Will the Real Joe Pilates Please Stand Up?

Pilates studios are literally everywhere. The interesting thing is that most of them don’t offer Pilates.

On every street, in every block, in every strip mall lies a Pilates studio . The odd thing is that most of these studios don’t actually offer Pilates instruction. There is hot Pilates, Pilates inspired , Pilates with pointe shoes , exercise classes with burpees and heavy weights that is called Pilates, pilates and puppies , and my personal favorite - Pistols and Pilates- a women empowerment class that combines fitness with firearms .

I would bet anyone $500 that the majority of people who attend these classes don’t know that there was a man named Joseph Pilates who invented this method.

He was not a dancer . Mr. Pilates was born in Düsseldorf, Germany, in the 1880s. He had health problems as a child and made it his life’s mission to get strong and healthy . He studied and mimicked how animals moved with ease and control. He became a boxer, a gymnast, a circus performer and martial artist . By the time he was an adult he was a well sought out model for anatomical charts.

Joe Pilates believed that in order to live a happy life both the mind and the body must be equally conditioned . If a person was a brilliant intellectual who never moved their body and spent their days hovering over a desk they were no better off than a musclehead who never read a book or questioned life. He also believed that a flexible spine is the key to longevity. A uniformly developed body is better than bulging muscles. Proper breathing is essential to physical health. Before you work the peripheral parts of the body like the arms and legs you need to have a strong and stable center. And that exercise should be something that energizes you- not something that makes you want to lie on the couch binge watching Netflix for the rest of the day .

Along with his exercise method he invented and constructed equipment that used spring resistance while coupled as home furniture Besides the reformer there are pilates chairs, barrels made out of beer barrels (Mr. Pilates was a brewer at some point) and magic circles made from the rings around the beer barrel .

So if there was a man named Joe Pilates who had a clear fitness philosophy , how are all these studios able to use the word Pilates? Because in 2000, a Manhattan federal court ruled that the word Pilates is generic and was stripped of copyright protections.

What makes authentic pilates special is not just the exercises but the idea that you never stop learning about your body . It’s a system -so every shape your body makes in one exercise can be found and repeated in another more challenging exercise. Initiating movement from your abdominals makes everything easier not harder .

Somewhere along the line people who never really studied Pilates thought they could do it better -watering it down to something that doesn’t even live up to what you can learn from the book Pilates for Dummies . They believe the repetition is boring, the learning curve takes too much time and traditional Pilates classes don’t make you sweat enough. So the marketing solution is - do it in 100 degrees! Let’s do endless repetitions till your leg feels like it’s going to fall off! Let’s add a bike , loud music , timed intervals , and dogs !

Strength training and cardio is hugely important but they are not a replacement for Pilates. And if coming out of an exercise class drenched in a sweaty t shirt is your goal then you could work harder in Pilates but that would still be no match for a 100 degree room that’s doing most of the workout for you.

As people age and things aren’t moving like they used to, they often end up seeking out a real pilates studio . The one thing they always say- I wish I’d started this sooner .