The Origins and Evolution of Pilates

The Pilates exercise regime is of quite modern origin, with its early beginnings occurring during World War 1, through the work of Joseph Pilates. As with any part of history, though, parts of what followed are often the subject of disputes, and we will not delve into those here. Rather, just mention some of the indisputable, or at least less disputable, facts.

Joseph Pilates was born in Germany in 1880, and moved to Britain before the outbreak of the First World War. When war broke out, he was interned in the Isle of Man, and it was while he was confined that he is said to have started developing exercises that could maximise benefit from available space and equipment, for those who were confined at the time.

Those were the formative years, when he started to get the basics of his ideas and philosophy together, as well as to put them to good use. Starting with just a few exercises, over his life time he went on to develop over 500, reasoning that it was better for the health of the body, posture and balance, to perform a series of many exercises a few times. That goes against the more common practice with fitness exercise, to repeat just a few exercises many times. Of course, once the war was over and life got back to normal, he became less focused on those who were confined or needed rehabilitation.

Each of the exercises Pilates created was very precise, and with a particular purpose in mind. To understand and benefit from Pilates to the maximum, therefore, somebody needs the discipline and patience to learn moves with precision. In order to do that, an experienced Pilates practitioner is the best source of training.

The need for experienced instruction was one reason that Pilates exercises spread slowly during his own life time, which ended in 1967. The very precision of the exercises probably meant that they attracted, as potential instructors, only those who were themselves very precise. It could be argued that only a small, elite group really understand and knew Pilates to the standard that the man himself would have been satisfied with.

One undisputed part of the Pilates history is the fact that he opened a studio in New York in 1926. He and his wife, Clara, kept the studio going until his death, and then she kept it open for another decade. Even so, Pilates even at that time was not universally known, and it was really in the 1980's that interest in Pilates exercise started to become more widespread.

With yoga becoming far more well known and practised, more people started to hear about Pilates, and his own connection with yoga. With modern marketing wielding its influence, and the health and fitness market growing massively in the 1990's and into the 21st century, Pilates and variants thereof became much better known.

Since his death, Pilates has continued to evolve as experience is gained in using the methods he encouraged to achieve not only precision but balance and alignment, flowing movement and control, perfect breathing and concentration. His aim was to achieve strength, flexibility, awareness of one's own body, improved mental concentration and increased energy.

In recent years some medical practitioners, especially in orthopaedics, have taken a closer look at the practical use of Pilates for patients and it will be interesting to see whether Pilates becomes a normal inclusion in physiotherapy departments across the globe.