![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/\/9cec8d81-8cea-4ec9-849b-3595c12f745c.jpg\")
<\/p>\nA concert violinist went undercover to get justice after a faulty Pilates machine put her in a wheelchair and wrecked her career.<\/p>\n
Maya Meron, who has three children and had appeared on the BBC\u2019s annual summer classical music festival and with the London Symphony Orchestra, was doing a \u201cdownward-facing dog\u201d when the reformer machine\u2019s support bar gave way. She was \u201ccatapulted\u201d forwards and knocked unconscious for about half a minute.<\/p>\n
An ambulance took her to hospital and she was left in pain with a fractured elbow, severe abdominal injuries and long-term nerve damage. \u201cI was shattered,\u201d she said. \u201cI had to cancel all concerts and suddenly thought that I had no life.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the gym said there was no evidence to prove wrongdoing by its owner or its staff, Meron began her own inquiry with the help of private investigators.<\/p>\n
Seven years on, the 45-year-old has won a \u201cvery substantial\u201d financial settlement.<\/p>\n
On Monday, the Israeli musician spoke to The Times from New York, where she was recovering from her fifth operation since the accident at the Heartcore studio, Hampstead, north London, in 2019.<\/p>\n
She said she had been weeks from the legal time limit for a claim when the gym\u2019s management agreed to allow her to inspect the Pilates machines. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A reformer Pilates machine. Heartcore studio uses machines called Coreformers<\/p>\n
ALAMY<\/p>\n
Heartcore focuses on a Pilates programme during which participants use a machine called the Coreformer. Several celebrities are reported to have used the gym, including the Duchess of Sussex, who declared it her \u201cfavourite workout\u201d in an article she wrote for Vogue in 2019.<\/p>\n
Meron went back to the gym with her lawyers and a health and safety expert where they were met by management, its legal team and insurers. \u201cWe went into a room with about 40 machines, but it did not feel the same,\u201d Meron recalled. It then emerged that there was one solitary machine in a side room \u201cwhere everybody put their coats \u2014 that was the machine\u201d.<\/p>\n
Lawyers still maintained that there was insufficient evidence to bring a claim or force a settlement. But the day before Christmas, said Meron, \u201cinstead of shopping for gifts for my children, I went back to the gym in disguise\u201d. At the time, London was in the midst of the Covid pandemic and Meron wore a mask and signed in under an assumed name, posing in the class as an \u201cinept beginner\u201d.<\/p>\n
Eventually, she went to ten branches of the gym to assess Pilates machines, having instructed private investigators to accompany her so they could take photographs. \u201cEventually, I discovered that there was a pedal on the machine that gets stuck and makes the machine malfunction,\u201d said Meron, adding that she and the private detectives made recordings of the machines.<\/p>\n
In one case an instructor told Meron and investigators that it was possible to do a series of exercises without the machine malfunctioning \u2014 but eventually it would go wrong if enough weight were put on it. \u201cEven my husband wasn\u2019t aware that I was doing this,\u201d said Meron of her investigations, adding that \u201cthe more I found out, the more I kept going and discovered that it happened at other studios.\u201d <\/p>\n