JOSEPH PILATES

STORY OF JOSEPH PILATES

Joseph Hubertus Pilates was born in 1880 near Düsseldorf in Germany.
He was a boy with a rather frail physical structure. Concerned by the possibility of contracting TB, he dedicated himself hard to the practice of body building, so much so that at the age of 14 he was called to pose for the creation of anatomical maps of the human body.

The study of anatomy and muscular development thus became an object of study and an integral part of his adolescence to which he added, during his stay in Germany, skiing, diving and various athletic disciplines.
In 1912 he moved to England where he began a career as a self-defense instructor for the local police academy, as well as cultivating an interest in boxing and acrobatics in a local circus.

When World War I broke out, J.H. Pilates was interned for a year in Lancaster prison together with other compatriots. During this period he did not lose heart and organized training for himself and his fellow prisoners, thus refining his principles on health and body building.
He boasted when in 1918 a flu epidemic killed thousands of Englishmen, but none of those who underwent his physical training contracted the deadly flu.

Later he was transferred to the Isle of Man where he found a completely different reality from the one he had previously experienced in Lancaster prison: soldiers returning from battle full of wounds, full of diseases, immobilized for some time.
He therefore decided to get busy building machinery that could be used for the rehabilitation of those people. In fact, at the time of his imprisonment in England, J.H. Pilates applied springs to patients' beds with the aim of helping them regain and maintain muscle tone while they were still in bed.

He returned to Germany in the early 1920s where he continued to design re-education equipment, some of which is still in use today.

Beyond his creative commitment, his profession took him to Hamburg to work for the local police as a trainer of recruits and the entire police force.

In 1925 the teaching of the Pilates Method became important for the German government which invited J.H. Pilates to personally follow the training plan of the new German army. It was then that J.H. Pilates decided it was time to leave for the United States of America.

During the ship journey he met the nurse Clara, who later became his wife. Arriving in New York, J.H. Pilates opened a studio on Eighth Street and began to organize his technique. The first part was focused on Matwork, which is a series of exercises performed free body on a mat ("mat").
This program was included in a book called Controlology, the original name he invented for his technique. However, the work was not limited only to the organization of the exercises, but also extended to the improvement of particular tools.

As a result of this idea, the Reformer was born, one of the tools that are still part of the machinery used in Pilates studios today.

During his work, J.H. Pilates also invented other equipment (Trapeze Table/Cadillac, Wunda Chair, Barrel and others) as well as other exercises for Matwork.

J.H. Pilates died in 1967. Pilates student Romana Kryzanowska took over the New York studio together with Pilates' wife, Clara. Other direct students, called "First Generation Teachers" or "Elders", such as Ron Fletcher, Kathy Grant, Lolita San Miguel and Mary Bowen continued teaching the technique and opened their studios in the 70s and 80s in different parts of the USA.