We recently connected with Olya Fromer and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Olya thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

We believe in the basics of movement, no matter how old or young or whatever limitations you might have. Our Industry has shifted too much into the wrong mentality about exercising “hard” and “feeling burns” and it has become less about learning and understanding the power of movement, from small to big. We believe you can’t skip the basics to go straight to advanced. Your body is unique and we teach exactly that; about individual bodies, their strengths, how to improve balance, mobility, strength and the power of breath!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Growing up as a professional gymnast for the national team of Ukraine, I always believed in movement, exercising, and pushing my body beyond its limits. I have always worked hard to maintain my body’s strength and believed in a simple idea: the harder the better…until injury came. It brings you to the humble realization of how fragile we are and how little we pay attention to or listen to our own body until we have to. I didn’t love Pilates from the start but that’s because I didn’t understand it and I couldn’t feel it. But my love for Pilates came after I found the right teacher who helped me to learn about my body and the simplicity of the movement and the power of those tiny muscles that helps us move through life without pain when they all work as a team. I fell in love with the work and take pride in practicing what I preach, sharing my personal experience with my clients. Simply learning my body and how it functions, that helped me to regain all of my strength that I lost through severe injuries. I suffered and it made me lose faith, but now I can continue to do what I love. and I proved myself wrong by putting effort and time into learning, educating, strengthening and getting inspired to become an instructor myself. I was a performer on the world stage of Cirque du Soleil for 18 years and once I became someone who practices and teaches Pilates, through every injury I would suffer in my performance life, I knew how to maintain my body’s strength, to listen to it and rehab it so that I could continue do what I love. So what makes us different is we believe everybody is unique in their own way and that exercise is not one size fits all. We are a space where we start teaching no matter how young you are, from toddlers to seniors…no matter what injuries you either suffer or have been born with…any physical limitation you might have, we are a space for all. When we teach about body and movement, it helps each client to be active and understand their own body better. We are a safe place and you are never too young or too old to start exercising in a balanced, mindful, and fun way. You do not need to be dripping with sweat to see or feel the benefit of exercising.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

We met one fateful day in Chicago, IL when I came in for an interview at Melissa’s Pilates studio that she owned. I grew up a competitive gymnast on the Ukrainian national team and had been touring all over the world with Cirque du Soleil since I was 17. After 12 years on tour I decided to pause and settle in Chicago and was now looking for a place to land and begin my new journey. After my interview, I stayed for a Champagne-ilates class and Melissa hired me on the spot, after seeing (according to Melissa) my impressive resumé, we connected over our movement philosophy and ability to have fun in an otherwise pretty serious industry. We bonded over Pilates and our love of performance. We both found Pilates while rehabilitating from various injuries; I was having hip and shoulder injuries from being a competitive athlete and Melissa suffering from a serious back condition since she was 20. In Chicago, we shared clients, learned from each other and created movement programs each month based on anatomical themes to keep our clients and ourselves motivated, educated and, most importantly having fun. In addition to teaching together, we began performing together as well, combining our love of movement and performance. I moved out to LA first and Melissa came soon after in 2019 with her husband and baby. During the pandemic, Melissa wrote a book on how to teach Pilates to Kids and began traveling the world sharing this new training program. I took an interest to this program, being a child who had suffered so many injuries and thus the collaborations began again! Now, we just needed a space! We began dreaming up a space in LA where we could combine all of our passions for movement. A space where people could rehabilitate from injuries, feel more connected to their bodies and learn more functional movement patterns at any age. We dreamed up a space where parents could bring their child while they exercised and where children could learn about movement through Pilates. Next came a name. What do we call this space now that it is a combination of both of us? We wanted a name that was fun, easy for kids to say and expressed both of us. For Me I looked at the national flower for Ukraine, the sunflower and then the Soleil of Cirque du Soleil. For Melissa, we looked at the flower of California, the Poppy, which is also her daughter’s name and now the home of our studio. When we dove deeper, we discovered that the Poppy flower is a symbol of peace and this brought us to SolPop Pilates. Our studio is filled with sunflowers for Ukraine and Poppies for peace. There is a giant sun pained as a mural on our wall, which symbolizes the energy that we receive and give back to others.

Any advice for managing a team?

Weekly workout and meetings works like a charm for us, also bringing our families together to bond helps us to connect and maintain our friendship and disconnect from business side of it. We also (believe it or not) did some business couples therapy so that we could improve the way we communicate and understand each other.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sol-pop.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/solpoppilates/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100088043383165
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/solpop-pilates-san-fernando-valley
• Other: We would love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]