capped at four
Primary Clients: Adults training for daily life, clients recovering from injury or surgery, and people managing chronic pain
M&AView Contents
A structured guide to the training methods, coaching philosophy, progression system, client experience, and evidence examined in this Authority Spotlight.
The signature of pillarPERFORMANCE is cross-conditioning. Within a single hour, a client may work through classical Pilates drawn from the original Joseph Pilates repertoire on the studio’s Stott reformers and Cadillac conversions, then move to the floor for functional strength work with weights, cables, and stability training. Naus is precise about the sequencing: the equipment work stays true to the classical method, and the floor work stays true to strength principles. Neither is diluted to accommodate the other.
This is possible because of how the team is credentialed. Most instructors at the studio hold advanced-level Stott Pilates certification alongside NASM personal training certification, and everyone teaching there brings twelve to fifteen-plus years of experience. A client is never handed off between a Pilates person and a strength person. The same instructor carries both bodies of knowledge into the room.
Naus describes the logic behind the pairing as working from the inside as well as the outside. The Pilates work builds control, precision, and internal connection. The strength work loads that connection so it holds up under real conditions. The studio has been known for exactly this combination since it opened, at a time when almost no one taught the two together.
When clients ask Naus whether they should train legs one day and upper body the next, her answer starts with a question: what is the goal? Unless someone is preparing for competitive lifting, she points out, the body they are training belongs to a life that does not move in isolated parts. People reach overhead to place things on shelves, twist to grab something from a back seat, get up and down from the floor, and sit for hours at desks. Her programming mirrors those realities.
So the sessions lean heavily on full-body exercises and everyday patterns, executed with unusual scrutiny. Getting up from the floor is not just a transition between exercises. It is the exercise. What are the knees doing? Where are the feet? How does the spine feel? Did the client connect to the core before initiating the movement? Naus reasons that the mind learns whatever it is given, without judgment, so the studio is deliberate about what it gives: alignment, integrity of movement, and continuous connection to the body while it works.
The payoff, in her experience, arrives outside the studio. She only sees most clients one or two hours a week. If those hours train attention as much as muscle, the body begins repeating good patterns autonomously in the other 166 hours. Clients tell her they hear her voice while sitting at their desks, reminding them to create space between the vertebrae. She calls herself the little ghost in their ear, and she considers that echo the real product.
Clients regularly ask Naus for her single best training secret. Her answer disappoints anyone hoping for a shortcut and satisfies anyone paying attention. Her name starts with a C, she jokes, so she sticks with the C’s: commitment and consistency. Find something you are willing to do consistently, commit to doing it well, and improvement follows almost by definition.
The qualifier matters: doing it well. One of her recurring teaching lines holds that there is no bad movement, only movement done badly. Exercises are not sorted into safe and dangerous lists at pillarPERFORMANCE. They are examined for execution. Within the studio’s classes, she has noticed the pattern confirm itself. The clients who attend the small-format sessions tend to be exactly that: constant, consistent, and committed.
That principle also shapes how flexible the studio allows itself to be. A client is never locked into a single format. One visit may be pure Pilates, the next functional training, the next a blend, because every instructor can teach across the spectrum. The commitment is to showing up and moving well, not to a rigid template.
Over twenty years, pillarPERFORMANCE has become the studio people find when a bigger room stopped working for them. Naus describes clients who arrive after injuries, with chronic pain, hoping to prevent a surgery or recover from one. The studio has worked with a client pinned against a wall by a car who doubted they would move properly again, and with clients navigating serious cancer diagnoses who did not believe their bodies could still train. The team’s job in those cases was patient and specific: rebuild movement patterns, and rebuild the client’s trust that their body can move.
She is careful about how competition-minded class culture affects those clients. Larger class formats have their place, in her view, but they require a discernment about one’s own body that many people have not yet built. In a room of four, with an instructor who has taught for well over a decade, that discernment can actually be taught.
The results clients describe track the philosophy rather than the mirror. They notice their glutes firing for the first time. They feel their breath. They sleep better. They feel their feet in their shoes on a walk. They begin adjusting how they sit at a desk without being told. Naus also points to how training for daily life can carry over to it: clients who have described feeling more prepared and more resilient after everyday stumbles or falls, connecting that steadiness back to the movement patterns the studio is built around.
The experience Naus wants a new client to have begins before any exercise. Walking in, they should feel an energy that is welcoming, coherent, and safe, and the first conversation should be inquiry rather than pitch: what brought you here, where are you at, how can we best support you? The studio was built on that opening feeling, and it is maintained in details clients mention unprompted, including a space kept spotless and set up as though welcoming that one client specifically.
Behind that first impression sits an unusual staffing model. Clients do not belong to one trainer. If someone works with Naus this week and a colleague next week, the two instructors are communicating about that client in between. The team functions as one unit, which is only possible because everyone teaching in the space has been at it for twelve to fifteen years or more. Naus has taught her staff a plain hierarchy for decisions: people over profits.
Longevity is the quiet proof. Some clients have trained with the studio through twenty years and every stage of life. Others left during the disruptions of 2020 and returned years later, specifically because the studio had let them go without rigidity or resistance. Naus does not chase retention. She holds a standard, keeps the door open, and lets people ebb and flow in the way that is best for them.
If Naus could correct one local misunderstanding about her studio, it would be the hesitation people feel about the cost of one-on-one training. Her counterargument is characteristically concrete: people will pay an interior designer serious money to put color on a wall, then hesitate to make a comparable investment in the body that has to carry them through every room of that house. If the body cannot move the way it is innately designed to move, she notes, the color on the walls will not matter.
Her ambition for the studio’s next chapter is consistent with everything else about it. Not more square footage, but more people discovering private instruction, one more instructor who fits the team’s expectations, and continued growth on the foundation that already exists. If one word survives from this feature, Naus would choose empowerment: the empowerment to take back one’s body, to invest in oneself, to be curious about pain rather than afraid of it, and to keep moving through every stage of life.
- pillarPERFORMANCE is a boutique studio founded by Colleen Naus in 2006, now in its twentieth year of operation in Carlsbad, California.
- Its defining method is cross-conditioning: classical Pilates on Stott equipment and functional strength work taught together within the same hour.
- Classes are capped at four participants, and private one-on-one instruction remains the studio’s specialty.
- The teaching philosophy centers on awareness, alignment, and life movement patterns, with commitment and consistency as the stated engine of progress.
- The studio’s clientele skews toward people managing injuries, chronic pain, or recovery, who need instruction depth a large class cannot provide.
Where Awareness Becomes Strength
What remains after examining pillarPERFORMANCE is the coherence of the whole. The dual certifications, the four-client ceiling, the personalized billing, the inquiry-first conversations, and the two C’s are not separate policies. They are one idea expressed at every scale: a body taught to feel itself will take better care of itself.
Twenty years in, Naus is not selling transformation on a deadline. She is teaching a practice, and the clients who arrive ready to connect with the depths of themselves tend to discover that the strength was the byproduct. The awareness was the point.
For readers who recognize themselves in this feature, Naus keeps the entry simple. She invites prospective clients to reach out to the studio directly and to begin with an introductory pair of private sessions at a reduced rate, a first step designed for experiencing the space and trying one or two instructors before deciding anything further.
Nothing at pillarPERFORMANCE requires a long commitment at the door. As Naus puts it, clients do not have to get married to anything: one visit may be Pilates, the next functional training, the next a blend, because every instructor is equipped to teach across the method. The first two sessions exist to let the work speak for itself.
Explore pillarPERFORMANCE
Colleen Naus is the founder and training lead of pillarPERFORMANCE, the boutique studio she opened in Carlsbad, California, in 2006. A dancer who began lifting weights at sixteen, she certified as both a Pilates instructor and a personal trainer roughly twenty-five years ago, when almost no one held the two together, and built her studio around that combination. The method featured in this article reflects her interview directly: classical Pilates and functional strength taught as one practice, four-client classes, a private-session specialty, a veteran teaching team that operates as a unit, and a conviction that awareness, commitment, and consistency are what actually change a body.
This feature is based on a recorded interview with Colleen Naus, founder and training lead of pillarPERFORMANCE, and on business context supplied by the studio, along with photographs and logo assets approved for publication. The official pillarPERFORMANCE website was also among the sources. Details on the combined Pilates and functional strength method, the four-client class format, the client experience, and the introductory private sessions come from Naus’s interview.
Statements about methods, client experiences, and results are attributed to Naus’s account rather than presented as guarantees. This article is editorial; it does not provide medical, rehabilitation, nutrition, or individualized training advice, and it does not guarantee individual outcomes. Readers should consult a qualified professional before beginning or changing a movement or fitness program.
- Recorded interview with Colleen Naus, founder and training lead of pillarPERFORMANCE, covering the combined Pilates and functional strength method, small-format instruction, the client experience, the studio’s twenty-year history, and the introductory private sessions.
- Photographs, logo, and business context provided by pillarPERFORMANCE.
- pillarPERFORMANCE website: pillarinmotion.com, the studio’s official site.
Related training methods
Explore more studio approaches to movement, instruction and strength.
