PILATES BY ASHIYA

Joseph Pilates, a former prizefighting boxer and wrestler, was born in 1883 just outside of Dusseldorf, Germany.

He’d been performing in a circus troupe in Blackpool, Lancashire when the First World War broke out, which led to his being detained as an ‘alien enemy’, first at Lancaster Castle, later the Isle of Man. It was during his internment that he began developing a method of exercise to help his fellow inmates stay strong and healthy. He later claimed that the inmates he’d trained left the camp stronger than they were when they’d arrived. 

Pilates later took the method, which he named Contrology, with him to New York City in 1926, where he initially worked at a boxers’ gym in Manhattan before setting up a studio of his own on 8th Avenue, known colloquially as “Joe’s gym,” with his wife Clara. Here, the couple initially trained ballet dancers and choreographers such as George Balanchine and Martha Graham, plus boxers and acrobats, before later gaining popularity within New York’s high society.

Something of a madcap inventor, Pilates devised and patented a whole system of apparatus (including the Cadillac, Wunda Chair and Reformer), many of which are still in use today. While his 1945 book ‘Return to Life Through Contrology’ offers brilliant insight into the original mat exercises, he was in fact continually evolving and updating his method, yet comparatively little was documented. 

After his death in 1967, Pilates’ Contrology method was continued (renamed, simply, ‘Pilates’) through a handful of his former students, now referred to as the Pilates Elders: Carola Trier, Kathy Grant, Lolita San Miguel, Romana Kryzanowska, Ron Fletcher, Jay Grimes, Eve Gentry, Mary Bowen, Bruce King, Robert Fitzgerald and Bob Seed.

For further information, John Howard Steel’s biography ‘Caged Lion’ offers a fascinating insight into the history.