Local Pilates instructor returns home after Miami Dolphins stint

MILLBROOK — Local Pilates instructor Jackie Bachor has led a career that has taken her from rural upstate New York to Miami and back again — where she is forging a new path that blends her passions for fitness and equestrianism.

Now standing in the sun-drenched studio space of True Pilates Millbrook, Bachor has found space for both. The studio doubles as a stable loft, looking down on Bachor’s horses Dessie and Sammy. When Bachor points around the space to identify Pilates equipment, it’s as if she’s naming horses. At the center of the room is the Cadillac, a raised bed with overhead bars. To the side sits the Barrel, an arced apparatus designed for optimal spinal mobility.

By the far wall sit two Reformers, padded tables with a variety of appendages. It’s on the Reformer that she’s trained pro athletes for years, shocking some of humanity’s biggest muscles with deceptively simple exercises.

“Pilates smokes out all the weaknesses in your body,” said Bachor. “It removes compensatory movement. When we get out of bed in the morning, we compensate.”

Bachor made a career out of Pilates that took her down to Miami to work for the Miami Dolphins NFL franchise, where she was responsible for helping players prevent and work through injuries during the regular season.

One of the other strength coaches, Wayne Diesel, put it to Bachor this way: “He said, ‘you’re not afraid of big movements and you’re really patient. If you can convince a 1,200-pound animal to do things your way, what’s a 300-pound guy got on that?’”

But long before Bachor started training NFL players like Antonio Brown, Jaelan Phillips, and Kenny Stills, she trained horses. Bachor was just four years old when her namesake Aunt Jackie introduced her to the equestrian lifestyle. There’s a photo on Bachor’s desk marking the moment: a tiny child dwarfed by her steed, all grit as she approaches a jump.

Two of her horses, Dessie and Sammy, greet her with head bobs and whuffles when Bachor enters the barn. Dessie has recently recovered from a serious injury, and Bachor spent long stretches in his stable during the recovery, playing opera through the speakers. “That’s why he’s so opinionated,” Bachor laughed as Dessie bobbed and shook his head. “He still thinks I should spend four hours a day with him.”

During her early years growing up in Boiceville, New York, however, keeping horses was both a passion and unsustainable. “Unless you’re really talented or you have a lot of money,” Bachor said, “you don’t get that far in the horse business.”

Still, she was able to make it work for a time. Bachor organized hunting trips in Hyde Park, and helped run a stable with her partner at the time. When the relationship ended, however, the bills started piling up. “I had all these horses and I didn’t have any way to pay for them…it was a really low point in my life.”

That’s when Bachor’s sister introduced her to Pilates. It was a comfort, both physically and emotionally. Bachor decided to become an instructor, making trips into Manhattan to train under the first lady of Pilates, Romana Kryzanowska. Kryzanowska was a protégé of founder Joseph Pilates, and is largely responsible for promulgating the practice after Pilates passed away in 1970.

When another instructor asked for help introducing Pilates to a string of Equinox fitness clubs, Bachor jumped in with both feet. “My work ethic from the farm and the horses really helped me out,” she said. “That made me very popular with the managers when they saw the numbers. I was just trying to survive.”

After a session training the NBA player Jayson Williams and NFL running back Curtis Martin, Bachor started to earn a reputation among pro athletes. “I remember Curtis saying to me, ‘I should have done this when I was playing,’” she said. “‘This would have helped me so much.’” Soon Bachor was getting opportunities to teach outside of New York.

One such offer meant moving to Miami—and giving up her horses. “I had to walk away from it,” Bachor said. “I remember saying to my Aunt Jackie, who got me involved in horses in the first place, ‘Oh, that yoke is off my neck.’ And it broke her heart, but I truly felt that way at the time.”

Once again, Bachor fully committed. This time, it was to her new Miami lifestyle. She found an apartment by the beach, bought roller blades and some five-inch heels, and started networking. But initially, the work didn’t come. “I had to build this business up from nothing,” said Bachor. “I didn’t have any friends, and I didn’t really care for the woman that I was working for…that was a whole other kind of low.”

That started to change after Bachor helped a linebacker named Kelvin Shepherd with his untreated scoliosis. The strength coach took notice, and asked who had helped Shepherd heal. When Shepherd told him, a chorus of other voices from the locker room sang Bachor’s praises.

Soon after, Bachor got the call: the Dolphins wanted to hire her as a Pilates instructor for the season. She squeezed a Reformer machine into the back of her truck and set up shop at the practice facility.

At first, the brutality of the sport was jarring. “When the team brought me in, they said, ‘These guys go through a car wreck on Sunday,’” she remembered. “We have six days to put them back together for the next car wreck and we have to do that for 16 weeks. Can you help us?’”

But even though Bachor had been hired, there was no guarantee the Dolphins themselves would take to Pilates. Back then, it was unfairly typecast as a woman’s workout. And the players could be unpredictable, skipping sessions or suffering injury. “The first person that came in to work with me was Kenny Stills,” Bachor said. “He knew that I needed support, and he was that kind of person.”

Bachor soon found other ways to drum up business. “Anybody that won the Super Bowl got free Pilates the next offseason,” she said. “A couple of the guys took me up on it.”

Pilates began to take hold across the league. As her career flourished, Bachor returned to her love of horses and riding. She built a barn back home, but could only enjoy it from afar. “I started to realize how much of that was who I am,” she said. “South Florida wasn’t the right place for that.”

For a while, the Dolphins continued to fly her to Miami on a weekly basis. But the NFL is a notoriously thankless employer. Look no further than some of Bachor’s clientele: Antonio Brown, after nearly a decade as the league’s top receiver, was repeatedly injured and dogged by controversies. Kenny Stills faced backlash after kneeling alongside Colin Kaepernick in protest of police brutality.

Then in 2025, the Dolphins started the season 2-7 and shuffled their coaching staff. GM Chris Grier was out. With him went the strength coach — and Pilates advocate — Dave Puloka. Jackie Bachor’s weekly flights to Miami came to a halt.

“Sometimes you let go of one dream to chase another,” she said from the studio loft of True Pilates Millbrook. The room is lined with signed photos of Bachor and the pros in training. Wide windows overlook the horses in their box stalls, and beyond them barn doors open onto horses grazing in rich green paddocks. Laughter echoes up from places unseen. Bachor shares the space with a few other horse owners, and good vibes abound.

“It’ll be the first year that I’m not doing anything football-related,” Bachor said. “That was great for my resume, but boy, it was tiring. I would fly out on a Monday afternoon and come back Tuesday night.”

Now that’s time spent at the stable, or out with the local hunt club. Bachor has also started designing Pilates workouts specifically for equestrians. “You have to be able to control your body,” she said. “It’s very hard to do that when you’re on a moving target.”

Bachor is also looking for opportunities to teach for free. It’s a habit she picked up at Miami’s Lotus House, the largest women’s shelter in the country.

“They weren’t athletes, but they tried really hard and they loved it,” Bachor said. “They loved that somebody was coming to do something fun with them, and trying to make them feel better. Because I’ve been there.”