How to Achieve a Neutral Spine, Great Abs and a State of Enjoyment While Exercising

Evan Heitzman's ailing back seemed to be getting worse.

“I was having trouble sitting down, and I had to stop playing tennis,” the 47-year-old Moorestown resident recalls of the chronic pain, which was hindering her from engaging in a sport.  

She had visited medical specialists and had joined health clubs. Still searching for some relief, Heitzman became acquainted with Meghan Bubnis’ fitness style, and she tentatively opted to give one more center yet another shot. 

These days, Heitzman is a twice-weekly dedicated practitioner of Core Vitality—open since October 2010—where Bubnis invokes a combination of Pilates and body conditioning regimens on CoreAlign exercise frames that help assuage the back pain Heitzman intermittently experiences. 

“Meghan can pretty much size you up and tell you what’s going on with your body,” Heintzman says of Bubnis’ perceptive observations of anatomical form and shape. 

Years earlier, Bubnis was working steadily as an actuary, but feeling uninspired. She landed in Philadelphia and enrolled in a physical therapy program at Drexel University, with a sub-specialty in orthopedics. 

“I always liked working out,” says Bubnis, who turns 33 on Thursday. While majoring in mathematics at the University of Notre Dame, Bubnis became certified and led fitness classes. “I thought I could turn this into a career helping people.”

After graduating from Drexel with a doctorate in 2006, Bubnis worked as a physical therapist at The Training Room inside Velocity Sports Performance in Cherry Hill. 

In 2007, she completed her certification in Polestar Pilates—a comprehensive and rigorous study—which mandates each student complete an 800-hour apprenticeship, followed by practical and written examinations. 

She did a two-year stint at FitLife in Mount Airy, PA—“The drive was brutal,” says Budnis, who lives in Hainesport—and then took a job for five months at the Virtua Health and Wellness Center in Voorhees, similar to the  across the road from Budnis' studio, located on Young Avenue in Moorestown Commons.

“All along, I basically had this desire to open my own place, which was sitting on the backburner for years,” Bubnis says. 

One of Bubnis’ ideas when she launched was to act as the “movement scientist,” delivering a skills-training formula, while allowing smooth transitions in between each exercise. 

“As I work with a person, I push them within their limitations, and I pinpoint what I might see as a disturbance,” Bubnis says, who’s married and the mom of two toddler girls. “By getting to the source of the problem, we can hopefully get rid of the problem.”

Additionally, she implements what she calls her core components in training: the three F’s—Fix, Foundation, and Fun. 

According to Budnis, her job is to “fix” the areas of the body that are causing pain, by offering the correct solutions. As the body speaks to Bubnis, the “foundation” becomes set.

“But a workout isn’t any good unless you are having ‘fun’ while helping yourself,” she says, laughing.

Beyond the center’s tinted windows is an array of exercise equipment: traditional Pilates weights, suspension straps and power racks. The room conveys a calming, Zen-like feeling.

As one of only two CoreAlign Master Instructors (CAMI) on the East Coast—the other one is in Manhattan—Bubnis leads some of her workouts on “movable carts” that roll while the participant is doing various exercises. The equipment was created in 2004 by Jonathan Hoffman, a physical therapist, who lives in Israel. 

“On an unstable surface, you really are isolating your core area,” she says, eagerly showing a visitor the harmonious movements done on the equipment.

The largest volume of clients at Core Vitality are women in their 40s and 50s who visit “early in the morning or around their kids’ schedules,” says Bubnis. But she does have men, even a couple physicians, who are regular clients.

Currently, Core Vitality has five other instructors and classes max out at six. Mat classes are held in a back room. Core Vitality also has a center at 117A Route 73 South, in Marlton.

“She so enthusiastic,” Heitzman says of Bubnis. “If you’re up to the challenge, she’s the instructor.”