Back to Fitness: A Short History Of Pilates
Taken from here.
Like yoga, Pilates emphasizes a focus on breath, concentration and controlled movements, but despite the fact that Pilates and yoga are often conflated in the popular mind, that’s about where the similarities end. There’s no real spiritual connotation to Pilates, and instead of poses we find a series of movements designed to emphasize spine alignment, core strength and working different muscle groups in tandem. You won’t get an aerobic workout from Pilates, but you can burn calories.
Pilates was developed in the early 1900s by Joseph Pilates, a German fitness expert whose father was a prize-winning gymnast and mom a naturopath. He worked as a professional boxer, circus-performer and self-defense trainer for the Scotland Yard in England until British authorities put him in an internment camp (for being German) on the Isle of Man during World War I. It was there he began working on the fitness system that would become Pilates, which he called ‘Contrology’ (from the Greek words for control and logic).
In 1926, Joseph Pilates immigrated to the United States, where he met his future wife, a nurse named Clara, and together they opened a fitness studio for teaching contrology. Choreographers and dancers were the first accolades of Pilates’ fitness method (to this day, many dancers practice Pilates and many Pilates instructors have a background in dance), but he hoped it would wind up taught in schools or used as a wide-spread conditioning program for men.
The original Pilates technique revolved around a series of mat exercises and machine-aided resistance-training. Specialized Pilates studios still make ample use of these machines, but your average contemporary gym or fitness center Pilates classes either don’t use props or rely on things like small, weighted balls, resistance bands and exercise balls. Today there are some Pilates devotees who adhere strictly to Joseph Pilates’ methods, which means teaching and performing the exercises in way that doesn’t vary from workout to workout and relying heavily on specialized equipment. Contemporary or modern Pilates, however, is less strict, and much easier to perform at home or an all-purpose gym. In 2000, a U.S. federal court struck down an intellectual property suit that tried to restrict the use of the word ‘Pilates’ to refer only to Joseph Pilates’ original techniques (and hence Yogilates, Hoopilates and Piloxing have been born).
In the mid- to late 1990s, Pilates “morphed from a little-known exercises with a devout but small following including dancers, singers, circus performers and actors to a mainstream fitness regimen,” write Rael Isacowitz and Karen Clippinger in the preface to their book, Pilates Anatomy. “How this happened, why this happened … remain somewhat of an enigma. However, few can dispute that the growth of active participants in the United States from approximately 1.7 million in 2000 to approximately 10.6 million in 2006 is a phenomenon.”
The underlying Pilates philosophy is that it takes mind and body working together for good health. It’s “not just a random choice of particular movements,” Isacowitz and Clippinger write, but a system of “overall physical and mental conditioning that can enhance your physical strength, flexibility and coordination as well as reduce stress, improve mental focus and foster an improved sense of well-being.”
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Like yoga, Pilates emphasizes a focus on breath, concentration and controlled movements, but despite the fact that Pilates and yoga are often conflated in the popular mind, that’s about where the similarities end. There’s no real spiritual connotation to Pilates, and instead of poses we find a series of movements designed to emphasize spine alignment, core strength and working different muscle groups in tandem. You won’t get an aerobic workout from Pilates, but you can burn calories.
Pilates was developed in the early 1900s by Joseph Pilates, a German fitness expert whose father was a prize-winning gymnast and mom a naturopath. He worked as a professional boxer, circus-performer and self-defense trainer for the Scotland Yard in England until British authorities put him in an internment camp (for being German) on the Isle of Man during World War I. It was there he began working on the fitness system that would become Pilates, which he called ‘Contrology’ (from the Greek words for control and logic).
In 1926, Joseph Pilates immigrated to the United States, where he met his future wife, a nurse named Clara, and together they opened a fitness studio for teaching contrology. Choreographers and dancers were the first accolades of Pilates’ fitness method (to this day, many dancers practice Pilates and many Pilates instructors have a background in dance), but he hoped it would wind up taught in schools or used as a wide-spread conditioning program for men.
The original Pilates technique revolved around a series of mat exercises and machine-aided resistance-training. Specialized Pilates studios still make ample use of these machines, but your average contemporary gym or fitness center Pilates classes either don’t use props or rely on things like small, weighted balls, resistance bands and exercise balls. Today there are some Pilates devotees who adhere strictly to Joseph Pilates’ methods, which means teaching and performing the exercises in way that doesn’t vary from workout to workout and relying heavily on specialized equipment. Contemporary or modern Pilates, however, is less strict, and much easier to perform at home or an all-purpose gym. In 2000, a U.S. federal court struck down an intellectual property suit that tried to restrict the use of the word ‘Pilates’ to refer only to Joseph Pilates’ original techniques (and hence Yogilates, Hoopilates and Piloxing have been born).
In the mid- to late 1990s, Pilates “morphed from a little-known exercises with a devout but small following including dancers, singers, circus performers and actors to a mainstream fitness regimen,” write Rael Isacowitz and Karen Clippinger in the preface to their book, Pilates Anatomy. “How this happened, why this happened … remain somewhat of an enigma. However, few can dispute that the growth of active participants in the United States from approximately 1.7 million in 2000 to approximately 10.6 million in 2006 is a phenomenon.”
The underlying Pilates philosophy is that it takes mind and body working together for good health. It’s “not just a random choice of particular movements,” Isacowitz and Clippinger write, but a system of “overall physical and mental conditioning that can enhance your physical strength, flexibility and coordination as well as reduce stress, improve mental focus and foster an improved sense of well-being.”
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- Back to Fitness: 6 Retro Workouts Good for a Giggle
- Back to Fitness: Dance Workouts That Are Anything But Dainty
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