Where It All Started!
The History of Pilates
I feel it is more important than ever, in the context of the popularity of modern Pilates, not to lose sight of where and how this all started. The story of Pilates from its inception to what we see across the globe today, all started with one man, Joseph Pilates. The journey from his birth in Germany in 1883 to the modern Pilates we see practised now is a fascinating story, that takes us from Germany to England and then over to America. This story is set against the backdrop of two World Wars and one man’s unwavering belief in his method.
Joseph Pilates was born in Monchengladbach, a small town near Dusseldorf, Germany. He was not well as a young child and suffered from both asthma and rickets. Despite these ailments, he had good genes; his parents owned and ran a local gymnasium, while his father was also a prize-winning gymnast and his mother, a naturopath.
As a young child, his interest in human anatomy and health developed from a hobby into his enduring lifetime passion and he applied his growing knowledge to his own health and fitness. By the age of 14, he was in good enough shape to pose for anatomical drawings. His father used his own experience to help train Joseph in the disciplines of bodybuilding and gymnastics, both of which he excelled at.
In 1912, shortly before the outbreak of World War One, Joseph moved to England, where he earned his living as a professional boxer and circus performer. He also spent time at Scotland Yard, training the police force. With the outbreak of WW1, Joseph was interned with other german nationals in Lancaster Castle, on the edge of Cumbria. It is here that Joseph first started to develop his own unique series of exercises that would come to be known as “Contrology”. He took on the role of training many of the inmates in wrestling and self-defence, along with his emerging Contrology exercises. He boast that the inmates following his exercise programme would emerge from their internment considerably strong that when they entered.
While WW1 still carried on, Joseph was then transferred to another internment camp at Knockaloe on the Isle of Man. It was here that his emerging exercise programme, Contrology, really started to take shape… as did Joseph! To look at old images of him is like flicking through pictures of Tarzan.
It is here in the Isle of Man that the foundations of the modern “reformer” can be traced. Some of the inmates were bed-bound with illness and suffering from muscle atrophy. To help them strengthen their muscles while still in bed, Joseph started to attach bed strings to the end of their bed frame to provide a resistance to work against. These flourishing rehabilitation methods were later used to here veterans of WW1.
In 1918 a terrible epidemic of influenza, known as the Spanish Flu (or Great Influenza) swept the world, killing tens of millions of people and tens of thousands in England. None of Joseph’s “exercise followers” succumbed, even though the camps were hardest hit.
Following the end of the war, Joseph returned to his native Germany where he once again worked with another police force, this time the Hamburg Military Police. In 1925, he was also invited to train the Germany Army but was unhappy with the political direction of the country and decided to move to America to continue to develop he “new” exercise practice.
“I invented all these machines, used to exercise rheumatic patients. I thought, why use my own 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.”
From here onwards, the rest of the story of Joseph Pilates moves to the US. It was on the ship en route from Germany to America that Joseph met his future wife, Clara. She was a kindergarten teacher but also suffered from rheumatoid arthritis. He used his exercise programme to help her with her pain. Together they would form a formidable partnership to help promote Contrology, which came to be known by its founder’s name of Pilates.
Once in America, Joseph set about creating his own exercise studio in New York. He had a steady and growing stream of clients, not least from the adjacent ballet studios located next to his gym. This is where some of the strong links between Pilates and ballet developed.
Not too different to the modern “reformer”