SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — If you're into sports and fitness there's a good chance you've seen videos of athletes doing Pilates on your social media feed. It's a low-impact workout that can make the toughest NFL players shake and sweat. One of the trainers Arizona-based athletes have flocked to in recent years is Peoria native Jess Pate, owner of Calibrate Pilates. Equipped with a dance background, Pate became Pilates certified in 2015 and has been working with athletes in the Valley and beyond for nearly five years.
“I went overseas to a college in Australia for my ballet degree and I wanted to be a strength and conditioning coach, but I didn't want to do it with weights. So, I was like, ‘how can I train athletes without lifting weights?’ and I looked into Pilates,” Pate said. “A lot of what we believe in Pilates is that movement comes from the inside and then emanates out. Having a strong core, a strong powerhouse, will help create those faster, stronger, more stable movements on the field, whether it's going forward and back or side to side.”
Pate’s clients include Carson Kelly (MLB), Tarik Skubal (MLB), Liam O’Brien (NHL), boxer Eric Priest and several Arizona Cardinals players like cornerbacks Garrett Williams and Sean Murphy-Bunting. Word-of-mouth and personal testimonies keep players coming back to train at her sports specific Pilates studio. People unfamiliar with the practice might assume the small movements performed on the machine are simple but the time under tension proves to be challenging even for NFL defensive backs.
“It's a lot of work. Definitely humbling,” Williams said. “Coming off a knee surgery a year and a half ago, one of my biggest things was trying to improve my stability and my balance. I feel like I did Pilates all throughout OTAs, and I thought I was getting stronger as time went. I feel like a lot of that came from Pilates.”
Williams, now in his second NFL season, missed the first six games of 2023 recovering from a torn ACL. The Syracuse product made his NFL debut in Week 7 at Seattle where he recorded his first interception. The last Cardinals player to have a pick in his first NFL game was Hall of Famer Aeneas Williams in 1991. Williams started six of the nine games he was available for in his rookie season, and he credits Pate with helping him feel stronger and more confident with each session together.
“When I come in here, even if my day has been kind of been off, her energy is going to kind of pick me up naturally. When I first came, she can say it was a big struggle for me just getting as simple as it can get in Pilates. But she didn't make me feel like down or bad,” Williams said. “She just told me, ‘the more you do it, you get more comfortable.’ And as we just kept doing sessions I felt myself improving. She was lifting me up to the point where I look forward to coming to Pilates because I can feel myself getting better and I leave feeling better than I did walking in.”
Working toward injury prevention and increasing mobility are two of the main motivators for both Williams’s and Murphy-Bunting’s Pilates practices. Murphy-Bunting, a six-year NFL veteran, signed with the Cardinals in March and quickly connected with Pate to elevate his offseason training. The 27-year-old has battled different injuries over the last three seasons but he’s found a pathway to healing on the Pilates reformer.
“It's all about breaking your body down and building it back up the right way. All these movements seem easy but -- I'm still out of breath. It’s crazy how much it works,” Murphy-Bunting said. “I think for me, just keeping my joints mobile all the time is important. It takes consistency. Obviously the second time and third time frustrates you because it's challenging. But the more I started to do it on a consistent, weekly basis, I started enjoying it, having fun, and then just reaching new limits on my body. I think that was really cool.”
Pate is a Master Trainer for Pilates Sports Center, sharing her knowledge with students and aspiring instructors. From hand grips on the machine to the equipment used in the session, Pate’s programming maximizes movements that will directly translate on the field of play. Her studio is adorned with signed baseballs, hockey pucks, and helmets from clients expressing their gratitude. The movements performed in Pate’s studio might be small, but her impact is noticeable.
“I think she's very humble, very knowledgeable. I think every time I've come here I've learned something new and consistently learning something new for me has been a big blessing,” Murphy-Bunting said. “You come here with different types of injuries and things like that, and she teaches you ways on how you can prevent them, where it's coming from, where it's pulling from, what muscle is tight, where you need to loosen up. I think it’s just been a big blessing for me to have her on my team to support me and my career.”
The Arizona Cardinals open their season in Buffalo on Sunday, Sept. 8.
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Arizona sports
The city of Phoenix is home to four major professional sports league teams; The NFL's Arizona Cardinals, NBA's Phoenix Suns, WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury and MLB's Arizona Diamondbacks.
The Cardinals have made State Farm Stadium in Glendale their home turf and the Footprint Center in downtown Phoenix is home to both the Suns and the Mercury. The Indoor Football League’s Arizona Rattlers play at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale.
Phoenix also has a soccer team with the USL's Phoenix Rising FC, who play at Phoenix Rising FC Stadium in Phoenix.
The Valley hosts multiple major sporting events every year, including college football's Fiesta Bowl and Guaranteed Rate Bowl; the PGA Tour’s highest-attended event, the WM Phoenix Open; NASCAR events each spring and fall, including Championship Weekend in November; and Cactus League Spring Training for 15 Major League Baseball franchises.