"Physical fitness is the first requisite of happiness. In order to achieve happiness, it is imperative to gain mastery of your body. If at the age of 30 you are stiff and out of shape, you are old. If at 60 you are supple and strong then you are young." Joseph Pilates
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| Joseph Pilates at 57 |
So much that surrounds Joseph Pilates has the ring of myth, a young boy born in 1880’s Germany, plagued with asthma and rickets, physically weak yet obsessed with restoring his health and developing his strength to such a degree that he was posing for anatomical charts by the age of fourteen. He became a circus performer in a circus that toured Europe but while touring Britain World War I broke out and he was interned in a prison camp on the Isle of Man, where he worked. His powerful belief in the efficacy of his system led him to devise ways to rehabilitate the bed-bound patients by rigging bed-springs over the beds and indeed he went on to devise much of the equipment we still use today. Such was his success that when there was an outbreak of Spanish flu in the camp, not one of the patients Joseph was working with succumbed to the virus. This is down to a belief that Joseph held dear, that Pilates:
“develops the body uniformly, corrects wrong postures, restores physical vitality, invigorates the mind and elevates the spirit”
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Joseph Pilates at 72 performing
the open-leg rocker |
After armistice was declared Joseph returned to Germany where he worked for a short time training the military police in his method, however he became disillusioned with the politics of a post-war Germany and left for the United States in the 1920’s. He and his wife settled in New York and opened a gymnasium where finally he had the stability to refine and patent the gym equipment he had devised during his internment. Of his equipment he said:
“Here the accent is on stretching, bending and tensing the body muscles, and flexing them….There are no weights to lift… ever see an animal lift weights for fun or exercise?”
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| Joseph Pilates at 77 |
Indeed Joseph drew much of his inspiration from the movement of animals and spent a great deal of time during his childhood observing animals both domestic and wild. He was a true pioneer and in his lifetime devised over 500 exercises and invented over 20 different pieces of equipment for use in Pilates. He originated and developed one of the most intelligent and thorough means of body conditioning to date. His passion and dedication to his unique exercise has been handed down to his students and his students’ students and his method continues to inspire, invigorate and elevate its practitioners.
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