Shaping the Future of Group Exercise
As the National Governing Body (NGB) for group exercise, the focus of our work is to protect, support, and elevate the entire sector. To ensure that our guidance, professional standards, and scopes of practice truly reflect the realities of the industry, we have established our first dedicated Sector Advisory Panels for Pilates and Yoga.
We believe that governance shouldn’t happen isolated from the community it serves. By bringing together a broad spectrum of expertise, we ensure that every development is driven by the very people who live and breathe the sector every day.
By formalising these panels within our National Governing Body governance structure, we are creating an unshakeable foundation for industry standards. This ensures that any guidance issued is robust, transparent, peer-reviewed, and completely independent of commercial bias.
The group exercise landscape is diverse, vibrant, and rapidly evolving. For guidance to be credible and effective, it cannot be top-down; it must be built on collective expertise.
Our panels are designed to ensure comprehensive representation and robust governance across three key pillars:
We ensure that developments are not driven by a single viewpoint, but by a democratic consensus that represents instructors, training providers, and operators alike.
By pressure-testing standards against real-world experience, we create frameworks that protect a teacher’s right to practice while maintaining the high standards the public deserves.
This is a dynamic initiative. These initial panels represent the first phase of a broader commitment to sector-wide representation, with scope to introduce further specialist panels as the industry evolves.
Michael King is an internationally recognised Pilates educator with 48 years of teaching experience. Originally trained with Alan Herdman in London, Michael later continued his professional development with many of the leading Pilates teachers and elders of the Pilates community.
He is the founder of Michael King Pilates (MK Pilates), with training programmes taught in over 30 countries worldwide. Michael is recognised for his contribution to Pilates education and professional standards and continues to teach, mentor, and present internationally.
Howard Braband has over 40 years’ experience in the health and wellness industry. Founder of Gym kit UK, one of the UK’s leading independent fitness equipment brands, he has been the UK distributor for Peak Pilates for almost 15 years. He also owns four Pilates and Reformer Pilates studios.
Through his roles as a studio operator, equipment supplier and industry leader, Howard brings practical commercial and operational insight to the EMD UK Pilates Advisory Panel.
Gillian Reeves is the Head of Group Exercise at Third Space, a collection of premium health clubs based in London.
With extensive experience in specialist group exercise management for leading national brands, she has played a key role in shaping class concepts, developing content for group exercise qualifications, and working as both a tutor and assessor.
Founder, Cherry Baker Education & Modern Pilates
Cherry Baker is an elite fitness educator, presenter, and industry pioneer with over 45 years of experience. A champion for high professional standards, Cherry has spent decades shaping the group exercise and clinical rehabilitation landscape across the UK.
Key Achievements & Impact:
Passionate about raising the bar for instructor education, Cherry is a dedicated advocate for standards and safety across the sector.
Yolande Green is a highly experienced fitness industry professional with over 35 years of experience in education, quality assurance and standards development. Since entering the industry in 1990, she has held numerous roles including gym instructor, personal trainer, fitness manager, educator, assessor, internal and external quality assurer, college lecturer and business owner. Her career has taken her around the world, including working on cruise ships and supporting training providers internationally.
With more than 20 years’ experience in quality assurance, Yolande has worked with SkillsActive, PD: Approval and ICREPs, contributing to the development of qualifications and professional standards across the UK and internationally. She currently serves as Lead External Consultant for the ICREPs Global Standards Committee.
Alongside her quality assurance work, Yolande remains an active practitioner, teaching 15 classes each week and working with a wide range of clients through her own business, Green Pilates Movement Studio. Her combination of strategic quality expertise and current industry practice ensures that training and qualifications remain relevant, robust and focused on professional excellence.
Gillian Reeves is the Head of Group Exercise at Third Space, a collection of premium health clubs based in London. With extensive experience in specialist group exercise management for leading national brands, she has played a key role in shaping class concepts, developing content for group exercise qualifications, and working as both a tutor and assessor. Gillian has also owned her own Yoga studio and brings a wealth of practical knowledge from teaching a wide range of class styles.
With over 10 years of teaching practice in yoga, Gillian is grateful to have studied with renowned teachers across it’s wide spectrum. Her training includes Freestyle Yoga with Jayne Nicholls, Jivamukti Yoga with Sharon Gannon and David Life, Restorative Yoga with Adelene Cheong, and more recently Sound Healing with Cherub Sanson and Tim Wheater, reflecting her ongoing commitment to evolving her practice and sharing a holistic approach to movement and wellbeing.
Ann-See Yeoh brings over 30 years of yoga teaching experience to the Advisory Group, rooted in the Krishnamacharya lineage through Desi achar and Paul Harvey, and informed by an MMedSci in Sport and Exercise Science.
A founding partner of Yoga Chew Valley, she has built and led a team of teachers, delivered yoga teacher training for more than two decades, and spent 25 years as a Les Mills BODYBALANCE Trainer and Assessor, giving her an unusually broad perspective across both independent yoga culture and the mainstream group exercise sector.
Ann-See has consulted for health clubs and operators across the UK and Asia. Currently, she supports yoga practitioners and teachers via her Yoga Life Club platform, mentors’ yoga teachers on a 1-2-1 basis and works with studio owners navigating the professional and commercial realities of running a yoga business. She is also a published author and coach, working at the intersection of yoga philosophy and personal development.
Her voice on the Advisory Group represents the full breadth of the yoga workforce: from independent studio owners and training providers to large-scale operators and the teachers working within them.
Donna Noble is an author, speaker, facilitator, wellbeing coach, and one of the UK’s leading voices in inclusive wellbeing and Body Positive Yoga. She is passionate about making yoga and wellbeing more accessible, diverse, and representative of everyBODY.
Through her teaching, writing, and speaking, Donna challenges outdated ideas about who wellness is for and helps people reconnect with the wisdom of their bodies. She trains and mentors yoga and fitness professionals to create more inclusive and accessible experiences for the communities they serve.
Donna’s work has been featured across major festivals, corporate organisations, media platforms, and professional training programmes both in the UK and internationally. A nominee for the National Diversity Awards, she is the author of Teaching Body Positive Yoga and the forthcoming Demystifying Yoga.
Her mission is simple: to create spaces where people feel seen, supported, and empowered to embrace themselves exactly as they are.
Jayne Nicholls is the multi award winning owner and director of GXT and commands a unique position in the education of instructors.
Jayne champions the working instructor providing qualifications and developing programs that allow both emotional and financial rewards. As something of an entrepreneur in the fitness industry, she has created a business out of a passion.
Starting as a group exercise instructor and personal trainer, Jayne has never been employed, never taught third party programs and always searched for a “better way.” This mindset paved the way for long term sponsorship by Nike as a Fitness Athlete, Red Bull, repeat bookings as a presenter and speaker at conventions and events nationwide.
Her leadership demonstrates that you can be both an instructor and a businessperson and her longevity in the industry provides a proven track record for success. Creator of the Freestyle Yoga brand, Jayne has white labelled her unique style of yoga for Virgin Active UK/SA & David Lloyd clubs.
Peter Tyldesley is the CEO of British Wheel of Yoga.
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