The longer version:
Who was Joseph Pilates?
Joe was born in Germany in 1880. He was a frail and sickly child who suffered from asthma, rickets and rheumatic fever. Older boys picked on him and unable to defend himself he dedicated himself to becoming stronger. A family physician gave him a discarded anatomy book and as 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 Eastern and Western forms of exercise, including yoga, Zen, and ancient Greek and Roman mind/body regimens. By the time he was 14, his dedication to fitness and health had developed his body to the point that he was modeling for anatomy charts.
As a young man, he became an accomplished boxer, gymnast, skier and diver. There are 2 versions of how he traveled to England. One version has it that in 1912 he decided to go there to work as a boxer, and another, that by 1914 he and his brother were circus performers, touring England with their troupe. In 1914, WWI broke out and Joe was interned in England for his German citizenship. In the "camp" 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 original exercises that later became known as "Contrology". Transferred to another camp, on The Isle of Man, he became a nurse and worked with many internees who suffered from wartime diseases and trauma. He devised equipment to rehabilitate them, taking the springs from the 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. He also began 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 von Laban, a famous movement analyst, who is said to have incorporated some of Joe's theories and exercises into his own work. Pilates was not happy with the political climate in Germany in 1925 so he decided to leave. He was encouraged to go to the United States.
It was en route to the U.S. that Joe met his future wife, Clara. 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 Eighth Ave, in the same building as several dance studios and rehearsal spaces. "Contrology" (later known by his sir name) gradually became an intrinsic part of many dancers' training and rehab work. Dancers were sent to Joe to be "fixed". Both Martha Graham and George Balanchine sent their dancers to Joe Pilates for strengthening and "balancing" as well as rehabilitation. He was a friend and teacher to such renowned dancer/choreographers as Ted Shawn, Ruth St. Denis, and Jerome Robbins and many required their dancers to go to Joe. However, Joe counted many socialites as well as plumbers and doctors to his list of clients.
For over forty years he worked at assessing and perfecting his method. Joe was passionate about understanding movement and anatomy. Joe felt his work was "50 years ahead of (his) time". 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 spontaneous zest and pleasure".
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 is assumed that this incident directly led to his death in October 1967, at the age of 87. Clara continued to teach and run the studio until her death 10 years later, in 1977. At this time Romana Kryzanowska took over the studio and has dedicated her life to teaching Joe's work as he himself devised it.
Joseph Pilates: The abbreviated version
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