What is Pilates?

Pilates is an exercise system developed by Joseph Pilates to strengthen muscles, increase flexibility and improve overall health. Exercises are performed on a mat and on specially designed equipment. The Pilates system includes exercises for every part of the body and applications for every kind of activity. Created in the early part of the 20th century, Pilates was so far ahead of it’s time that it did not begin to achieve popular recognition until the first few years of the 21st century. Over 10 million people are now practicing Pilates in the United States and the numbers are growing every year.

Why is Pilates so Popular?

Pilates focuses on engaging the mind with the body to create exercises that involve the whole body. Every exercise is performed with attention to the breath, proper form and efficient movement patterns. Pilates strengthens the core, improves balance, increases coordination and decreases stress. The exercises are relatively safe, low impact and appropriate for anyone from 10 to 100. Pilates focuses on learning to move better so the benefits are felt in everyday life.

Pilates is used in fitness centers, private studios, rehabilitation clinics and hospitals to improve the health and well being of clients from the recently injured to the super fit. As more and more people participate, Pilates continues to grow and evolve to meet the needs of anyone wanting to improve their ability to move with strength, ease and grace.

Pilates - History to present day

Joseph Hubertus Pilates was born in Germany around 1880. He had rheumatic fever, asthma and rickets as a child and was plagued by a weak respiratory system. In order to improve his own health he began exploring ways to strengthen his body and his mind. Early on, Joe became intrigued by the classical notion of the ideal man who combined a well trained body with an equally well trained intellect. In pursuit of this goal he participated in boxing, fencing, wrestling and gymnastics as well as exploring yoga and zen meditation. Germany was a fertile ground for these explorations at the turn of the 20th century with many ground breaking leaders in movement science, dance and psychology working there.

Joe was in England touring with a boxer when World War 1 broke out. He was held as a resident alien in an internment camp near Lancaster for the duration of the war. While in the camp he took it upon himself to lead his fellow detainees in a daily exercise program. According to Joe, when the influenza epidemic of 1918 – 1919 broke out, none of the inmates that followed his regimen got sick.

Joe’s success with his group of inmates brought him to the attention of the camp leaders and he was given the job of an orderly at a hospital on the Isle of Man. He was put in charge of 30 patients and worked with them every day to exercise whatever they could move. This was in the days when western medicine was in it’s infancy and there were few treatments to offer patients other than surgery and morphine. Nursing during this time usually meant extended bed rest which lead to muscular atrophy, loss of aerobic capacity and a weakened immune system. Joe’s exercises helped his patients to get better faster and helped them to fend off the secondary infections that killed so many people in similar circumstances.

Working as an orderly also led to the development of Joe’s first piece of exercise equipment. Manually working out 30 patients every day was exhausting so Joe came up with the idea of attaching springs to the patient’s bed frames and thus the first Cadillac was born! Now the patients could exercise themselves under Joe’s supervision.

After Joe was released from the camps and returned to Germany, he was approached by the “brown shirts” (who were to become the Nazi party) to train their police force. Joe didn’t want to have anything to do with them so he left Germany on a boat for America and met his soon to be wife Clara on the passage over. Clara was a nurse who became a true partner for Joe, working beside him in the studio everyday and taking care of any client’s Joe didn’t want to work with.

When Joe and Clara arrived in New York in 1926, they rented a small studio in the same building as the New York City Ballet on 8th Ave. and started teaching what Joe named “Contrology”. Joe worked with clients from all walks of life but he made an especially strong impression on the dance community working with Ted Shawn, Ruth St. Denis, George Balanchine and many others who sent their injured dancers to Joe’s for rehabilitation following injuries.

Joe was an inventor who was always working on developing new exercise equipment. He designed the Universal Reformer, the Wunda Chair, the Cadillac, the Ladder Barrel, the Spine Corrector and many other wonderful inventions during his lifetime. He made many of the machines himself and often designed them to fit a particular client. Many of Joe’s original machines are still working today.

Joe had a dream of introducing his vision of mind body fitness into every aspect of life from elementary schools to military training and had he not been so far ahead of his time it might have happened. Instead he taught a small group of devoted teachers and students a few of whom went on to continue the work and keep it alive until the rest of the world caught up with his revolutionary thinking. Joe spent many years talking to anyone who would listen about his work but did not receive much recognition during his lifetime.

Joe’s studio was destroyed by fire in 1967 and he died soon after that from complications of smoke inhalation. His wife Clara carried on the work until her death in 1977.

The primary teachers who carried on Joe’s work after his death include:
Romana Kryzanowska, a ballet dancer who worked very closely with Joe and taught at his studio for many years. She started one of the first teacher training programs in the country and has trained hundreds of instructors to teach the work as Joe taught it to her. She was associated with the Pilates Guild for many years and currently teaches through Romana’s Pilates.

Eve Gentry, was a well known modern dancer who worked with Joe and Clara as a student and teacher for many years before moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico and opening a studio there. Joe helped to rehabilitate Eve after a radical mastectomy and helped her to regain the full use of her arm and torso. Eve died in the late 1990’s. Her work is carried on by Michele Larsson through Core Dynamics.

Ron Fletcher was a Martha Graham dancer who worked with Joe and Clara very late in their lives. Ron credits Clara with inspiring him to develop his unique work on the Step Barrel/Spine Corrector and to open a studio in Los Angeles on Rodeo Dr. Ron was the first teacher to bring Pilates to the west coast and to introduce it to many famous actors and actresses. His work incorporated a more “dancerly” style and more complicated choreography into the original exercises. His work is carried on by the Ron Fletcher Program of Studio and is known as Ron Fletcher Work.

Carola Trier trained with Joe and opened her own studio in New York where she taught until her death in the late 1990’s. Her work is carried on by several senior students including Jillian Hessel in Los Angeles and Deborah Lessen in New York.

Kathleen Stanford Grant originally came to Joe with a knee injury she sustained as a dancer. She was one of only two students to be certified by Joe to teach Pilates. After dancing and choreographing for many years she started teaching at New York University where she teaches a Mat class to the students and runs a small studio.

Other teachers who worked with Joe and who are still teaching include Lolita San Miguel in Puerto Rico and Mary Bowen in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Pilates Movement Principles:

Joseph Pilates thought of his method as a way to connect and develop the mind, body and spirit. These are the key principles of the Pilates method.

1) Breathing – The breath is the essential link between the mind and the body. It draws our wandering mind back into our bodies and back to the task at hand. It is the foundation of our existence and the rhythm that accompanies us from birth to death. In Pilates the breath is integrated into every movement in order to keep our awareness on what we are doing, to improve the flow of oxygen throughout our tissues and to improve the capacity of our lungs.

2) Concentration – To concentrate is to pay attention to what you are doing. To be present with and in control of the task at hand. Without concentration the exercises lose their form and their purpose. When teaching it is important to have a client do only as many repetitions as they can without losing their concentration. As Joe often said, “It is better to do five repetitions perfectly than 20 without paying attention”

3) Control – To be in control is to understand and maintain the proper form, alignment and effort during an entire exercise. Pilates exercises are never done without engaging the mind to control the movements and the efforts that the body is making.

4) Centering – In Pilates all movement radiates outward from the center. Developing a strong, stable and flexible center is one of the defining features of this form of exercise.

5) Precision – Understanding proper form and placement and being able to perform exercises with efficiency comes with practice. Precision is the end product of concentration, control, centering and practice.

6) Balanced Muscle Development – Understanding, developing and maintaining correct alignment and form is essential to Pilates. With practice these principles become second nature and lead to improved posture, increased comfort and enhanced physical abilities.

7) Rhythm/Flow – All movements in Pilates are done with a sense of rhythm and flow. Flow creates smooth, graceful and functional movements. It decreases the amount of stress placed on our joints and develops movement patterns that integrate our body into a smoothly flowing whole.

8) Whole Body Movement – Pilates is fundamentally about integration: integrating movement into a flowing whole body experience, integrating the mind and body to create clarity and purpose, integrating mind, body and spirit to create a life of balance.

9) Relaxation – To be healthy in body and mind it is important to understand the balance between effort and relaxation. In Pilates we learn to use just the amount of effort needed to complete the exercise correctly, no more, no less. Learning to release unnecessary tension in our bodies helps us to find ease and flow in movement and in the rest of our lives.

Pilates as a Career

Interested in finding out about a career in Pilates. Check our our 'Pilates as a Career' section.