Naperville Pilates, spin studio helps fitness buffs 'feel strong inside'

Maura Clifford and Karen Blecke are self-described "movement geeks."

The Naperville moms, with seven kids between them, don't exactly nerd out over staying in shape, but usually find themselves on their feet.

So when Blecke suggested Pilates to ease her friend's chronic back pain, Clifford halfheartedly agreed, thinking it "seemed like a lot of laying around."

Clifford had thrown out her back - water-skiing, no less - and suffered pain for more than a year. Doctors started talking surgery.

"Every time I would go to get out of bed, I'd be like, where am I going to put my feet? How am I actually going to do this?" Clifford said.

About a dozen Pilate sessions later, Clifford was cured - and hooked.

"It made a huge difference in the quality of my life," Clifford said.

They wanted to bring those transformations to others with their own studio, MK Lab, in downtown Naperville. They opened about seven years ago with a few clients in a second-floor flat that felt like their "first apartment."

"With a lot of hard work - and it was a lot of hard work - we're here today," Clifford said.

"Here" is a roomier studio above Ted's Montana Grill and just across the street from the old one. The duo recently relocated after building a following too big for their former space.

"We were also feeling like, 'What's the next challenge?'" Clifford asked. "'What's our next step?'"

While Pilates is "very centering, very calming," Blecke said, they also wanted to give their clients another way to get moving.

"You got a bug, right?" Blecke said to Clifford.

The latter calls cycling her other love, a calorie-buster that feels like a "big party" in their new group classes.

"To me, I love this idea of coming in here and turning the lights down and pumping the music up and just being really focused on me and going and hearing the music and camaraderie of everyone in the room," Clifford said. " ... It's a strange dichotomy of being in a group setting, but really focused in my own space and how the cobwebs kind of come out of my brain."

With more room, they're now offering Pilates, cycling and combo classes (30 minutes of each). Clifford's 72-year-old dad flips on Frank Sinatra and leads seniors on a spin on the studio's 15 Schwinn stationary bikes. And they're planning to offer a weekly version for teens taught by one of their peers.

Clifford and Blecke also hope to do charity rides like one benefiting Bike Bald, a Naperville nonprofit group that supports kids with cancer, after an opening celebration at their new studio with Mayor Steve Chirico on Jan. 8.

Growing their business - from a vision scribbled on kitchen napkins years ago - leaves the two smiling and crediting each other for their work ethic. They're "more sisters than anything," Clifford said, who know the way to keep moving is to find "what you love."

"For us, it's about feeling strong inside, and all of that we'll radiate outward," she said.