Meet Brooke Bowersock
Get to know our founder
Brooke Bowersock, founder and owner of ALIGN Pilates Studios in Austin, Texas, is a true Pilates pioneer. After stumbling across a mat Pilates class in 1999, Brooke was hooked.
“Pilates changed my life completely,” says Brooke. “Being opened up to this world gave me a head start into health and wellness.” Soon, Brooke was certified as an instructor and was one of the first to open a studio in Austin in 2004, introducing others to the world of Pilates.
Today, Brooke is a sought-after Pilates instructor and teacher trainer. Since 2016, she has been a Master Educator with Balanced Body, the leading global educator for Pilates certifications, and is now a Balanced Body Principal Educator, a title held by only a handful of Pilates instructors in the world.
“When I was at my studio, I felt like I needed to be there more, and I loved it. It was bustling. It was so fun. Just like this environment at ALIGN is now.”
Brooke Bowersock
Balanced Body Pilates Principal Educator
Go Big or Go Home
Pilates is more popular than it has ever been, but this was not the case when Brooke opened her first studio. The fitness-focused city of Austin was more into cycling and running, recalls Brooke, and the demographic of people doing Pilates was limited to those who could afford private sessions. When Brooke opened that first studio in the Tarrytown neighborhood, it grew bigger and more quickly than she had expected. By the time she sold it a few years later, the studio had 17 instructors, a robust clientele, and the popularity of Pilates was beginning to grow. But as the mom of two young daughters, Brooke felt pulled in two directions.
Brooke sold her first studio to spend more time with her daughters but continued teaching private sessions in her home. Eventually, the demand for duet and trio classes outgrew her home studio so she moved it into a small, 100-year-old house in the Clarksville neighborhood, opening what would become the first ALIGN Pilates Studio in 2013.
Austin was growing rapidly at the time and with it, real estate prices. The overhead of renting a studio space led Brooke to a major crossroads. “I had to make a choice,” she says. “I had to either go big or go home.” Grow her business along with the growth of Austin, or close up shop.
“Hearing how Pilates has changed their life and how much they love it and how they want to bring that to other people, it moves me every time.”
She Chose The Former
That decision eventually led to where she is now, the owner of two ALIGN Pilates Studios: ALIGN Pilates Studios West, where she and her team offer Pilates classes in seven different formats, and ALIGN Pilates Studios East, the only dedicated Pilates training center in Texas.
“I love teaching teachers,” says Brooke, who originally went to college to be an elementary school teacher. At the beginning of each training, Brooke asks her students to share how Pilates has impacted them.
“Hearing how Pilates has changed their life and how much they love it and how they want to bring that to other people, it moves me every time,” she says. “Me, having fallen in love with Pilates so much and taking this journey, but then bringing it to all these people, so they can change all these other lives, it’s an incredible feeling.”
Growing Together
Brooke’s goals reach beyond the ALIGN Pilates Studios. She wants to unite the entire Pilates community of Austin. In what can often be a cutthroat industry, Brooke knows that together is better. She started the ALIGN Pilates Summit to provide continuing education for instructors city-wide and give them an opportunity to connect. She also launched a Mentor Program for teachers who go through her training, so they can continue to learn and grow in a supportive environment.
Anyone who works at ALIGN is on board with this “together is better” mindset. They’re not competitive.
“We support each other,” says Brooke, “and we are very much about growing together.” In 2004, there were four Pilates studios in Austin. Today, there are more than 150.
“I’m trying to stay true to the integrity of Pilates and educate people, so anyone who is taking it can stay safe.”
“It’s exciting now that there are so many studios that are offering classes because it’s making Pilates more accessible to such a vast demographic,” says Brooke. But, she adds, with growth comes challenges. Pilates is still largely unregulated, meaning anyone can open a studio and say they are an instructor.
“I’m trying to stay true to the integrity of Pilates and educate people, so anyone who is taking it can stay safe,” says Brooke.
Her teacher training is one of the best in the country because she understands what it means to “teach to the body in front of you.”
As Brooke explains, “The classes I teach have a person or two who are pregnant, a person who’s never done Pilates, a person who has a rotator cuff issue, a person who just had hip replacement surgery, a person who could teach the class and then the people in between. A good class instructor has the ability to teach every single person at a level that is safe and challenging for them without anybody else in the class knowing you’re making these individual adjustments. I try to teach my teachers how to do that.”
This is what sets Brooke apart—a commitment to serving everybody, challenging them while keeping them safe, and doing so as one of the most credentialed instructors in the world.
“As your body changes, it changes with you, you never master it.”
You Never Master It
Even with her existing credentials, Brooke continues to seek further education, attending conferences and workshops (when she’s not leading them herself). This is one of the reasons she loves Pilates and has stuck with it for the past 25 years. “As your body changes, it changes with you,” she says. “You never master it.”
As Pilates continues to grow in popularity around the country, you can trust that Brooke will continue to be at the helm, fostering the community and helping it grow, not taking for granted the work she gets to do every day. As she says, “I feel like the luckiest person in the world to have this job.”