They often say that every “overnight success” is usually five years in the making…Well Pilates burst on the scene over the last decade like the new kid on the block who just happened to be over 90 years old.
Joseph Pilates invented the ingenious exercise system due to the same reason most things get invented: necessity. Born in Germany in 1880, Joe was an extremely sickly child and in an attempt to improve his overall health and physical well-being he extensively studied Eastern and Western exercise regimens. Needless to say, it was certainly helpful to young Joe that his father was an award-winning gymnast and his mother was a naturopath. Aside from studying the human anatomy in obsessive detail (thanks to a book given to young Joe by his family physician), yoga, skiing, diving, gymnastics, and wrestling were among the many disciplines he studied.
With such a diverse and eclectic physical education background, it was only natural for Joe to take the best of all the systems and devise his own unique system known as the Pilates Method.
Heading to England in 1912, Joe began to work as a self-defense instructor for the famous Scotland Yard as well as becoming a boxer. Among the other positions Joe held to help make ends meet, he also found himself becoming a circus performer and actually touring with his brother as Greek Statues.
However, World War I soon broke out and Joe was “detained” due to his German genealogy. While in an interment camp, Joe began to teach his form of physical fitness to the other detainees.
It didn’t take long before those in charge noticed something fairly remarkable; the detainees who were studying with Joe appeared to be more resistant to a particularly nasty strain of influenza circulating around the camp.
After World War I ended and Joe was released, he returned to Germany and began training the Hamburg police. During this time he managed to connect with Rudolf von Labon, a man famous for his knowledge and advances in movement analysis; Rudolf began to incorporate a number of Joe’s exercises into his own regimens.
In 1925 Joe received a request to train the New German Army. His determent during World War I, plus his dislike for the political leanings of the new German government, made him politely refuse. Soon after this refusal, Joe and his wife immigrated to the United States where they opened a wildly successful dance studio. Many of Joe’s exercises were incorporated into the training of the dancers.
Unlike so many of the exercise programs today, Pilates is not a fad. Having been in existence, in one form or another, for the better part of a century, it certainly has an established track record. Realistically, nearly all Pilates students can trace their genealogy back to its originator, Joe, by finding out who trained the trainer who trains them. This is almost unheard of in current exercise regimens and just goes to show one more way in which Pilates is unique and refreshing.
Written By: Kerri Stalton
