The History of Joseph Pilates: The Man Behind the Method
Joseph Pilates didn’t just create a series of exercises, he created a system and method that would challenge the body, the brain and lift one’s spirit. “The whole country, the whole world, should be doing my exercises. They’d be happier.”
Today, Pilates is practised worldwide, from church halls to specialist Pilates studios like The Pilates Hub and The Pilates Center but its roots go back to one fascinating man with an extraordinary life story.
Early Life and Influences
Joseph Hubertus Pilates was born in 1883 in Mönchengladbach, Germany. As a child, he suffered from asthma, rickets, and rheumatic fever. Determined to improve his health, he studied the body intensively and explored gymnastics, calisthenics, boxing, martial arts, and animal movement. By his teens, he had transformed himself and worked as a gymnast, diver, and boxer.
World War I
When WWI began, Pilates was living in England with different stories suggesting he was working as a circus performer or as a boxer. Interned as a German national on the Isle of Man he cared for his sickly fellow internees, helping them rehabilitate and stay well. Legend has it that none of his followers succumbed to the great Flu epidemic of 1919 in some part because of his methods.
Teaching in Germany and the Move to America
After the war, Pilates returned to Germany but he became uncomfortable with the political climate, and emigrated to the United States. By then he had started to develop his now renowned equipment so that it resisted movement ‘in just the right way’ and meant he didn’t need to use his own strength to challenge his students. On his journey to New York Joe met Clara, a nurse who became his wife and teaching partner. They opened their first gym on 939, Eighth Avenue, New York, in the same building as many dance and rehearsal studios, which saw him and his method becoming popular with dancers seeking strength, rehabilitation, and injury prevention.
Contrology: A System Ahead of Its Time
Joseph and Clara taught for over 40 years. His book ‘Return to Life Through Contrology’ described his method for ‘complete co-ordination of mind, body and spirit’. He believed his method could bring health, happiness, and maybe even world-peace, if practiced regularly and exactly as prescribed by him. These days it might be described as a wellness manual to help you live a fulfilled life with ‘spontaneous zest and pleasure’.
Key to his method is the system of exercises that requires the student to concentrate, to learn to control their movements and to be disciplined and maintain a regular practice.
He wanted the body to be returned to the way it was designed to move which he described as ‘uniform development’. He likens this to moving naturally as animals or babies do.
This is why he said Contrology requires patience and persistence, and not to expect a quick fix, but to be reassured that the benefits would follow.
His most important aim was to have us breathe properly. In particular, to focus on a full exhale ‘emptying the lungs of every last atom of air so it is like a vacuum’ in order to oxygenate the body, to cleanse the lungs, to detoxify the organs. He described this effect as an ‘internal shower’; bringing better circulation of blood and lymph around the body. And perhaps the thing he is most famous for is his belief that the health of your spine is an indicator of age and so ‘Contrology’ or ‘Pilates’ as it’s become known since his death, aims to have the spine move freely in flexion, extension, lateral flexion and rotation.
Legacy and Global Influence
Joseph Pilates died in 1967 at age 84, leaving behind devoted students, the Pilates Elders, in particular Romana Kryzanowka who took over his gym and business in New York. Today, millions practise Pilates globally, whether for strength, posture, injury prevention, or simply to feel better.