Meet Chris Onslow

  • Owns Mbodies Pilates Instructor Training

  • Pilates expertise & Sales Agency for Align-Pilates.

  • UK Pilates Business Pioneer

  • Introduced Stott Pilates to the UK 2002 - 2010

  • Owned and managed 7 health clubs, Pilates studios and fitness businesses

  • Fitness video production companies

  • Design, manufacture and distribution of Fitness kit

  • MBA and Teaching PGCE PE department Head

  • Distributed Balanced Body, Merrithew and Align-Pilates

  • Badminton, basketball and volleyball player and coach

  • First and higher degrees in Physical Education

Chris is a Pilates Business Specialist Consultant, not a Pilates Exercise Specialist.   In his teens and early ’20s Chris played representative sport and took a first degree, and then Masters Degree in Physical Education.. 

He followed this with a Post Graduate Teaching Certificate.

He moved from a Role as Head of PE in a Secondary school, to being appointed manager of only the second Private Sports and Fitness complex open to the public in the UK in 1986: The Douglas Bader Club in Oxford, linked to St Edward’s Independent School, now known as the Nuffield Oxfordshire Rackets Club.

 In 1987 Chris was awarded by the UK Sports Council, a management award for managing the most Profitable Dual use Sports Facility in the UK, and in 1988 a second award for the best managed Leisure Facility in southern England, in regional heats of the UK Leisure Management Awards. 

After studying for an MBA at the University of Warwick from 1988 – 1991 Chris left his management position at Douglas Bader taking a one-year contract as a Business Consultant to evaluate commercial opportunities for St Edward’s School in Sport and Leisure.

In 1994 Esporta Health Clubs invested in St Edward’s School and developed their flagship health club, integrating it into the Douglas Bader Complex. 

In 1990 Chris established a film production company;  Physical Exercise TV Ltd – which produced Sports Conditioning and training videos in association with The Sports Council and Coachwise Ltd – the commercial division of The UK National Sports Coaching Federation, now Sports Coach UK.

The early 1990s saw the growth of Aerobics and Step Aerobics in the UK and in 1990, on the back of the video production company, Chris was supported by the UK Sports Council to develop a range of laminated A3-sized Circuit Training Cards. The sale of over a thousand sets of these cards prompted London Central YMCA to commission Chris to develop a second range of Aerobic and Step Aerobics circuit cards, and an accompanying range of fitness products under the YMCA brand, these included Aerobic Dumbbells, toning bands and tubes, an Aerobic step, amongst other products. 

In 1992 Chris launched Pro Active Health Ltd, a mail-order fitness accessories company selling the goods he designed and third party products. The company grew rapidly attracting worldwide manufacturers to seek distribution

By 1999 Pro Active Health Ltd. had a turnover exceeding £1,000,000 and four years later this had tripled.   Alongside the Film and Products companies, in 1994 Chris opened a 5000 square foot Private Health Club at Oxford Airport, which he named Aviators, now known as Vida.

When in the late 1990s Pilates began to feature in Sports Conditioning, Chris visited Colorado and spent time with Pilates apparatus manufacturer Balanced Body, and began to distribute Pilates accessories and Allegro 1 Reformers as the only stock holding Pilates company in the UK. In 2000 a US lawsuit ruled the word ‘Pilates’ was free to be used as a generic term to describe the exercise method, and could not be trademarked or monopolised. After this landmark ruling, Chris saw the opportunities that Pilates offered and between 2002 and 2010 he started to distribute Stott Pilates videos and accessories, subsequently opening two Pilates Studios which became the Stott Pilates Instructor Training studios in the UK. The first studio was in the Aviators Health Club at Oxford Airport, and the second was in Central London in the Central YMCA Club.

Chris opened two Pilates-focused companies in the 1990s; Active Pilates Ltd and Pilates Solutions Ltd.

During the mid-1990s Chris became recognised as the ‘UK Pilates Business Expert’ and he started to be asked to be involved in the development of chains of Pilates franchise studios in clubs like Holmes Place, David Lloyd Leisure and in helping to support the initial development plans for Chilli Pilates. 

Chris also expanded his own Pilates operations to build a 6000 square foot, clinically focussed, Pilates Wellness Centre, under the Mbodies brand, in West Oxfordshire (Witney) which opened in 2009.  He also became involved in the ownership of apparatus in Pilates Studios in the North East and North West of the UK. 

In 2010 Chris parted company with Stott Pilates as their exclusive training and apparatus distribution company in the UK, and in a consultancy role, became involved in the development of a range of UK-designed commercial Pilates apparatus under the brand name Align-Pilates.

 Chris continues today to support the Align-Pilates brand through his Pilates Apparatus agency and account managing a range of key customers like Chilli Pilates.

In 2002 in association with MadGroup UK Chris opened the training company Mbodies Training Academy – focussing on special populations education for Physiotherapists and Pilates instructors as well as offering a new modular way for Pilates matwork teachers to train in a cost-effective way, on Pilates Apparatus, to meet the needs of the UK Fitness Insurers.  

A combination of Chris’s video production background, education focus and the COVID 19 pandemic led to the transformation of Mbodies Training Academy from an event management company teaching face to face courses across Europe, to the current digitally focussed online training company with top quality ‘learn in your own time’ Pilates and Special Populations CPD (Continuing Professional Development), and qualifications supported by a network of tutors offering face to face support.