Pilates

            
             Joseph Hubertus Pilates is the founder of the Pilates method also known as "the method." He was born in Germany in 1880 and as a young boy suffered from asthma, ricketts and rheumatic fever. He was always very weak. Fortunately, a family physician gave him a used anatomy book which he proceeded to memorize. He said, " I learned every page, every part of the body; I would move each part as I memorized it. " He studied both Eastern and Western forms of exercise including yoga, Zen, and ancient Greek and Roman regimens. By the time he was 14 he had worked so hard to improve his body that he had become body model for anatomy charts. During WWI, he taught wrestling and self-defense. He began to create his system that would become Contology. He was transferred to a camp where he worked as a nurse. He developed equipment to rehabilitate wartime wounded, he even worked on an apparatus to help exercise the bedridden. Pilates technique was so successful that when the influenza swept over the country, none of his patients perished. After the war was over, he returned to Germany and began to train the Hamburg Military Police as well as taking on personal clients. He said, "You must always do it slowly and smoothly. Then your whole body is in it." Soon afterwards, he came to the US, where he opened his first Pilates studio in New York City. On the way to the US, he met his wife, Clara, with whom he worked to cure her arthritis. In New York, he and Clara became famous for their work with famous dancers. He counted many socialites as well as plumbers and doctors as his clients. He felt that his work was way ahead of his time. The basis of his work was his idea of what physical fitness actually was: "the attainment and maintenance of a uniformly developed body with a sound mind fully capable of naturally, easily and satisfactorily performing our many and varied daily tasks with spontaneously zest and pleasure.