The Method
The Pilates method is a set of varied exercises and intelligent physical fitness principles, performed using specific equipment or on the floor. Its aim is to balance the musculature by focusing on the abdominal, pelvic and posterior regions, with a view to improving posture, strength, coordination and mobility.
The Pilates method is also about mental concentration and body awareness, which help to strengthen the muscles and lengthen the figure…
“It’s the mind that builds the body”, Joseph Pilates
The movements are performed taking into account the student’s actual physical abilities as well as their own objectives, without ever exceeding the point of effort which, once reached, will indicate the transition to other more difficult exercises.
The Pilates method can be used as a sport or as a complement to another physical activity, dance or as a rehabilitation method. The eight principles of the method are: Concentration, Breathing, Centre (the Powerhouse), Control, Precision, Fluidity of movement, Balance and Repetition.
The origins of Joseph Pilates
Joseph Hubertus Pilates was born on 9 December 1883 in Mönchengladbach, Germany, to a father (Friedrich) who was a top-level gymnast and a mother (Hahn) who was a naturopath and a pioneer of natural and alternative forms of healing. He was a sickly child, suffering from rickets, asthma and rheumatoid arthritis. To regain his health, he began studying anatomy and observing animals in the woods….
“Take a horse. If someone wants to race it, he trains it to be in the best possible shape. Why not keep humans in the best possible shape too? he says one day, discussing fitness.
He soon realised that mental and physical health were linked, and studied disciplines that were very exotic at the time, such as yoga and various martial arts. He integrated these Eastern practices with Western physical activities such as gymnastics and boxing, and also incorporated ancient Greek and Roman forms of physical exercise. He is convinced that a modern lifestyle (poor posture, incorrect breathing, exercises that ignore the postural muscles, etc.) is a decisive factor in poor health.
As a young man, already a diver and gymnast, Joseph moved to England in 1912, where he boxed professionally and taught self-defence at police academies and Scotland Yard. To earn a living, he also took part in a circus act with his brother, where he played the Greek statue.
When Great Britain joined the First World War, he was taken prisoner as an enemy alien. It was in these difficult circumstances of internment that he laid the foundations of the Pilates method. He observed how animals stretched and used his own observations in his training. He taught the exercises he had devised to his fellow internees, just as a gym teacher/physiotherapist would. In this way, he enabled immobilised prisoners (wounded or invalids from the war) to regain strength and life, in particular by attaching springs to their sick beds. He devised exercises to prevent muscle loss, and the results were so surprising that these people became healthier than the able-bodied. With these springs attached to the bed, he developed the principle of resistance and designed the Reformer, the first apparatus for practising the Pilates method. He also realised how effective the machines could be on untrained people, compared with mat work. So he dismantled a bunk bed, attached springs to the top frame, and began to use this apparatus for rehabilitation purposes: the Cadillac had just been born.
Once released, he returned to Germany and continued to train police officers in Hamburg. He also worked with dance and bodywork experts such as Rudolf Laban. When the new German army tried to force his hand to become a trainer, he left his country and emigrated to the United States. It was on the boat journey that he met his future wife, a nurse called Clara. They married and set up their studio in New York, where they taught his method of physical conditioning known as “Contrology”.
This revolutionary method quickly became a huge success, particularly with dancers, acrobats, athletes and film stars. His first clients were the legendary dancers and choreographers Balanchine (co-founder of the New York City Ballet) and Martha Graham (founder of the Graham Dance Company). The dancers in New York’s dance companies quickly adopted the Pilates method, which enabled them to undergo accelerated rehabilitation for the various injuries inherent in their work, as well as strengthening their muscles while preserving their flexibility.
Uncle Joe, as his friends and family liked to call him, went on to invent new exercises and design new equipment, all based on the same principle: “intelligently designed movements, performed correctly, with great precision and balance, are much more effective than hours of monotonous training consisting of stereotyped exercises”.
Breathing, correct posture, harmonious development of the postural muscles and movements performed without haste but with perfect precision are the specific features of his method, which he explains in detail in his two books: “Your Health: A Corrective System of Exercising that Revolutionizes the Entire Field of Physical Education”, published in 1934, and “Return to Life Through Contrology”, published in 1945.
Joseph Hubertus Pilates taught with his wife Clara in their studio, then known as the Pilates Studio, on 8th Avenue (New York) for over 40 years. He died in 1967 at the age of 83, having dedicated his life to the well-being and health of others. Clara joined him ten years later.
His students, the elders
The Pilates method began to be taught throughout the world by the “Pilates Elders”, as Joseph Pilates’ first students were called. Their teachings varied according to their approach, their personal experiences and their understanding of the method; this produced different styles of the method.
In 1938, Eve Gentry began studying with Joseph and Clara, teaching with them until 1968, when she opened a dance school and an institute dedicated to the Pilates method in Santa Fé (New Mexico).
Carola Trier, an acrobat who had escaped from a Nazi concentration camp in France and emigrated to the United States, became a contortionist. In 1940, an injury prevented her from performing and she subsequently approached Joseph Pilates. At the end of the 1950s, she opened her own “Contrology” studio in New York, with the agreement of the method’s creator himself.
Ron Fletcher, one of Martha Graham’s dancers, began practising Pilates in the 1940s to overcome a chronic knee injury. In 1971, he opened a studio in Beverly Hills (California), which soon became very popular with film stars.
In 1941, Romana Kryzanowska, also a dancer, injured her ankle and, following advice from George Balanchine, rehabilitated it and studied with Joseph Pilates. When Joseph Pilates died in 1967, she continued to teach the method at the Pilates Studio with Clara Pilates. When Clara Pilates decided to retire, she appointed her director of the studio.
Pupils of Joe and Clara, Kathy Grant and Lolita San Miguel also became instructors. Kathy Grant became director of Bendel’s Studio in 1972, and Lolita San Miguel left to teach Pilates at the Ballet Concierto in Puerto Rico. In 1967, just before Joe’s death, they both received their Pilates teaching diplomas from the State University of New York. Of all the ‘alumni’, they were the only two to have received official diplomas from Joe himself.
Mary Bowen, a Jungian analyst who studied Contrology in the 1960s, began teaching in 1975 and founded Your Own Gym in Massachusetts.
Robert Fitzgerald, also a student of the founders, opened his studio in New York in the 1960s, where many of the dancers in the New York companies studied.