History
Who was Joseph Pilates?
Joseph Humbertus Pilates lived to be a vigorous and vital 87 year old icon. Had he not succumbed to the effects of smoke inhalation during a fire (in the restaurant below his studio on 8th avenue in New York City) he potentially could have demonstrated an inconceivable level of physical fitness for many years to come. Looking at pictures of Joe, it is hard to imagine he had ever suffered from physical ailments and grew up a sickly child.
Born near Duseldorf,Germany in 1880 Joseph Pilates faced rickets, asthma and reheumatic fever. At a young age he began to study the Eastern disciplines of yoga and martial arts and blended them with Western forms such as body-building, gymnastics, boxing and skiing. By age fourteen he had sculpted his physique so well that he was asked to pose for anatomical charts. Pilates spent his life obsessed with restoring his health and body condition, and over time, he overcame his frailty and became an accomplished skier, diver, gymnast, circus performer, self-defense instructor, boxer, and a yogi.
It was during World War I that Pilates began the development of what we now know as the "matwork," or exercises done on the floor. While Pilates was interned in a war camp for enemy aliens he used his knowledge to develop a fitness program to build abdominal strength and body control for his fellow internees in order to maintain their health and fitness levels whilst being held in confinement. His fitness program was so beneficial that he and every single one of his fellow compatriots survived the influenza epidemic that killed thousands in 1918. He attributed their survival to their physically fit lungs. Hence, the Pilates Principle of Diaphragmatic Breathing.
While doing his internment, Pilates was sent to the Isle of Man to work as a nurse orderly caring for many war wounded, bedridden patients. Unable to participate in his floor exercises, he designed extremely clever apparatus that allowed these immobilized servicemen to rehabilitate while lying on their back. He rigged springs (actual bed springs) and pulleys to plumbing pipe right above the hospital beds that provided assistance & resistance to create "movement." (This set up later evolved into the Cadillac, one of the main pieces of equipment in the Pilates method.)
In 1923, Pilates emigrated to the United States and settled in New York City with his future wife, Clara, whom he had met on this journey to his new home. It was here where he opened a studio on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan and began training and rehabilitating professional dancers ? soon attracting the 'elite' of New York. With the cr?me de le cr?me of leading ballet dancers coming to him because his exercises perfected and complemented their traditional exercise programs. In 1956, Dance Magazine reported in its February issue, "At some time virtually every dancer in New York had meekly submitted to the spirited instruction of Joe Pilates."
He then built various pieces of equipment to enhance the results of his exercises. His motivation for building the equipment was to replace himself as a spotter for his clients. He developed 20-odd contraptions, some of which look a little a like medieval torture devices. They were constructed of wood and metal piping and used combinations of pulleys, straps, bars and springs. Even now, the equipment found in Pilates studios across the world, are built and based upon these same features. To learn more about the equipment, click here.
Over a decade, his philosophy led him to develop a regimen with more than 500 exercises which he originally termed contrology, the complete coordination of body, mind, and spirit. Acquiring control over your body through his system of exercises would provide suppleness, muscular power, with corresponding endurance, good posture and alleviation of body strain as well as invigorate the mind and elevates the spirit. This system has since come to be known as the Pilates Method.
In 1964, the New York Herald Tribune noted, "in dance classes around the United States hundreds of young students limber up daily with an exercise they know as pilates" without knowing that the word has a capital P, and a living, right-breathing namesake.
When Joe passed away in 1967, he was 87 years old. (His death was contributed to lung damage from smoke inhalation of a fire in the restaurant below his New York Studio.) He left no will and had designated no successor to carry out the Pilates exercises work. Nevertheless, due to the popularity and effectiveness of the technique his work was destined to continue.