Contents

1. Celebrity Pilates fans – Jamie Lee Curtis
2. Joseph Pilates
3. Move of the month
4. Joke of the month

Celebrity Pilates fans – Jamie Lee Curtis

"Pilates is the only exercise programme that has changed my body and made me feel great"

Joseph Pilates

"I must be right. Never an aspirin. Never injured a day in my life. The whole country, the whole world, should be doing my exercises. They'd be happier."
Joseph Pilates, in 1965, age 85

Pilates takes its name from Joseph Pilates (1880-1967), who devised it as a new approach to exercise and body-conditioning in the early decades of the last century.

Joseph Pilates was was born near Dusseldorf in 1880. He was a very frail child, suffering with asthma, rickets and rheumatic fever. He was determined to make himself strong and healthy and studied body building, diving, skiing and gymnastics, Drawing from this athletic training, he devised a series of exercises that enabled him not only to improve his health, but to develop a body that was strong and fit enough to pose for anatomical charts.

In 1912, aged 32, he left Germany for England, where he became a professional boxer, an expert skier and diver, taught self-defence to Scotland Yard detectives and found work as a circus acrobat. Interred in England during the First World War, Pilates worked as a ‘physical therapist’ prescribing exercise for injured men. He devised makeshift exercise aids by attaching bedsprings in various positions so that patients recovering from injuries could exercise safely. Modern versions of this equipment can be found in Pilates studios today and are known as reformers. The men taking part in Pilates’ exercise regime recovered more effectively than those who didn’t. While Joe was the outspoken force behind his method, his wife Clara, a trained nurse, quietly incorporated his concepts and exercises in ways that benefited more seriously ill or injured clients.

After moving to New York in the 1920's, his studio soon attracted actors, dancers and elite athletes. By the 1960's his clients included famous names such as George Balanchine, The New York City Ballet and Martha Graham's Modern Dance Company. In 1967 Joseph Pilates died at the age of 87. He was fit and healthy. He died of smoke inhalation while trying to remove pieces of his equipment following a fire at his studio.

The Pilates method did not return to Britain until 1970, when it was brought back to this country by Alan Herdman. Alan’s first clients were actors, dancers and singers, but word soon spread as doctors and physiotherapists began recommending Pilates to patients struggling with chronic injuries.

Move of the month

Cat Stretch

• Kneel down on your mat, with your knees directly under your hips, hands under your shoulders and weight equally distributed between both points.
• Inhale through your nose to prepare, then as you exhale pull your navel up towards your spine and sequentially curve the back up to the ceiling finishing by relaxing your neck down in an 'angry cat' position.
• Inhale deeply here then as you exhale reverse the movement, articulating back down through the centre of the spine to return to a neutral spine.
• Repeat this twice more, remembering to draw the shoulders down the back every time you reverse the movement.

Joke of the month

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