Pilates

Pilates, exercise discipline created by German American gymnast, bodybuilder, and entrepreneur Joseph H. Pilates in the mid-20th century and refined by his students and disciples. The Pilates regimen was practiced largely in a prone, supine, or seated position on a mat and emphasized the development of stability and flexibility by strengthening the musculature, particularly the core abdominal muscles, through a series of controlled movements. The practice was widespread in the Western world by the second decade of the 21st century.

Development of the discipline

Joseph H. Pilates (b. December 9, 1883, München, Gladbach, Prussia [now Mönchengladbach, Germany]—d. October 9, 1967, New York City, New York, U.S.) claimed to have suffered muscle wasting as a child, as a result of bouts with asthma, rheumatic fever, and rickets. In an effort to combat the debilitating effects of his ailments, he pursued an aggressive regimen of gymnastics and other physical activities, including bodybuilding. Pilates moved to England in 1912 and, following the outbreak of World War I, was imprisoned as an enemy alien. While in camps in Lancaster and on the Isle of Man, he began proselytizing his methods of attaining physical fitness. He assisted in rehabilitating injured inmates by devising exercises that they could perform in their hospital beds, some of which involved gripping bedsprings affixed to the wall in order to create resistance in the movements. This later inspired Pilates to design and patent a suite of spring-loaded furniture specifically for his exercise program.

In 1926 Pilates moved to New York City. There he and his partner Clara Zuener opened a studio devoted to his method, which by then was informed by his studies of Eastern exercise disciplines such as yoga. The muscle-lengthening and muscle-strengthening properties of the exercises attracted many performers, particularly dancers—notably Martha Graham, Rudolf Laban, and George Balanchine. Pilates formally laid out his method in two brief volumes, Your Health: A Corrective System of Exercising That Revolutionizes the Entire Field of Physical Education (1934) and Return to Life Through Contrology (1945; with William John Miller). The latter presented 34 discrete exercises, many of which are incorporated into contemporary practice. Pilates certified several of his disciples as teachers of the method. Known as the Elders, they subsequently opened studios in other parts of the United States, perpetuating and expanding upon the method. Pilates himself continued teaching until his death. Though in 1992 a Manhattan Pilates studio owner purchased the assets of the original Pilates studio—which had gone out of business in 1989—and asserted trademark rights over the Pilates name, a 2000 decision in federal district court designated “Pilates” a generic term.

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Most of the original Pilates exercises entailed forward and backward motion along the centreline of the body. Precision and control were emphasized over repetition and speed. A lexicon of cues, such as “draw the abdomen in,” directed students to move their bodies in ways not necessarily instinctive but that primed the body to work the proper muscles. The latter was aimed at the main target of the discipline as a whole: what Pilates called the “powerhouse,” the core abdominal, lower back, and gluteal muscles. Students were continuously exhorted to inhale deeply and exhale completely while engaged in the exercises and to use the breathing process as a point of focus. The inhalation occurred during contraction of the muscles and the exhalation during their relaxation; that pattern was reversed for some exercises.

Contemporary practice

For the remainder of the 20th century, Pilates was practiced mostly by dancers on the coasts of the United States and in the United Kingdom. However, as greater cultural emphasis was placed on physical fitness, the regimen’s delivery of a “whole-body workout” began attracting increasing numbers of devotees, from fewer than 2 million in the last decade of the 20th century to more than 11 million by the middle of the first decade of the 21st. Pilates was increasingly integrated into training programs for athletes and rehabilitation programs for the injured.

Longtime practitioners expressed reservations about the increasing rapidity of certification processes for instructors, maintaining that it encouraged a superficial understanding of the movements involved and a consequent disregard for the safety of future students. The Pilates Method Alliance, formed in 2001, positioned itself as the premier professional and certifying agency and demanded a 450-hour training period prior to certification of instructors. The discipline was, however, unregulated, allowing for the existence of far less-stringent schools and of hybrid forms of the discipline such as so-called Piloga (Pilates with yoga).

A typical Pilates “mat class” lasted for approximately an hour. Practitioners were positioned on a mat and alternated between prone, supine, and seated poses. Though many of the exercises remained similar or identical to those created by Pilates, the cues were often enhanced by metaphors from other disciplines such as yoga and by the instructors’ own experiences in attempting to direct sometimes infinitesimal alterations in body positioning. Contemporary classes frequently incorporated more twisting than those conducted in the early years of the discipline. In addition to mat classes, a similar series of movements was conducted on versions of the machines designed by Pilates; their main advantage was the provision of support and resistance.

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