WundaBar Soho

WundaBar is a great Pilates workout if you are looking to add variation to your weekly routine. They combine intensity, brisk instruction with integrity of movement on their patented WundaFormer. 

RUNDOWN

WORKOUT

This class started with a brief overview of the WundaFormer machine, like both the MegaFormer and the standard Pilates reformer. We began class working on compound movements with weighted lunges where we were pushing hard against the reformer while simultaneously doing bicep curls. This theme continued throughout class where we would focus on one body part but continue working adjacent muscle groups. We particularly found the cat/cow series on the moving platform to be challenging for the abs and got a great glute and ab workout out of the standing pike on the back “chair” part of the machine. We followed a pretty standard sequence for Pilates, starting by focusing on the legs, then moving into the glutes, arms, and then finishing class off with abs. The machine, while new to us, made Pilates both very accessible and very scalable – it was easy to feel a difference in resistance in the springs, and then difficulty in the workout overall was also easily customizable.

INSTRUCTOR

Kristina Brookman was exactly what we look for in an instructor at a new-to-us studio: she introduced herself, she shared some detail about the new machine, and she made sure that all her directions on exercises were clear and used language we would be familiar with. She led a class that was half full of newbies like us and half full of regulars who were adding free weights to everything and doing lunges perched on what seemed like one toe. She did a good job of motivating without being too focused on either the advanced or beginner clients. I felt compelled to try many new things and even some of the advancements and appreciated that Kristina didn’t stop me from trying. Would take her class again!

SPACE

The WundaBar studio is a small, cute storefront right between SoHo and TriBeCa surrounded by galleries on all sides. The space itself is laid out to maximize the number of Reformers that can fit in the place diagonally (it seemed like there were 8 people in our class). WundaBar has its own patented Reformer called the WundaFormer, which has a few more resistance options and modalities than a standard Pilates Reformer. To us, it seemed like a cross between a MegaFormer (like those at SLT or the former Brooklyn Bodyburn), with its heavy springs, a Pilates chair like the ones at Chaise Fitness, with the back platform that allowed us to raise our hips into a pike, and a standard Reformer. Other than these machines, the studio itself was bare bones. There was a small changing room and a bathroom in the back, but no showers, and if there was any WundaBar merchandise for sale we must have missed it underneath the pile of coats that lined one whole end of the room.