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December 1, 2008
Joseph Pilates
Pilates exercise was devised by Joseph Pilates. He was born near Dusseldorf in 1880. History tells us that he was a frail child prone to asthma and rickets, the Pilates method sprang from his interest in improving his physical fitness. There were many pioneering developments in mind/body training in the early 1900's and Joseph Pilates incorporated some of these ideas in his method.
By the outbreak of World War One, Joseph Pilates had developed his physicality so effectively that he was working in London as a boxer, a circus performer and a self defence instructor. During the war he was interned along with other German nationals, it was during that period of internment that he further refined the Pilates method. One place of internment was a hospital on the Isle of Man where he worked as a hospital orderly. He attached springs to the hospital beds and created strengthening exercises which he and the doctors noticed improved the recovery rate of the patients. These early “experiments” with springs and beds provided the blueprint for Pilates equipment.
After the war Joseph Pilates returned to his native Germany where he taught fitness training to the Hamburg police. In 1923 he emigrated to America, where he opened a studio in a fashionable part of New York. He continued working in New York right up until his death in 1967.
