Max Howarth
Co-founder and instructor
Max came to Reformer Pilates in his mid-fifties with no movement background and no strong expectation that it would change much.
It changed almost everything.
He co-founded Luma with Lucia in September 2025 and teaches five classes a week at the studio he helped build.
4+ years intensive practice · Men's Pilates advocate
From mixing desk
to Reformer
Max has spent decades working in audio post-production, running Red Facilities, his Edinburgh-based studio. Alongside the production work, he’s built a career as a highly-regarded voice actor with clients around the world. It’s the kind of work that keeps you at a desk for long hours. Creative, absorbing, and entirely at odds with how the body was designed to move.
By his early fifties, the stiffness and tension accumulated over years of desk work had become part of the background. And he’d come to accept it as the inevitable price of getting older.
Then at 56 he started Pilates.
The experience changed not just how he moved but what he wanted to do with his time.
Max came to Reformer Pilates in his mid-fifties expecting very little. What he found was a practice that addressed, systematically and precisely, everything that years of desk work and conventional exercise had left undone: hip flexors that had quietly shortened, deep stabilisers that had disengaged, and the thoracic spine that had stopped rotating. Within months, things were changing that he had stopped expecting to change.
At 60, Max moves better than he did at 30. His lower back, a reliable source of trouble through his forties, is no longer a factor. His range of movement, his physical resilience, his recovery: all measurably better than a decade ago.
Another late discovery has run alongside this. Max took up skiing at 50 and the connection between the two practices is direct: the deep stability, hip mobility, and body awareness Pilates builds translate straight onto the mountain. He skis harder and recovers faster than he did before.
The experience changed not just how he moved but what he wanted to do with his time. He began working toward his instructor certification, and in September 2025 he and Lucia opened Luma: a studio built around the conviction that more people, and particularly more men, should have access to a practice this transformative.
His Approach
Experience and training
Currently completing Reformer certification
Four years of intensive Reformer Pilates practice
Teaches five Reformer classes weekly at Luma
Particular focus on men new to the practice
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Teaching philosophy
Max teaches from experience rather than theory. He knows what it feels like to arrive at Pilates late, without a movement background, carrying the physical consequences of years at a desk.
He is particularly interested in the men who arrive sceptical and leave converted – the ones who expected something gentle and found something that asked more of them than anything they had tried before. In his experience, those tend to be the clients who stay longest and gain most.
Private sessions with Max
No audience,
no pressure
For anyone who finds the idea of walking into a group Reformer class a step too far, a private session with Max is the answer. One-to-one, no audience, taught by someone who remembers exactly what that uncertainty felt like. Many of Max's regular group class clients started here.
Max on Pilates
Max has written several of the guides on the Luma blog, drawing on his own experience as someone who came to Pilates later in life and found it transformative.
Questions about Max
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He started in his mid-fifties with no movement background, after years of desk work in audio post-production. The results surprised him completely and led directly to co-founding Luma.
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Yes. His own experience as a late starter makes him particularly well suited to working with people who are new to the Reformer, uncertain what to expect, or coming from a background with no movement practice.
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Max teaches across Reformer levels. View the schedule to see his current classes.
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He wanted to build a studio that took the practice as seriously as it deserves, and to make it accessible to people, particularly men, who might not otherwise find their way to it. Read more about Luma's story.
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A classically trained musician, Max spent decades in audio post-production, running Red Facilities in Edinburgh, alongside a career as a voice actor with clients around the world. He came to Pilates as a direct response to the physical consequences of years at a desk, and has not looked back. He also took up skiing at 50 and finds the two practices compound each other directly: the stability, mobility, and body awareness Pilates develops translate straight onto the mountain.