PILATES HISTORY
Joseph Pilates was born in Germany in 1880 and grew up in England, where he was interned during World War I and used this time to become a nurse. His frail childhood apparently inspired him to pursue a path of lifelong fitness that led him to take up bodybuilding and several other sports to become a competent skier, diver, boxer, and gymnast.
It is apparent that the time spent in those old gymnastics and bodybuilding training halls laid many of the foundations for the design of his special training machines and his training methods. While working as a nurse, he inventively used the springs and frames of hospital beds to make variations of what he had seen used by gymnastics and physique coaches of his time. There can be little doubt that he, like so many young men of his time were impressed by the innovative approaches of training legends such as Eugene Sandow, who consulted for many kings, queens and heads of State at the time.
During the 1920s, he moved to New York, where he opened his first formal studio, which ultimately attracted well-known dancers such as George Ballanchine and Martha Graham to train there regularly, which provided an invaluable marketing boost to his career in the USA. Since his work grew up in the world of gymnastics, an aesthetic art which has strong allegiances with ballet, it obviously received sympathetic support from the emerging dance community in the USA, which, until that time was vastly overshadowed by the dancing giants of Europe.
Consequently, his methods became very well publicized in the dance and drama community and, until recently, have remained confined largely to these same communities that spread his method in its earliest days. Also not surprising is that some of his latter day disciples have astutely discerned that any intriguing apparently novel systems of fitness can make a fortune in the fitness and shape gullible West. In this regard, Romana Kryzanowska, his one Master Teacher, who, after Joseph's death, was asked by his wife, Clara, to continue with Joseph's teachings and today she serves as the guru of the Pilates movement.
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