(From left) Phebe Jenkins and Jane Ellington, owners and instructors at The Shed (Photo by Nancy Brown)
After almost five years of teaching yoga and Pilates classes in her backyard, founder of The Shed Jane Ellington has taken her business out of her home and into a new studio — at 1006 Lafayette St. in Richmond’s Malvern Gardens neighborhood — that opened earlier this week.
“It felt like a natural next step,” says Ellington, who co-owns The Shed with fellow Pilates instructor Phebe Jenkins. “We’ll keep it small. It’ll be eight mats and eight reformers, so classes will only ever have eight people at a time. I want to stay true to the initial vision of The Shed.”
Ellington, a licensed yoga instructor since 2017, had plans to open a standalone studio in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. She pivoted her plans that summer and created The Shed, offering lessons in yoga and Pilates out of the backyard shed at her home in the West End.
Kate Stephenson has been taking classes with Ellington since 2020. Stephenson looks forward to the workout every week, she says.
“I think we all knew that what Jane was doing in [the original location of] The Shed, it was almost too good to be true,” Stephenson says. “She has a really good vision for what she wants, and so I think it’ll be exciting to see which teachers she’s brought on board.”
The Shed’s new brick-and-mortar space is sticking to its trademark small classes, featuring eight spaces on either the mat or the Pilates reformer machine, depending on the class. Ellington and Jenkins will teach both mat and reformer classes. The co-owners are joined by instructor Elizabeth Carrington, who will also teach mat Pilates.
Ellington felt the spark for a business partnership the moment she sat down for coffee with Jenkins in August 2024. She asked herself, “Why work against each other when we could work together and build something really great?”
Creating community among attendees has always been a central focus of The Shed. Stephenson and Ellington agree that the studio’s smaller classes help connect participants and enhance their workouts.
Ellington wants to ensure that The Shed keeps classes small, even in the new space. “We want you to feel the community element of working out, but also almost like you had a private session as well,” she says.
For Ellington, the hard part of establishing a business is over. “Now I feel like we are in the beautiful, fun part of actually getting to build it and open it. And I’m really excited,” she says.
The Shed will offer dozens of classes per week from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. More information on classes and scheduling is available at theshedrva.com.
