- The original functional core strengthening exercise method developed in the 1900s by Joseph Pilates.
Joseph Pilates
- Develops abdominal, back, and joint strength while maintaining and/or increasing flexibility and range of motion.
- Pilates
can be done on a mat; standing; sitting; with props such as balls,
bands, weights, and rollers; and/or on specially designed spring-based Pilates equipment.
Joseph Pilates was born in 1880 in Moenchengladbach, a town near
Dusseldorf, Germany to a gymnast father and a naturopathic physician
mother. Moenchengladbach, located in West-Central Germany, was a center
of industry and production, specifically cotton textiles. Pilates was a
frail and sickly child who suffered from rickets, rheumatic fever, and
asthma. Other children constantly made fun of both his name (they
called him "Christ killer") and his frailty, and Joe was too weak and
skinny to ever fight back. He resolved to get stronger in his breathing
and his movements so that he could defend himself.
One day Joe's doctor gave him an anatomy book, and the seeds of
Contrology were sewn. Of this book Pilates said, "I learned every page,
every part of the body I would move each part as I memorized it. As a
child, I would lie in the woods for hours, hiding and watching the
animals move, how the mother taught the young." While attending school
and studying history, philosophy, and engineering, Pilates also studied
Eastern and Western forms of exercise. The young Joe sent for more
books and haunted the University libraries in Dusseldorf. The more he
learned the more questions he had. He tried yoga, Buddhist meditation,
and ancient Greek and Roman gymnastic exercises, and kept meticulous
written records of what the exercises did for him and how he
progressed. Pilates hald fast to the ancient Roman credo "Mens sana in
corpore sano (A sound mind in a sound body)." By the time he turned 14
he was not only strong enough to be considered an accomplished skin
diver, gymnast, boxer, and skier, he also modeled for anatomy charts.
We know that Pilates traveled to England when he was in his 30s, but
there are at least two different equally plausible stories about how
and why he went. The first story tells us that he went there to box,
having exhausted most of the prizefighting venues at home. The second
claims that Joe had begun successfully performing in the circus with
his brother, and they had a Greek statue act that was so popular they
took it to England. Whichever is true, Pilates was in England in 1914
when WW I broke out and was interned by the British as an enemy alien.
He first went to a small camp near Lancaster, where he began teaching
self defense and wrestling to the other Germans, claiming that they
would be stronger when they left than when they entered. It was here
that Joe began to develop his system of Contrology. Then he was
transferred.
During both World Wars, the British set up their Alien Civilian
Internment Camps on the Isle of Man. Interestingly, they only interned
males women were not interned. For WWI (1914-1918) a very large camp
was established on the west coast of the island at Knockaloe. The
Knockaloe camp, intended to house 5000 men, ended up expanding to hold
about 24,000. It was 22 acres large, divided into 23 compounds split
into 4 separate camps. Each camp had its own hospital, theater,
cafeteria, printing presses, etc. and the hospitals were used to treat
soldiers injured on the front lines of battle. The Knockaloe camps were
built from wooden huts, and became extremely depressing after several
years. To make things worse, the camps did not close right at the end
of the war, since there was a long period of post-war hostilities. The
camps finally closed in late 1919, and most of the internees were
deported back to Germany.
It was while interned at Knockaloe camp that Joe Pilates began to
really experiment with his exercises and theories. It was obviously his
priority to maintain his own strength and conditioning, which was not
easy given the basic lack of hygienic conditions and the presence of
injured and sick internees and soldiers, but Pilates also had to deal
with the great influenza epidemic of 1918. In a time when there was no
physical or exercise therapy and medicine was relatively archaic, Joe
began to work with the sick and injured men. He taught them to breathe
and attached bedsprings with straps to the walls by their hospital beds
so they could begin to stretch and exercise by pushing or pulling on
the springs before they could even get out of bed. His patients got out
of bed much faster, and Joe's experiments were encouraged. Outside of
the hospital he took large groups of internees through his exercise
regimen every day believing wholeheartedly that the more everyone
breathed and moved the better off they would be. "Out with the bad
germs and in with the fresh new oxygen," he would counsel. England lost
tens of thousands and while the camps were hit extremely hard by the
flu, only 200 men died at Knockaloe, thus proving to Joe that he was
right.
Joe in his 70s
After the war Pilates was deported back to Germany, where he continued
to develop, practice, and teach his exercises until 1925. He trained
the Hamburg Military Police, took on some private clients, and worked
as an early Physical Therapist, exercising patients who suffered from
the same illnesses he had, including rheumatic fever. Joe met and
collaborated with movement analyst Rudolf van Laban and famous German
dancer Mary Wigman, and began developing spring based exercise
equipment. "I thought, why use my strength [to exercise rheumatic
patients]? So I made a machine to do it for me. Look, you see it
resists your movements in just the right way so those inner muscles
really have to work against it. That way you can concentrate on
movement. You must always do it slowly and smoothly. Then your whole
body is in it."
Post war Germany was not doing well either politically or economically.
The Weimar Republic was not accepted by many Germans, inflation was up
due to wartime debts, and unemployment was at an all time high. By 1923
French and Belgium troops had moved in to Germany as she defaulted on
war reparations payments. The government began printing so much money
that the mark became worthless in 1914 the US dollar was equivalent to
4 marks, in 1920 40 marks, in 1922 200 marks, in 1923 18,000 marks, and
by 1924 4.2 trillion marks. Things had literally gotten to the point
where you needed a wheelbarrow full of paper money just to buy
groceries.
In 1925 Pilates was invited to train the New German Army. However,
given the situation in Germany, he had already decided to leave. Boxing
expert Nat Fleischer and Olympic boxer Max Schmelling convinced Joe to
come to the US, specifically to New York City. Here he could train
boxers and continue to work on his equipment, inventing and patenting
his new machines. He met his future wife Clara, a kindergarten teacher,
on the boat to Ellis Island. The story goes that Clara suffered from
arthritis and Joe worked with her to increase her mobility and relieve
her pain. Once in New York they opened their gym at 939 Eighth Avenue,
in the same building that housed rehearsal studios for George
Ballanchine's New York City Ballet.
Joe, Mary, & Clara Pilates in the studio
Joseph Pilates never received the level of recognition that his
brilliant work clearly deserved, and even today it is difficult to wade
through the myth and find the true story. This is partially true
because most of what we know about his life has come from students of
students of his students.
While many facts about Joe's life are verifiable, sources still
disagree on the basics. In fact, I just reviewed several sites
and each gave a different year of death (1966, 1967, 1968) as well as a
different cause of death (he died in a fire as a result of a fire as
a result of smoke inhalation from a fire etc.). According to his
New York Times obituary Joseph Pilates died in 1967 at Lenox Hill
Hospital, but the Times never mentions cause of death. And there
was indeed a fire on the same floor as his studio in 1965 where Joe
suffered a bad leg scrape while inspecting the studio. But,
according to Pilates Elder Mary Bowen, "To set the record straight -
no, Joe did not die in a fire. He died two years later...of
advanced ephysema from smoking cigars for too many years...."
Apparently all the good breathing in the world could not keep his
scarred lungs (recall that he was rheumatic and asthmatic as a child)
from feeling the effects of smoking. As Joe left no will, Clara took
over and ran the studio until she retired in the mid-70s.
The Question of Lineage
Most Pilates teachers out there today can trace his or her lineage back
to Joe and Clara, and this includes such heavyweights as Winsor and
Stott. I, for example, originally was a client at SUNY Purchase
where I learned under Steve Giordano who studied with Joe's student
Romana Kryzanowska. Then I worked with Karen Carlson in
Philadelphia who studied with Mary Bowen and Kathy Grant who both
studied with Joe. And I received my certification from both
Michelle Larson and her teacher Eve Gentry who studied with Joe.
Since then I have worked directly with Romana, with Eve before she
died, and with Kathy. So even though my studio training
affiliation is with the PhysicalMind Institute I trace my lineage as a
student and teacher back to Pilates himself and when people ask me what
style of Pilates I teach I can honestly say that it is my own, but
informed by all of my teachers.
Of the 10 students of Joe's who taught Pilates either at his studio or
opened their own (yes, there were other New York Pilates studios open
in the 50s!), only 6 are still alive and 5 are still actively teaching
in their 70s and 80s! Each individual took what he or she learned
from Joe and Clara and expanded the work with their own knowledge and
expertise. Additionally, many of the Elders worked with one
another. Hence, the different styles of Pilates, all of which can
ultimately be traced back to Joseph Pilates himself.
Photos on this page courtesy of Balanced Body (Thanks!!)
Copyright 2008 Lynda Lippin