The healthful spoils of war

At the dawn of the 20th century, as Europe endured the 1st World War, a  young German quietly went about his business, leading a fitness program on the Isle of Man in the midst of the Irish Sea.
   
But the instructor and his students didn't have the luxury of conducting their classes in the environs of a fitness studio or spacious gymnasium. Instead, the program was carried out inside the cramped confines of a British internment camp.
   
The young German, along with a number of his fellow countrymen, was held captive under a cloud of suspicion; a common fate for expatriates from nations on the wrong side of the political divide.
   
Despite his incarceration, he revived the bodies and minds of many of his fellow internees using his unique exercise program. The regimen, which implemented self-defense techniques, restling and strength training, was the foundation of a fitness program that would one day cultivate a worldwide following and bear the namesake of its creator, Joseph Pilates.

Using a method he called “Contrology,” he focused on the core muscle groups responsible for maintaining balance and support for the spine, by incorporating yoga-like movements and controlled breathing techniques.
   
Pilates would later boast of the benefits of his program, claiming that none of his students contracted the Spanish flu, which at the time was reeking havoc on the human population throughout the world.

But fitness and health were not always a staple of Pilates’ life, who endured a childhood  plagued by rickets, asthma and rheumatic fever.

Channeling his struggles with ill health into fuel for a lifelong dedication to physical fitness, the once frail German youth transformed himself into a picture-perfect image of the human physique.

The road that led Pilates to England, and later a successful career in the United States, is littered with biographical uncertainties. Some claim he traveled to England to join the the circus, posing as a Greek statue. Other accounts claim Pilates traveled there to train as a boxer.

Although Pilates' exploits during these years remain obscured by a factual haze, his endeavors following his time in England are clearly illuminated by the spotlight of fame.

When World War I came to an end, Pilates returned to his homeland, where he continued to develop and practice his unique fitness program and philosophies of physical health. While living in Hamburg, word of his unique ethos spread, eventually reaching the ears of the local military police, who hired Pilates as a physical fitness trainer and self-defense instructor.

Throughout the 1920s, Pilates’ reputation as a training guru preceded him in his native land, where it did not go unnoticed by the German government, who approached him in 1925 with an invitation to train the German Army.

Pilates declined the offer—which in historical hindsight was the prudent choice—opting instead to take his innovative fitness techniques across the Atlantic, to the United States.

Pilates settled in New York with his wife Clara, where he opened his own fitness studio in the late 1920s. Serendipitously, the studio occupied space in a building that housed several dance organizations.

Word spread quickly through the dancing community about Pilates’ methods, and he quickly garnered a following of dancers who used his method for strength training and rehabilitation.

His popularity rapidly expanded beyond the dancing community, spreading throughout New York, where his studio became the premiere fitness center in the city.

Before long, Pilates’ clientèle list read like a who’s who of the stars of the day, like Katharine Hepburn and Sir Laurence Olivier.

His growing fame was bolstered by a foray into the field of writing. With the publication of “Return to Life Through Contrology” and “Your Health.” Pilates spread his gospel of physical wellbeing across the world.

As the years went on, the fitness icon garnered many loyal devotees. Some of these disciples went on to teach the theory, now known simply as Pilates, after the death of its originator in 1967, at the age of 87.

What began inside the confining walls of an internment camp, with one man and a few students, grew into a worldwide fitness phenomenon, with an estimated 11 million followers and 14,000 instructors in the United States alone.

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