Jade Davis teaches Pilates at her studio Vitalbody Pilates inside the Orpheum Theatre in Fairfield. (Andy Hallman/The Union)

FAIRFIELD – Jade Davis has practiced Pilates ever since the age of 9, and she’s imparting her years of wisdom on clients at her business Vitalbody Pilates in Fairfield.

Pilates refers to a physical exercise regimen founded by German gymnast and bodybuilder Joseph Pilates. Davis is a native of the United Kingdom, and even trained with the man who brought Pilates to the UK, Alan Herdman.

Davis founded the Vitalbody Pilates Method in 2008 while living in the UK, where she ran three studios. After studying at the prestigious University College London, she came to MIU to finish her studies in physiology and sustainable living. In Fairfield, she met her husband Jaden Lane, who works at Overland Sheepskin.

Davis never expected to open a Pilates studio in Fairfield. She intended to get a PhD in biophysics at Georgetown in Washington, D.C. and then return to England, but the pandemic interrupted her plans. While her PhD was on hold, Davis taught Pilates to a few clients.

“Everyone kept finding out about me and coming to my house to do Pilates, and I couldn’t turn them away because I felt bad,” she said. “I started with a small studio up here seeing clients one-on-one, and it got very busy, very quickly, and I was seeing six or seven people a day.”

Davis said Pilates is a labor of love, and she can’t stop doing the things she loves. She runs an over 55 class six days per week, and that’s become one of her most popular.

“I didn’t intend to focus on my over 55 group, but it’s what has filled the classes,” she said.

Davis said that Pilates is quite different from yoga, another exercise regimen, because Pilates involves weight training.

“With yoga, you’re only really using body weight. For Pilates, stretching is one very small part of it,” she said. “It’s more about reconditioning the heart, lungs, and the pliability of the tissues. They say yoga focuses more on flexibility and Pilates focuses more on mobility, which is about balancing the strength of the muscles to allow a range of movement.”

Davis used Pilates to recover from a couple of horrific injuries, one of which was “tearing a hamstring from the bone” and the other of which involved suffering whiplash and spinal injuries from a car accident.

After her hamstring injury at the age of 19, Davis was unable to walk and in terrible pain. She had to take time off from the professional dance school she was in, and through her physical therapy, she was introduced to Alan Herdman. She worked with him twice a week for a number of years. She was also doing osteopathic medicine, but it wasn’t fully fixing her ailments, until she did Pilates.

“It used to hurt to hold my head up from the whiplash,” she said. “I didn’t want to wake up because holding my head up was so miserable. And then I did Pilates, and [the pain] went away.”

Davis’s business is located inside the Orpheum Theatre, and accessible from the west side of the building along North Second Street. She is about to add a second teacher to her studio in Dilek Koksal, who will soon begin her student teaching as a Pilates instructor. Mary Cox teaches yoga at the studio, and Tiffany Eklund does a boot camp in the mornings. Davis has two big studios, one dedicated to Pilates and the other for mats and movement.

“I try to get people to come in for a private session first if they can,” she said. “I have people on memberships, and every month they can come in for a 20-minute session with me so I can look at how the joints are moving and the balance of their bones, so their program is individually tailored.”