What is Pilates?

Joseph Pilates

Pilates is a ‘who’ and a ‘what’. The exercise technique called Pilates is named after the man Joseph Pilates. 
 
Joe was a practical genius, an inventor and an outstanding teacher who had a big effect on the world of physical fitness training and exercise.
 
Joe faced adversity several times in his life. Born in Germany in 1883, Joe was an unhealthy child. He suffered from rheumatic fever, asthma and rickets. He was small, thin and underdeveloped.
 
Joe decided early on to change his life. He studied health and fitness, took up gymnastics and boxing. He learnt anatomy. He watched his pet cat and also analysed the way babies move. He often said later that he based Pilates on babies and cats.
 
From late childhood and into his teenage years Joe practiced exercises to change his bad health and weak physiology. By his twenties he was transformed; now fit, strong and healthy with powerful muscles and powerful confidence.
 
The Pilates Method (initially called Contrology by Joe) came from many different health and fitness approaches including self-defence, body building, and athletics. Its popularity has its origins in a twist of fate that found Joe imprisoned during the First World War. Joe taught rehabilitation and fitness routines to the injured, the bed bound and other prisoners, with amazing results. His most famous invention, a piece of fitness equipment he called the ‘Universal Reformer’, he created as a prisoner of war, working in the camp hospital, using bed springs and bed frames.
 
Today Joe’s Pilates classes are taught all over the world, which was his dream. Pilates mat work is available in almost every suburb and some places are lucky enough to have a Pilates Studio too, such as Turning Tide Studio in Titirangi. You will find ‘Reformers’ in every Pilates Studio and experience their therapeutic power when you sign up for classes.

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