It's been almost a year since I tried out the art of pilates on the reformer.
Let me just tell you, I love it and being a Certified Personal Trainer I did NOT think I would dig it because I'm not "pumping iron".
I love the way it makes my muscles look and feel and ladies and gentleman...
this is not an EASY exercise!
There is a saying and it goes something like this...
"10 sessions and you will FEEL a difference,
20 sessions and you will SEE a difference,
30 session and you will have a whole new body"
I believe it!
Thanks to my instructor Melinda Johnson I have FELT and SEEN the joy of Pilates Reformer!
"Wrap your seat"
"Pinch Perch"
"Button your buttons"
If you still don't believe me and want to locate your local pilates studio today then here is a little biography I found on the creator; Joseph H. Pilates...
Biography
Joseph H. Pilates was born in 1883
[1][2] in
Mönchengladbach, Germany. His father was a prize-winning
gymnast of
Greek ancestry, and his mother worked as a
naturopath.
[3] His father's family originally spelled its surname in the Greek manner as "Pilatu" but changed to "Pilates" upon immigration to Germany.
[citation needed] The new spelling caused Joseph Pilates much grief as a child because older boys taunted him calling him "
Pontius Pilate, killer of
Christ".
Pilates was a sickly child and suffered from
asthma,
rickets, and
rheumatic fever, and he dedicated his entire life to improving his physical strength. Besides skiing frequently, he began studying
body-building,
yoga, "kung fu" (probably what is now known as
qigong), and
gymnastics. By the age of 14, he was fit enough to pose for
anatomical charts. Pilates came to believe that the "modern"
life-style, bad
posture, and inefficient breathing lay at the roots of poor health. He ultimately devised a series of
exercises and training-techniques and engineered all the equipment, specifications, and tuning required to teach his methods properly.
Pilates was originally a gymnast, diver, and bodybuilder, but when he moved to England in 1912, he earned a living as a professional
boxer,
circus-performer, and
self-defense trainer at police schools and
Scotland Yard. Nevertheless, the British authorities interned him during
World War I along with other German citizens in an
internment camp, first in
Lancaster Castle where he taught wrestling and self-defence, boasting that his students would emerge stronger than they were before their internment. It was here that he began refining and teaching his minimal equipment system of mat exercises that later became "Contrology". He was then transferred to another internment camp on the
Isle of Man. During this involuntary break, he began to intensively develop his concept of an integrated, comprehensive system of physical exercise, which he himself called "Contrology." He studied yoga and the movements of animals and trained his fellow inmates in fitness and exercises. It is told that these inmates survived the
1918 flu pandemic due to their good physical shape.
After the war (WWI), he returned to Germany and collaborated with important experts in dance and physical exercise such as
Rudolf Laban. In Hamburg, he also trained police officers. When he was pressured to train members of the German army, he left his native country, disappointed with its political and social conditions, and emigrated to the
United States.
The year 1925 is the approximate time when Pilates migrated to the United States.
[3] On the ship to America, he met his future wife Clara. The couple founded a studio in
New York City and directly taught and supervised their students well into the 1960s. His method, which he and Clara originally called "Contrology," related to encouraging the use of the
mind to control
muscles. It focuses attention on core
postural muscles that help keep the human body balanced and provide support for the
spine. In particular, Pilates exercises teach awareness of
breath and of alignment of the spine, and strengthen the deep
torso and abdominal muscles.
Joseph and Clara Pilates soon established a devout following in the local dance and the performing-arts community of New York. Well-known dancers such as
George Balanchine, who arrived in the United States in 1933, and
Martha Graham, who had come to New York in 1923, became devotees and regularly sent their students to the Pilates for training and rehabilitation.
Joseph Pilates wrote several books, including
Return to Life through Contrology and
Your Health, and he was also a prolific inventor, with over 26 patents cited.
[4] Joe and Clara had a number of disciples who continued to teach variations of his method or, in some cases, focused exclusively on preserving the method, and the instructor-training techniques, they had learned during their studies with Joe and Clara.
Joseph Pilates died in 1967 at the age of 83 in New York.
This page was last modified on 9 November 2012 at 19:32.
See you at the gym!
XO,
Cari
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