Joseph H. Pilates

Joseph Hubertus "Joe" Pilates (born December 9, 1883 in Mönchengladbach ; † October 9, 1967 in New York ) was a German - American body trainer and founder of the Pilates method, usually just called Pilates , a systematic body training to strengthen the muscles.

Life

Pilates was the son of the journeyman locksmith and successful gymnast Heinrich Friedrich Pilates (* 1859) and his wife (* 1860). Pilates' Prussian parents were Catholic. He was the second oldest of nine children. As a child, he suffered from asthma , rickets and rheumatic fever. Nevertheless, his joy in movement led to a special body awareness early on. He began to strengthen his body at a young age and dealt with movement theory . In addition to gymnastics , gymnastics , bodybuilding and skiing , he also read about training methods such as yoga and Zen meditation.

He went to England in 1912 and claims to have earned his living as a professional boxer, circus performer and as a self-defense teacher in police schools. There he trained the officers of Scotland Yard in self-defense. As a German he was interned at the beginning of the First World War . During this forced break, he began intensively to develop his concept of holistic physical training, which he himself called "Contrology".

He was engaged in yoga, studied animal movements and taught his fellow prisoners in the method he had developed. It is claimed that these fellow prisoners survived the great flu pandemic of 1918 due to their good physical condition. He returned to Germany after the war and worked there with the most important representatives of the movement theory . In Hamburg , among other things, he trained the local police.

In 1926 he emigrated to New York . Since the body training he developed had already gained a lot of recognition in the ballet scene in Germany, he wanted to introduce his method to the American strongholds of dance. On the crossing he met his future wife Clara Zeuner, a nurse. In New York, at the suggestion of Rudolf von Laban, they jointly took over a boxing and training studio at 939 Eight Avenue, in the same building as the New York City Ballet . In the USA it is often claimed that he came to Germany as the trainer of Max Schmeling , who was also trained by him in his studio until the late 1920s.

Clara Pilates' experience as a nurse led to a more gentle and rehabilitative -oriented further development of his concept. In the following years, many famous dancers and choreographers were among her clients such as Martha Graham , George Balanchine , Hanya Holm and von Laban. The close connection to dance is explained by this early period and the common content, namely the centering and stabilization of the body.

Pilates worked individually and creatively. For each individual client he created his own exercise program and even developed new exercises for the respective person. He practiced into old age and wrote books about his technique. He died of emphysema in New York at the age of 83 without leaving a will or arranging the succession and continuation of his work. Clara Pilates, who was considered the more gifted teacher, taught and continued to run the studio until her death ten years later. Students who opened their own studios and developed the method further ensured that their ideas survived.

Publications

• Your health; a corrective system of exercises that revolutionizes the entire field of physical education. CJ O'Brien, New York 1934 (48 pp.).
  • New edition: Presentation Dynamics. Incline, NV 1998 (66 p.), ISBN 0-9614937-8-X .
• with William J. Miller: Return to Life Through Contrology. JJ Augustin , New York 1945 (87 pp.).
  • Reprint: Christopher Publishing House, Boston 1960.
  • New edition: Pilates Method Alliance. Miami, FL 2003 (105 pp.), ISBN 0-9745356-0-5 .

literature

• Alycea Ungaro: Pilates. The training method for more balance and flexibility. Starnberg 2002, ISBN 3-8310-0377-7 .
• Eva Rincke: Joseph Pilates: The man whose name became the program. Verlag Herder, 2015, ISBN 978-3-451-31295-3 .

Web links

• Joseph H. Pilates patents .
• Historical videos of Joseph Pilates demonstrating two arm exercises.
• Biography with some historical photographs on the New Zealand portal Easy Vigor (in English). On the same page are too
• Find instructions for mat training.
• Blog of the author Eva Rincke, in which she reports on the background of her research on the biography of Joseph Pilates.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ see birth certificate: Joseph Pilates Birth Certificate and House in Moenchengladbach . Retrieved January 6, 2011.
2. ↑ see Alycea Ungaro: Pilates: The training method for more balance and flexibility. Starnberg 2002, ISBN 3-8310-0377-7 , p. 9.