Pilates – how did it all begin?
Ponad dekadę temu, po latach uznawania za elitarny trening dla wąskiej grupy profesjonalistów, pilates wszedł do głównego nurtu fitnessu i od tego czasu rośnie w siłę. Jaka fascynująca historia kryje się za tą metodą pracy z ciałem? Poznaj jej niezwykłą historię.
Joe Pilates – from a sickly boy to the creator of a new exercise method
Joseph Hubertus Pilates was born in Mönchengladbach, Germany in 1883. As a child, he struggled with asthma and other ailments. During his adolescence, fighting against his conditions, he turned to exercise and physical activity, especially athletics, skiing, diving, gymnastics, and boxing, and deepened his knowledge of well-known training methods. Fascinated by the classical Greek ideal of a person with a balanced body, mind, and spirit, he began to develop his own system of exercises based on this concept.
In 1912, Joe moved to England, where he worked as a self-defense instructor for Scotland Yard detectives. With the outbreak of World War I, he shared the fate of many of his compatriots and was interned as a “hostile alien.” During his internment, Joe refined his ideas and put them into practice. He attached springs to hospital beds, allowing bedridden patients to exercise using resistance. This innovative solution became the foundation of his later equipment designs. The effectiveness of his developing method and its impact on health can be evidenced by the fact that during the flu epidemic that struck England in 1918, killing thousands, none of Pilates’ clients died.
After being released from the internment camp, Joseph returned to Germany. His exercise method gained interest and favor within the dance community, primarily thanks to Rudolf von Laban, who created the most commonly used form of notation for the human body’s movements. Among others, Hanya Holm incorporated many of Pilates’ exercises into her modern dance teaching program, and they remain part of the “Holm technique.”
Joe, however, did not stay in his homeland for long. When German officials wanted to recruit him to collaborate with the army and introduce his exercise system into military training, he decided to leave Germany for good.
A new homeland and new opportunities
In 1926, Joe emigrated to the United States. During the voyage, he met Clara Zeuner, whom he later married (few people know that Clara was Joe’s third wife). Together, they established a fitness studio in New York, coincidentally sharing an address with the New York City Ballet. By the early 1960s, Joe and Clara could count among their clients the crème de la crème of New York dancers. Among them was George Balanchine, the founder of the New York City Ballet, who not only studied “with Joe” but also invited him to train young ballerinas from his company.
Pilates was also becoming popular outside of New York. As noted by the New York Herald Tribune in 1964, “in dance classes across the United States, hundreds of young students warm up daily with exercises they know as ‘pilates,’ not realizing that the word is spelled with a capital P and has a living, breathing namesake.”
Students Begin to Teach
Even during Joseph Pilates’ lifetime, two of his students – Carola Trier and Bob Seed – opened their own studios. Trier, a dancer and acrobat, arrived in the United States after escaping from a Nazi camp in France. She met Joe Pilates in 1940 when an injury ended her performing career. Joe and Clara helped Carola Trier open her own studio in the late fifties and remained close friends until their deaths. Bob Seed, on the other hand, was a former hockey player who became a Pilates enthusiast. He opened his own studio in another part of New York and began competing with Joe, trying to take some of his clients. Rumor has it that one day Joe visited Seed with a gun and warned him to leave town. Seed left New York.
Joe actively worked in his studio until his death in 1967 at the age of 87. When he passed away, he left no will and did not designate successors to oversee his method. However, his legacy survived and flourished largely thanks to his protégés, known as the “Elders.”
“Elders”
After Joe’s death, Clara continued to run the studio on Eighth Avenue in New York, closely collaborating with Romana Kryzanowska – a student of Joe and Clara since the early 1940s, who returned after 15 years in Peru to resume her studies. She became the director of the studio created by Pilates around 1970.
In addition to Carola Trier, several other students of Joe and Clara decided to open their own studios. Among them was Ron Fletcher – a dancer from the Martha Graham Company, who studied and consulted with Joe since the 1940s regarding a chronic knee condition. Fletcher opened his studio in Los Angeles in 1970 and attracted many Hollywood stars. Clara held him in deep regard and gave him her blessing to continue the work started by Joe, although he introduced some innovations and improvements inspired by both his years of dance work and another mentor – Yeichi Imura.
Direct students of Joe and Clara who also became teachers of the Pilates method included Kathy Grant and Lolita San Miguel. Grant took over the leadership at the Bendel studio in 1972, while San Miguel began teaching Pilates at Ballet Concierto de Puerto Rico in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 1967, just before Joe’s death, both Grant and San Miguel were officially certified by Joe as teachers of his method. They are considered the only Pilates teachers to receive such an honor from him.
Other students of Joe and Clara who opened their own studios included: Eve Gentry, Bruce King, Mary Bowen, and Robert Fitzgerald. Eve Gentry, a dancer, studied at the Pilates Studio in New York from 1938 to 1968 and at the Drama Department of New York University in the early 1960s. After leaving New York, she opened her own studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Bruce King trained for many years with Joseph and Clara Pilates and opened his own studio in New York in the mid-1970s. Mary Bowen, who studied with Joe in the mid-1960s, began teaching Pilates in 1975 and founded “Your Own Gym” in Northampton, Massachusetts. Robert Fitzgerald opened his studio on West 56th Street in the 1960s, particularly popular among dancers.
Pilates in Hollywood
There likely would not have been such a meteoric rise of the Pilates method if it weren’t for the fact that in the 1970s, Hollywood stars discovered it through Ron Fletcher’s studio in Beverly Hills. The growing media interest, and consequently – increasing popularity, made Pilates cease to be an elite form of training and enter the mainstream of fitness. Exercises using this method are now offered by sports facilities worldwide and have become a key element of training not only for dancers or athletes but for anyone who cares about their fitness. Over 10 million Americans practice Pilates, and that number continues to grow.
“I am ahead of my time by fifty years,” Joe once stated.
He was right.
I am a graduate in Managerial Economics as well as Finance and Accounting, with a specialization in Marketing. Since 2018, I have been working as a Copywriter at Balanced Body, where I create marketing content for the fitness and Pilates industries. One of my particular strengths is translating complex topics into accessible language and accurately analyzing the needs of target audiences. Outside of work, I am passionate about fire shows and volleyball, which helps me better understand the needs of physically active people.