Truecore Fitness expands to Leander

Truecore Fitness — a local gym chain with locations in Georgetown, Temple and now  Leander — is known for their pilates classes, which can accommodate the young, old, injured and everyone in between. 

The new 7,100-square-foot space in Leander is on Crystal Falls Parkway. The Leander gym includes a pilates studio, a yoga and Barre space, a cardio fitness room and a spin room, as well as a wine bar, a childcare room and locker rooms for both men and women.

Owner Holly McDaniel opened the Temple Truecore Fitness in 2015, after moving back to Texas from Los Angeles. In California, she had taken pilates classes at a gym, and she said she was disappointed there weren’t similar workout studios here, especially one that offered pilates, barre, yoga, and cardio fitness classes like spin. 

“I found the combination of pilates and spin really worked for my body,” she  said. “I was having to go to two separate studios [in LA], so I wanted to be able to do both of those in the same building.”

She also didn’t want  to rely on “traditional pilates,” and instead wanted to focus on The Sharp Method, which was developed by instructor Jasmine Sharp, who she had worked with in the past.  

Traditional pilates was created by German physical trainer Joseph Pilates to address his own injuries. It is a low-impact style of resistance training that uses an apparatus that he invented called a reformer. A reformer is a machine that creates resistance using springs. The reformer has moving “carriage,” straps, and a sturdy platform. 

“I had the impression that pilates was more like yoga, but when I took Jasmine’s classes, I realized that wasn’t always the case,” she explained. “I really liked the high intensity and low impact aspect of Jasmine’s pilates classes. I have taken pilates everywhere and her method is so unique.”

Ms. McDaniel said the Sharp method can be pursued with varying intensity and difficulty levels depending on the person. The method fatigues one muscle group before moving onto the next and works “those intrinsic muscles that you don’t even know you have until after taking the class.”

“I’ve heard that for 20 years,” said Jasmine Sharp, who now works with Truecore. “Clients consistently say they feel muscles they’ve never felt before or knew that existed.

“Holistically, pilates is a way of connecting your mind and your body in one program or method using resistance training: pulleys, straps, strings. I fused what Joseph Pilates created, classical pilates, and the new high intensity method to accommodate the masses. I didn’t invent the wheel, I just polished it.”

With experience opening pilates studios in Seattle, Palm Springs and Manhattan Beach, Ms. Sharp was hired to work in Temple when it opened as the Head of Education and to design Truecore’s Pilates Reformer Machine. In 2020, Ms. Sharp moved to Georgetown to help open the Georgetown Truecore location.

Truecore Fitness has different offerings for classes at each of their locations. Offerings that are unique to the new Leander location are heated yoga and barre classes. 

“We really have two choices,” Ms. Sharp said. “To grow old feeling the absolute best we can in our bodies by ways of movement, or simply just grow old.”