Joseph Pilates was born in München-Glebach, a small village near Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1880. His father was a prize-winning gymnast and his mother was a naturopath. In his early childhood, Joseph was plagued with illnesses such as asthma, rickets, and rheumatic fever, and was often teased because he was so frail. These factors helped develop his commitment to improving his fitness and health. At a very young age, Joseph began working to build his physical strength and stamina; by the age of fourteen, he was in such prime physical condition that he was used as a model for a series of illustrated anatomical charts (these charts would hang in his New York studio decades later). Joe was a self-taught athlete who eventually excelled at skiing, diving, gymnastics, and boxing.

In 1912, Joe went to England. Reports vary on why he went or what he did there; some say he went to train as a boxer, while others claim that he and his brother toured England with a German circus troupe, doing a Greek statue act. In any event, when World War I erupted in 1914, Joseph’s German heritage made him an enemy alien in England and he was placed in an internment camp, first in Lancaster and later on the Isle of Man. Joe’s confinement evidently didn’t dampen his spirits; before long, he was teaching his fellow internees wrestling and self-defense, and his skills in fitness training soon led to work with the camp’s disabled.

Joe began assisting the camp’s hospital in helping bedridden patients regain strength and muscle control. To assist these people in their exercises, Joe adapted hospital beds with pulleys, straps, and springs. As he later said, “I thought, why use my strength? So I made a machine to do it for me.” These adapted beds were the forerunners of the Pilates exercise equipment used today.

By 1925, Joseph Pilates had achieved a certain fame in his native Germany, and that fame brought him to the attention of the German government. When the German government asked him to train the new German army, Pilates realized that the changing political climate might compromise his ability to pursue his own path with his work. Joseph Pilates decided to take his dream—and his skills—to a new homeland, and he set sail for America.

The First Pilates Studio
On the ship that took Joseph Pilates to the United States, he encountered a quiet kindergarten teacher named Clara. By all evidence, Clara was smitten with Joe’s warm personality and enthusiasm for life, and they eventually married. Reports say that Pilates devised a series of rehabilitative exercises that relieved her arthritis pain. They opened their New York studio at 939 Eighth Avenue shortly after they arrived in New York City in 1926.

The Pilates’s studio shared a building with several New York dance organizations, and it didn’t take long for the dancers to discover Joe. Pilates’s fame spread throughout the dance community; George Balanchine encouraged his dancers to follow the Pilates exercise program, as did Martha Graham, Jerome Robbins, and Ted Shawn. In addition, in the summers from 1939 to 1951 Joe and Clara went to teach at Jacobs Pillow, a well-known dance camp in the Berkshire Mountains. Over the years, dancers came to rely on Pilates training techniques for both fitness and rehabilitation.
Pilates didn’t train just dancers. His studio soon became the fitness center of New York City, drawing a number of the city’s richest and most influential citizens, including Columbia University president Chester Bowles, Katharine Hepburn, Sir Laurence Olivier, Yehudi Menuhin, Mrs. Jean Vanderbilt, and—to quote a newspaper article from 1964—”prominent New Yorkers named Guggenheim and Gimbel.” All of these people trekked to Pilates’ studio, to be led through mat work and equipment exercises by Joe and Clara.

Fifty Years Ahead of His Time
During his lifetime, Joseph Pilates did not receive the exposure and recognition he so richly deserved. As the sole creator and source of his life’s work, he focused his genius on developing his method, and, consequently, was able to train only a select handful of students to carry on his teachings. “What I need is a school where I can turn out other teachers,” he stated in 1946. Today, his dream is finally being realized. Pilates was right!