HISTORY OF PILATES

Joe’s def­i­n­i­tion of phys­i­cal fit­ness was the “attain­ment and main­te­nance of a uni­formly devel­oped body with a sound mind fully capa­ble of nat­u­rally, eas­ily and sat­is­fac­to­rily per­form­ing our many and var­ied daily tasks with spon­ta­neously zest and pleasure”.

Joe was born in Monchenglad­bach, a small town near Dus­sel­dorf, Ger­many in 1880. He was small and sickly child who suf­fered from asthma, rick­ets and rheumatic fever. His name had been spelled “Pilatu” and was of Greek deriva­tion but was changed to Pilates. His father was a prize win­ning gym­nast and his mother was a neuropath. A fam­ily physi­cian gave him a dis­carded anatomy book and he put it “I learned every page, every part of the body; I would move each part as I mem­o­rized it. As a child, I would lie in the woods for hours, hid­ing and watch­ing the ani­mals move, how the mother taught the young.” he said. He stud­ied both the East­ern and West­ern forms of exer­cise includ­ing yoga. By the time he was 14 he had worked so hard he had devel­oped his body to the point that he was mod­el­ing for anatomy charts.

Grow­ing up in Ger­many, he achieved some suc­cess as a boxer and a gym­nast in addi­tion to being a skilled skier and diver. In 1912 he went to Eng­land for fur­ther train­ing as a boxer. He found employ­ment there as a cir­cus performer. By 1914 he had become a star and toured Eng­land with his troupe. He and his brother were per­form­ing a Greek statue act!

In 1914 after WWI broke out he was interned along with other Ger­man nation­als in a “camp” for enemy aliens in Lancaster. There he taught wrestling and self-defense, boast­ing that his stu­dents would emerge stronger than they were before being interned. It was here that he began devis­ing his sys­tem of exer­cises that later became “Con­trol­ogy.” He was trans­ferred to another camp on the Isle of Man where he became some­thing of a nurse and worked with many internees who suf­fered from wartime dis­eases and incarceration. He then began devis­ing equip­ment to reha­bil­i­tate them, tak­ing the springs from beds and rig­ging exer­cise appa­ra­tus for the bedridden! In 1918, a ter­ri­ble epi­demic of influenza swept the world, killing mil­lions of peo­ple tens of thou­sands in England. None of Joe’s fol­low­ers suc­cumbed even though the camps were the hard­est hit!

After the war Joe returned to Ger­many and began train­ing the Ham­burg Mil­i­tary Police in self-defense and phys­i­cal train­ing as well as tak­ing on per­sonal clients.

He said, “I invented all these machines. Began back in Ger­many, was there until 1925 used to exer­cise rheumatic patients. I thought why use My strength? So I made a machine to do it for me. Look, you see it resists your move­ments in just the right way so those inner mus­cles really have to work against it. That way you can con­cen­trate on movement. You must always do it slowly and smoothly. Then your whole body is in it.”

It was at this time that he met Rudolf van Laban, a famous move­ment ana­lyst, who is said to have incor­po­rated some of Joe’s the­o­ries and exer­cises into his own work. Mary Wig­wam, a famous Ger­man dancer and chore­o­g­ra­pher was a stu­dent of Joe’s and used his exer­cises in her dance class warm-up.

In 1925 he was invited to train the New Ger­man Army but because he was not happy with the polit­i­cal direc­tion of Ger­many he decided to leave. On the urg­ing of box­ing expert, Nat Fleis­cher and with the aid of Max Schmelling he decided to come to the U.S. It was en route to Amer­ica that Joe met Clara who was to become his sec­ond wife (there is really no infor­ma­tion avail­able about his first wife). She was a kinder­garten teacher who was suf­fer­ing from arthritic pain and Joe worked with her on the boat to heal her.

Upon arriv­ing in New York City in 1926 they opened a gym at 939 Eight Ave, in the same build­ing as sev­eral dance stu­dios and rehearsal spaces. It was this prox­im­ity that made “Con­trol­ogy” such an intrin­sic part of many dancers’ train­ing and rehab work and many were sent to Joe to be “fixed”. George Bal­an­chine, the famous chore­o­g­ra­pher, stud­ied with Joe and sent many of his dancers to Pilates for strength­en­ing and “bal­anc­ing” as well as reha­bil­i­ta­tion, as did another famous dancer/choreographer Martha Graham.

From 1939 to 1951 Joe and Clara went every sum­mer to Jacob’s Pil­low, a well-known dance camp in the Berk­shire Mountains. He was a friend and a teacher to such renowned dancer chore­o­g­ra­phers as Ted Shawn, Ruth St. Denis, Martha Gra­ham and Jerome Rob­bins and many required their dancers to go to Joe. Both Hanya Holm and Martha Gra­ham incor­po­rated Joe’s exer­cises into their student’s lessons.

Although Joe Pilates was a health guru, he strongly believed in fit­ness sup­port­ing life’s riches. He was renowned for lik­ing cig­ars, whiskey, and women, and was to be seen run­ning on Man­hat­tan streets in the dead of win­ter in a Speedo!

In Jan­u­ary 1966 there was a fire in their building. Joe returned to his stu­dio to try and save any­thing pos­si­ble and fell through the burnt out floor­boards, hang­ing by his hands from a beam for quite some time until res­cued by the firefighters. It was assumed that this inci­dent directly led to his death in 1967, at the age of 87. Clara regarded by many as the more patient teacher, con­tin­ued to teach and run the stu­dio until her death 10 years later in 1977.

His­tory of Contrology

Con­trol­ogy is com­plete coor­di­na­tion of the body, mind, and spirit. Through Con­trol­ogy you first pur­posely acquire com­plete con­trol of your body and then through proper rep­e­ti­tion of its exer­cises you grad­u­ally and pro­gres­sively acquire that nat­ural rhythm and coor­di­na­tion asso­ci­ated with all your sub­con­scious activities. This true rhythm and con­trol is observed both in domes­tic pets and wild ani­mals – with­out known exceptions.

Con­trol­ogy devel­ops the body uni­formly, cor­rects wrong pos­tures, restores phys­i­cal vital­ity, invig­o­rates the mind, and ele­vates the spirit.

One of the major results of Con­trol­ogy is gain­ing the mas­tery of your mind over the com­plete con­trol of your body. How many begin­ners are amazed and cha­grined (even trained ath­letes in the pub­lic eye) to dis­cover how few (if any) Con­trol­ogy exer­cises they are able to exe­cute properly! Their pre­vi­ous fail­ure to exer­cise reg­u­larly and prop­erly, or their method of train­ing, has not helped them. There is unmis­tak­able evi­dence that the func­tion­ing of the brain has cor­re­spond­ingly deteriorated.

Breath­ing is the first act of life, and the last. Our very life depends on it. Since we can­not live with­out breath­ing, it is trag­i­cally deplorable to con­tem­plate the mil­lions and mil­lions who have never learned to mas­ter the art of cor­rect breathing. One often won­ders how many mil­lions con­tinue to live as long as they do under this tremen­dous hand­i­cap to longevity. Lazy breath­ing con­verts the lungs, fig­u­ra­tively speak­ing, into the ceme­tery for the dis­po­si­tion of dis­eased, dying, and dead germs as well as sup­ply­ing an ideal haven for the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of harm­ful germs. Therefore, above all, learn how to breathe correctly. “SQUEEZE” EVERY ATOM OF AIR FROM YOUR LUNGS UNTIL THEY ARE ALMOST FREE OF AIR AS A VACUUM. Stand erect again and observe how your lungs will auto­mat­i­cally com­pletely refill them­selves with fresh air. The impact of so much oxy­gen upon your blood­stream at first quite nat­u­rally result in your expe­ri­enc­ing a slight sen­sa­tion of “light­head­ed­ness.” sim­i­lar to the effect you might expe­ri­ence the first time you find your self actively engaged in the rar­efied atmos­phere high up in the mountains. However, after a few days this feel­ing will entirely disappear.

Con­trol­ogy begins with mind con­trol over the muscles.

By reawak­en­ing thou­sands and thou­sands of oth­er­wise ordi­nar­ily dor­mant mus­cle cells, Con­trol­ogy cor­re­spond­ingly reawak­ens thou­sands and thou­sands of dor­mant brain cells, thus acti­vat­ing new areas and stim­u­lat­ing fur­ther the func­tion­ing of the mind. No won­der then that so many per­sons express such great sur­prise fol­low­ing their ini­tial expe­ri­ence with Con­trol­ogy exer­cises and their real­iza­tion of the result­ing sen­sa­tion of “uplift.” For the first time in many years their minds have been totally awakened. Continued use of Con­trol­ogy steadily increases the nor­mal and nat­ural sup­ply of pure rich blood to flow and cir­cu­late through­out the brain with cor­re­spond­ing stim­u­la­tion to new brain areas pre­vi­ously dormant. More sig­nif­i­cantly, it actu­ally devel­ops more brain cells.

More info:
» Who Was Joseph Pilates? — the abbre­vi­ated ver­sion
» Joseph Pilates — the long version