Absolute Success: With five locations, Absolute Pilates has become a local fitness powerhouse.

When I met Allison Zang, owner of Absolute Pilates, she told me a quick joke: What came first, the reformer or Joe Pilates? It took me an entire class to get it.

Pilates started in a prison camp during World War I by a German physical trainer named Joseph Pilates. He rigged up hospital beds with bedsprings so bedridden patients could exercise and build up strength using resistance training. He didn’t know what he was starting.

Forward to 2007 and Zang, an epidemiology researcher living in Pittsburgh decided to teach the Pilates method on the side while her husband was getting his degree in physical therapy. She didn’t know she eventually would own five Pilates studios on the west and east shores of the Susquehanna.

Zang, who received an undergrad degree in organizational behavior and wellness, thought she wanted to work in corporate wellness. As it turned out, the field didn’t provide what she believed to be the “correct level” for helping people.

So, she taught Pilates classes at night in her basement. Later, in 2007, she received her master’s degree in exercise physiology from the University of Pittsburgh.

“It’s a fancy way of saying, the science of exercise,” she said.