My Slope Saturday: Marisa Fuller

How the owner of Studio Pilates sees fit to spend a Saturday

Leda Strong is a native New Yorker who lives in Park Slope with her husband, Andrew. Follow Leda on Substack for more.

---

When I met Marisa Fuller on a snowy December Tuesday at her Park Slope Pilates studio on 4th Avenue, she was crouched by the front desk, spray bottle in hand. She explained that her Brooklyn studios – one at the 4th Avenue location and the other in Cobble Hill – were understaffed that day after an employee had called in sick, and she was filling in where needed. “I’m the owner, so there’s no work-life balance for me,” she explains. A glance at her business hours supports that claim: her studio is open seven days a week, including holidays. “People want to move their bodies,” says Fuller, and she wants to give them a space to do so.

Fuller first found Pilates around 1999, before it was as popular as it is today. While she loved the reformer as a way to move her body, she was “missing the personalized attention” and wished for a greater sense of community surrounding it; while navigating a divorce and looking to pivot away from her career in advertising in 2018, she set out to build that herself – with the support of a company she believed was revolutionizing Pilates. “I knew I didn’t have the playbook to do it myself, and knew I needed to do it with a franchise,” she says. Her Park Slope studio is the first location of the Australian-based Studio Pilates franchise in New York City and was the second to open in the United States in January 2021, which Fuller describes as a time when people craved a trusted space to exercise safely. Accordingly, she opened her second studio in Wilmington, North Carolina later that same year, in October 2021; her Cobble Hill studio began operations in the summer of 2023. She describes her mentality around expanding her business, and her mentality around most things, as: “When I set my mind to it, I’ll just do it. It’s just who I am.”

And done it, she has: today, January 25th, marks the five-year anniversary of the opening of her Park Slope studio. That location offers 88 classes a week, one of her longest-tenured clients just completed their 750th class, and the Christmas Day schedule was fully booked. So what about her weekends? For the woman at the helm of such an operation, days off are hard to come by, and her typical Saturday sees a mix of work, sacred self-care and family time, and of course, getting her steps in – she does own a fitness business, after all.

COFFEE GIRL: Fuller explains that her Saturdays are not always the same, but endeavors to walk me through the most consistent parts of her routine – her “repeat Saturday.” The mornings always start early, and with a cup of coffee. And while she has several favorite local coffee shops – Casita of Brooklyn and Yard Sale (“his pastries are to die for”) to name a couple – on Saturday mornings, she brews her own. “If I’m not physically in the studio, I’ll wake up, have my coffee at home, without fail…open up my computer, check in on all my studios, and enjoy the coffee, probably for about an hour or so,” Fuller says. “I’m definitely a coffee girl.”

SIX-MILE WALK: After ensuring everything at the studios is running smoothly, and when the weather is nice, Fuller sets out on foot. She begins her weekly six-mile walk up Sixth Avenue, stopping at Blank Street for another coffee. “Then, I’ll make a right and go up to Prospect Park, and then I do a big loop around the park.” She calls it her “mental health walk,” and it’s “much needed,” Fuller says, although she does occasionally get interrupted with news from the studio. “Once, I was in the park in the summertime, and the music at Cobble Hill kept going off and on…I was like, alright, I’m gonna hop on an e-bike. I e-biked over and I fixed it, got back on the e-bike, went back to the park, and finished my walk,” Fuller says. “I have to just get things done. Things will definitely get interrupted…people have to know they can get a hold of me.” When she finishes her park loop – uninterrupted or otherwise – she sometimes stops at Poetica on the way home to pick up a coffee or an Arnold Palmer.

SELF CARE: On Saturdays when Fuller can take some more time for herself, or what she describes as a “self care day,” she favors Wellzen Beauty Lounge for nail treatments (and sometimes gives their gift cards to clients) and Brightwood for skincare treatments (which she had gotten the day before I chatted with her). “I try to treat myself,” she says, though her ability to do so varies week to week. “I really try to disconnect, but I have to plan it, otherwise I will literally wake up in the morning, open up my laptop, and work,” says Fuller. Even more rarely, she and her partner plan a quick getaway, like a staycation in Hoboken or a jaunt down to Atlantic City, which requires heavy advance planning.

FAMILY TIME: For all the propulsive energy Fuller exudes, her Saturday evenings are about winding down with a good watch and some local pizza. “If my partner’s daughter is staying with us, we’ll order from Giuseppina’s, or sometimes cook dinner, and find something good on one of the streaming platforms,” Fuller says.

Though Fuller describes herself as someone with no work-life balance, her Saturday demonstrates what I might call work-life integration. Her role as an owner is foundational to her identity, and her business is also her community. “This is why I do what I do and work as hard as I do and why I don’t take as many breaks as I should,” she says. “It’s because of my clients.” She greets them personally as they walk through her studio doors. She relishes and celebrates their milestones. She loves what she does: creating the sense of belonging she yearned for as an early Pilates devotee. And she’s done so in a neighborhood where community means everything and loyalty reigns supreme. When Redberry Market opened near her studio, she told the owners: “you’re coming to a very community-driven neighborhood, so if you get in with these people, they’ll be loyal to you, and that’s absolutely what I find about Park Slope…[my clients] are coming here not only for a workout, but they’ve now become part of the family.”

Beyond just that supermarket, she strives to support other small businesses – Casita of Brooklyn, which opened the same week as her Park Slope studio, caters the studio every Wednesday and for her big events; she purchases gift cards to neighborhood spas for clients; she knows the proprietors of every local favorite by name. Her Saturdays, and every day, reflect her dedication to Park Slope – both through the local businesses she patronizes and the one she runs. And in return, like a warm pot of coffee on a Saturday morning, that community pours right back into her.