If Pilates wants to rid itself of its “easy” workout misconception, Kahley Schiller’s story—both in and out of the studio—may be the perfect example to lead the charge.
For nearly two decades, the roster at her Kansas City studio, Pilates by Kahley, has featured some of the biggest names on the Super Bowl–winning Chiefs. Quarterbacks and hulking linemen have entered seeking a few training tweaks, then left with an unexpected, almost delightful kind of agony.
Schiller is a classically trained instructor who for more than a decade has prioritized personalizing her craft over packing the room for profit. Her space contains only seven reformers in order for her to give each client as much hands-on attention and correction as possible.
She grew up a fan of the four-time Super Bowl champions, but on gameday Schiller watches as a coach, constantly looking for ways her defensive linemen can benefit from her work. She studies their stances, their leverage, even how individual muscles are firing, then comes up with a plan of attack—right down to working each specific head of the triceps if necessary.
“I watch to study what they need,” she says. “I primarily train the defensive line, and they have to hold those positions and have to come up with so much explosion. So I study them. I watch it for that purpose—to see just what they need, and if what I’m doing is helping them.”
While Schiller trains some of the league’s giants of the D-line—including former Chief Tershawn Wharton and current linemen George Karlaftis, Charles Omenihu, and Malik Herring—she believes her Pilates training was also the driving force that helped strengthen her much smaller frame battle an opponent far greater than any Super Bowl matchup: a liver transplant in 2019.
She survived not only the transplant itself and the excruciating post-op pain that followed. With a second chance at life has come a set of permanent adjustments that she can’t call any audibles on—including lifelong medication, food restrictions, and constant monitoring of her health. In the meantime, Schiller is using her second chance the best way she knows how. She continues teaching not only elite athletes, but also came up with a new tool—the Ab Belt—to help clients, especially women, who’ve faced their own surgeries, setbacks, and scares.
“My surgeon said the only reason that I’m alive is because my body was strong enough to get through that surgery,” she says. “Since there were so many complications, normally, most people aren’t able to get through something like that.”
Kahley Schiller
Just Being ‘Tired’ Turned Into a Near-Death Moment for Kahley Schiller
Pilates may look subtle, but its small, precise movements—targeting neglected stabilizers like the rotator cuff, deep hip muscles, individual triceps heads, and deep core—are exactly what make it such a valuable complement to standard weight-room sessions. By applying these Pilates principles, her Chiefs linemen often see improvements on the field: moving more efficiently, staying better aligned, and feeling less beat up in the smaller muscles that usually take a pounding for 60 minutes each Sunday.
In a way, Pilates reflects how Schiller now approaches her own health, nearly seven years after her liver transplant—and it’s the part of her story she shares with as many people as possible. Today, even the smallest hint of an ailment can no longer be brushed off without a physician’s confirmation. It’s a mistake she refuses to make a second time. “If I feel off, I go get my labs done,” she says. “I just walk in and say, need my labs. I check up on myself very often.”
That same vigilance wasn’t there back in 2019, when Schiller considered herself in arguably the best shape of her life—at least appearance-wise—while juggling dual roles as a mother of two young kids and a business owner. Looking back, the physical drain was enough to wear down even the fit football stars she trains, but to her it felt like a normal part of the grind. “I was just tired, but I didn’t think anything of that,” she says. “We’re tired all the time, right?”
She remembers the date—August 1, 2019—when she realized what she was experiencing was well beyond normal fatigue. Bouts of nausea became more frequent. Within weeks, she says, her face and eyes took on a yellow hue. That was the signal that something was seriously wrong.
Schiller also can’t forget her first brush with the medical system—after it took nearly three weeks to even get in to see a doctor. Her symptoms were initially dismissed as a dietary issue, and she was sent home with nausea pills. Two days later, everything escalated. “We were driving to Lawrence [Kansas] for a dinner, and my eyes were bright yellow, which is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen,” she says. She went straight back to the doctor and demanded blood work. This time, the results were impossible to wave away. While a normal liver enzyme count might fall between 10 and 40 units per liter, Schiller’s were in the thousands. She was rushed to the ER, where specialists were waiting.
After a biopsy at the University of Kansas Health System, she was diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis, a disease that attacks the liver. Her prognosis was not promising.
“He told me I was in acute liver failure, and I had 90 days to live,” she says.
Kahley Schiller Took a Pilates Approach to Regaining Pre-Transplant Strength
If the liver transplant itself wasn’t excruciating enough, the aftermath, she says, was infinitely worse. A blood clot shot to her lung, then her heart, then her brain. She later learned she’d had four minor strokes, along with a previously undiagnosed heart flap that allowed the clot to pass through. Surgeons had to halt the operation, insert a filter, wait, then go back in and finish the transplant.
When she woke up, Schiller had a new liver—and a heart surgery already on the schedule. Meanwhile, the pain medication kept wearing off far faster than any signs of the indescribable pain ever faded.
“I can’t even explain the amount of pain that I was in,” she says. “I didn’t sleep for days, and kept counting down the seconds until I could hit [the morphine button].”
Eventually the immediate pain subsided, but the road to recovery ahead was overwhelming. The core she had developed through years of Pilates was completely shredded. “They cut through my abdominals, so up and down and then across. So I had no core.”
She leaned heavily on her faith. “I probably read my Bible more than I ever have in my entire life during that time,” she recalls. She also drew on what she’d learned from her Pilates mentor, Lolita San Miguel, 92, a first-generation Pilates elder and one of only two instructors personally certified by the practice’s founder, Joseph Pilates.
The surgical trauma made sleep difficult, and basic tasks like using the bathroom became a challenge. So, much like a Pilates program, Schiller had to approach her own recovery in gradual increments. A slow 2.0-mph treadmill walk increased over time. At first, even lifting a 2-pound weight felt impossible, but she added more as her strength returned. “Each day, if there was a little bit less pain, that would be a baby step,” she says.
About two months after her operation, Schiller finally lasted 45 minutes on the treadmill. A few months after that, she began seeing core results again. “My abs took eight months from the actual surgery to where I could feel the burn again.”
Kahley Schiller
With a ‘New Normal’ Comes a New and Renewed Purpose
Life after a liver transplant means Schiller’s health now has to be managed with the same Pilates-like precision she instills in each of her clients. Permanently immunocompromised as a recipient with autoimmune hepatitis, she’ll almost certainly be on anti-rejection medication for the rest of her life. That life-changing reality now shapes nearly everything in her day-to-day routine. Her lab work is done regularly, and basic gym supplements she once took for granted—including everyday vitamin C tablets—are off the table unless specifically approved by her physician. Foods such as grapefruit, pomegranates, and even sushi can cause dangerous interactions with her medication and are no longer part of her diet.
Despite these permanent changes, Schiller can’t help but see the greater good that has come from her challenges. Since taking up Pilates as a UNLV student more than 20 years ago and later being introduced to the Chiefs after former quarterback Trent Green came in for sessions, her fitness practice has taken on a higher meaning, she says.
“My purpose in life is to help people,” she says. “This has given me a much better perspective of my clients who would come in and have all these different issues, because now I could finally relate to them. I never had been injured in my life, and now everything has happened.”
Out of her near-death ordeal also emerged a new way to ease the continuous lower back pain she experienced throughout her recovery. Foundational Pilates movements such as a C-curve—a position that helps flex and stretch the thoracic spine—became painfully difficult. She began wrapping a small Pilates ball with a knee brace to help keep herself propped up in that shape. That makeshift brace eventually led to the launch of her AB Belt in 2025. The redesigned device has already helped countless others—postpartum clients, people recovering from abdominal surgeries, those with lower-back pain, and even athletes. Her creation is just another extension of how she passes down the benefits of Pilates, the same practice she believes helped save her life.
“Everything that happens to us in life is for a great reason,” she says. “If you look at it that way, and you use it for something, then you’re helping others. If you look at it the other way and think that you’re the victim, then you’re going to stay over there.”
