History of Pilates

JOSEPH PILATES

The creator of PILATES Joseph Pilates. He created the proven method, is sadly no longer with us. He died in 1967 at the age of 87 from smoke inhalation, the result of a fire in his New York Studio. He was in fantastic physical shape at the time of his death and could preform his method with grace and ease. His background knowledge is unknown except that he was born in 1880 into a working class family in Dusseldorf, Germany. It is thought that he suffered from several childhood diseases associated with poverty: rheumatic fever, asthma and rickets. These illnesses can make you under developed and weak and gain future structual deformaties. At the age of fourteen he had totally transformed his body and posed for anatomical drawings. Joseph came to England in about 1912 and worked as a boxer and circus performer. He became involved with teaching detectives in the English police force but when war broke out he was interned in Lancaster and later, on the Isle of Man. He is reputed to have become a nurse and went on developing his method with other internees. At the time there was a particulary nasty influenza epidemic and his method was praised when none of the internees became infected. While he was still interned he designed the reformer by using the bed springs as an exercise unit, utilizing the tension of the springs to strengthen weak muscles. After the war he moved to New York and set up a studio which he ran with his wife, Clara a former nurse. Their success in restoring weak and sickly bodies was soon renowned. His technique particulary attracted people in the worlds of the performing arts and medicine. He took on apprentices and through them his method spread globally.

Pilates is now avaliable to everyone. He published his own book return to life through Controlology. He could see that modern day living, especially in the city, was having diasterous effect on peoples's health and fitness levels. He believed there was a clear connection between poor posture, secondary lifestyles and ill health. He studied many types of body conditioning including bodybuilding and yoga and he found weight training and the usual form of weight training and stretching boring and monotonous, and realized they had the potential to make you stiff and tired.