PILATES
What it is
For many years a close secret of the dance and theatre worlds, Joseph Pilates' life-enhancing technique has in recent years gained the prominence it deserves. A powerful body-conditioning method, remedial and healing technique, mood enhancer and fitness training, it has helped hundreds of thousands of people worldwide to maintain and develop their bodies' natural flexibility, dynamism and vitality to an advanced age. It is now a key part of the lives of millions of people worldwide, including many you'll have heard of...With yoga it shares an emphasis on stretching and flexibility, and with the Alexander technique a keen awareness of postural alignment and balance, but is uniquely distinct from either in it's concern with the body's core musculature as the cradle of our strength, co-ordination and balance.
Adored by many in the public eye for developing a longer, leaner and more toned body, it will also improve posture and relieve stress and tension. It is as ideal for athletes looking to improve performance and avoid injury as it is for those with back pain or who wish to prevent the physical effects of a sedentary lifestyle creeping up on them.
Precise and controlled, it is one of the safest forms of exercise and in fact plays a key role in many injury rehabilitation programmes in dance, sport and general practice. Originally developed as a series of matwork exercises (ie exercises performed on a flat floor), it later included the use of custom-built apparatuses.
Celebrity fans
An ever-growing list includes, amongst many others -Madonna, Hugh Grant, Joan Collins, Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston, Mike Atherton, Freddie Flintoff, Ian McKellen, Sandra Bullock and Gwyneth Paltrow, the entire AC Milan and Tottenham Hotspur football teams, David Beckham, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, Kate Winslet, Martin Amis, Ruby Wax and John Cleese.... to name but a few!
“I'm a Pilates person. It's great. I had a chronic back, a pinched nerve and a hip problem and it's completely solved all of it. I love it. It makes me feel like I'm taller.” Jennifer Anniston, TV and movie star
"I think Pilates is just an amazing thing. It's brilliant. It's great for the players. They are all doing it now."
Harry Redknapp, manager Tottenham Hotspur FC
"I have been going for 13 years... I emerge with a tremendous sense of wellbeing... [and so] I remain active and relatively agile." Joan Bakewell, writer and broadcaster, at the age of 70
History
The technique is the brainchild of one Joseph Pilates, a German of Greek extraction who before the First World War studied and practised every exercise system he could find, from yoga, tai chi and martial arts to body-building, gymnastics and classical Graeco/Roman exercises. A remarkable athlete, he also managed to box professionally, become an expert skier and diver, and teach self-defence (to Scotland Yard, no less!).Probably the first to meaningfully synthesise Eastern and Western ideas of physical culture, he spent the war integrating all he had learnt into a new discipline. In the 20s he took it to New York where it quickly won enormous favour in the dance community in particular. He believed that his technique "develops the body uniformly, corrects wrong posture, restores physical vitality, invigorates the mind and elevates the spirit".
Although sometimes seen as being more relevant for women, the Pilates technique was originally created for men and Joe himself was a "man's man" - a lover of boxing, whisky, women and Cuban cigars.
In the 70s Alan Herdman, having trained in New York, finally brought the technique back to the UK where it was originally conceived. One of the first to be trained at his London studio was young dancer and choreographer Chris Hocking, whose precise and inspirational teaching would soon be in such demand that she would found the UK's first group matwork school, Pilates Body Awareness....