About us

The Pilates Institute of Queensland was established over 20 years ago.

We started running training courses for our own staff so we had highly qualified Pilates practitioners with a consistent approach to naming, teaching and designing client programmes.

Other fitness professionals approached us about training when they saw that we were teaching our staff and had developed training material for this purpose. We started training courses for Matwork and Large equipment in the late 1990s.

Jenny Birckel, our director is an APA Titled Sports Physiotherapist. She began her Pilates journey in the early 1990s when she started to treat dancers at the QDSE and noted significant core and pelvic weakness issues. General strengthening and trunk muscle stability wasn’t a usual consideration in adolescent dancers in that era.

Jenny has merged her sports physiotherapy expertise with traditional Pilates adding many stepped down lower level exercises for early rehabilitation application to bring an injured client progressively through to optimal recovery and even to high level sports performance without the risk of recurring injuries.

Our current instructors are all experienced physiotherapists with many years of Clinical Pilates and work in our clinics, or in Rebecca’s case at the Children’s hospital.

Where can you find our courses

We “normally” run our training courses in Brisbane, Townsville, Rockhampton, Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne and have been to Perth. COVID19 has put a different slant on things and made travel difficult.

CVS of Our Course Presenters

Jennifer Birckel
B. App Sc (Phty)

Jenny graduated from her physiotherapy course at Cumberland college (University of Sydney) in 1979. She is an APA Titled Sports Physiotherapist and Member of the College of Physiotherapists.

Jenny started a private practice in a sporty country town in the early 1980s which necessitated an accelerated learning about sports medicine which was quite in its infancy in those days. She treated a large variety of sports in the country ( Murwillumbah and Lismore.) Moving to Brisbane in the early 1990s she started working with dancers at QDSE and with football- rugby union, league and soccer.

She undertook Pilates training courses in 1992 and 1995 with DMA. She opened an equipment studio in 1995 and has since gone on to expand on those early courses to bring her staff and her clients contemporary, scientific based exercise repertoire to meet the needs of clients from early fragile rehabilitation conditions to elite dancers and sports men and women. Over the years she has worked with sports teams and dance schools at local state and international level (Australian women’s rugby team).

Jenny has two large Pilates in the suburbs of Ascot and Bulimba in Brisbane and utilizes Pilates on a daily basis for strengthening and rehab.

Jenny has designed courses for Physiotherapists, exercise physiologists and exercise scientists and Fitness professionals and enjoys educating exercise professionals about Pilates and how it can be used for general and elite strengthening to rehabilitation clients.

Jenny delivered Diploma of Pilates Method for APMA for 5 years.

Jo Kaighin
Mst Phty Std 2007, BSc 2000, BSc Hons Biochemistry 2001

Jo graduated from a Master of Physiotherapy Studies in 2007. Since this time, she has worked in Occupational Health and Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy, including in an onsite role with BHP Billiton delivering health and manual handling education programmes for 12 months.

Jo completed training in the Pilates method with the Pilates Institute of Queensland in 2013. She has been involved in the training and marking of the Pilates Diploma course developed by the APMA and implemented by the Pilates Institute of Queensland.

Jo works as a clinical Physiotherapist implementing Pilates based rehabilitation programmes on a daily basis with a wide variety of clients.

Rebecca Fechner (née Thurecht)
BPhty

Rebecca studied her Bachelor of Physiotherapy from 1997-2001.

Rebeca started her Pilates journey while working in England and studying Clinical Pilates through the Australian Physiotherapy and Pilates Institute. She also trained with Stott Pilates and the Pilates Institute of QLD.

Rebecca has over 10,000 hours of clinical Pilates’s teaching accumulated over 20 years of Physiotherapy practice.

Rebecca is a physiotherapist with a special interest in movement rehabilitation which aims to reconnect body and mind, such as the Pilates method. She has worked in many varied clinical settings all over the world for over 20 years and has great success getting people back to life through allowing opportunities to experience body/mind integration and autonomy over their own movement experiences. She enjoys lecturing on Pilates courses not only to share her experience and empower clinicians toward success, but to continue to thrive from the collective experiences of others on the course.