Functional Fitness: The Essence of the Pilates Method

[Explor­ing Life] Con­trol­ogy is the term coined by Joseph Pilates to describe his method of inte­grated mind-body fit­ness. Today it is com­monly referred to as the Pilates method. Joseph Pilates wrote two books: a) Your Health-1934; and Contrology-1945 [1]. These are the main pri­mary sources mate­ri­als and should be required read­ing for any teacher and stu­dent of Pilates. In these books Pilates reveals his ideas about the mind-body con­nec­tion, func­tional fit­ness, breath­ing, body aware­ness, pre­ci­sion, con­trol, align­ment, sym­me­try, strength and flex­i­bil­ity. Con­trol­ogy, or the orig­i­nal Pilates method, is sig­nif­i­cantly more than a pro­gram of exer­cise — it is a pro­gram for the bal­anced devel­op­ment of mind and body. In addi­tion, it is also impor­tant to under­stand the major influ­ences and events in Joseph Pilates life since his method is a direct exten­sion of these expe­ri­ences. Many fit­ness train­ers have incor­po­rated aspects of Pilates work into their own Pilates inspired pro­grams, but these pro­grams are not authen­tic Pilates and often rep­re­sent a dilu­tion of Pilates ideas and inten­tions. Fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing the sit­u­a­tion is the lack of cred­i­ble and inten­sive cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­grams for aspir­ing instruc­tors. The pur­pose of this arti­cle, The Essence of the Pilates Method, is to explore the orig­i­nal and authen­tic method as devel­oped by Joseph Pilates.

Pilates’ Life Expe­ri­ences: The Under­ly­ing Ground of Contrology

It is the mind itself which builds the body.
–Joseph Pilates

Our cul­ture and the expe­ri­ences we have within that cul­ture are the under­ly­ing ground of all learn­ing. Our expe­ri­ences in life, and how we choose to react to them, serve to cre­ate our iden­tity and our des­tiny. Con­trol­ogy, or the Pilates Method, is clearly far more than a series of exer­cises to be per­formed in a fit­ness class. Con­trol­ogy, in fact, is a phi­los­o­phy of life that embraces the will to sur­vive against dif­fi­cult odds.

Joseph Pilates was born in Mönchenglad­bach (a small town near Düs­sel­dorf, Ger­many), on Decem­ber 9th 1883 [2]. His father was a prize-winning gym­nast and a mechanic by pro­fes­sion. His mother was a very resource­ful and car­ing indi­vid­ual who stud­ied and applied natur­o­pathic tech­niques. Both his par­ents embraced the ideals of both phys­i­cal fit­ness and ther­a­peu­tic well­ness. In Con­trol­ogy, both phys­i­cal fit­ness and phys­i­cal ther­apy are com­pletely integrated.

Joseph Pilates was said to be a skinny, sickly child who suf­fered from asthma, rick­ets, and rheumatic fever. There is evi­dence that Pilates was bul­lied as a child and had one eye per­ma­nently dam­aged from a stone thrown at him. It is pos­si­ble that these early child­hood expe­ri­ences inspired a strong inter­est in both phys­i­cal fit­ness and self-defense. At some point in his youth, a fam­ily physi­cian gave Joseph an anatomy book:

I learned every page, every part of the body; I would move each part as I mem­o­rized it. As a child, I would lie in the woods for hours, hid­ing and watch­ing the ani­mals move, how the mother taught the young.

This quote pro­vides sig­nif­i­cant insight into the early devel­op­ment of the Pilates method. His empha­sis on the cor­rect and pre­cise use of mus­cles and joints is well known, and it is impos­si­ble to attend any cred­i­ble Pilates course with­out being immersed in human anatomy. The state­ment, I would move each part as I mem­o­rized it, reveals a innate inter­est in tac­tile learn­ing, or what is now often referred to as body aware­ness. In Con­trol­ogy, no exer­cise is ever per­formed unless the mind is is com­pletely con­cen­trated on the pre­cise coor­di­na­tion of the body. The quote also reveals Pilates’ innate inter­est in the dynam­ics of move­ment (watch­ing the ani­mals move as well as learn­ing through effec­tive mod­el­ing (how the mother taught the young).

As a young adult in Ger­many, and against a back­drop of sig­nif­i­cant phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal chal­lenges (i.e. — phys­i­cal ill­nesses and bul­ly­ing), Joseph became an ama­teur boxer and gym­nast, as well as a skilled skier and diver. In 1912 Pilates went to Eng­land to train as a boxer. By 1914 he was a star cir­cus per­former, but was placed into an intern­ment camp in Lan­caster, Eng­land due to the out­break of WWI. His expe­ri­ences within the intern­ment camp were to be influ­en­tial. In order to help his fel­low Ger­man nation­als, Pilates decided that they would emerge from intern­ment health­ier and stronger than when they went in. It was here that he began to cre­ate the min­i­mal­is­tic sys­tem of train­ing using the floor and equip­ment that would become the foun­da­tion of Contrology.

He was later trans­ferred to the intern­ment camp on the Isle of Mann where he chose to help out in the sick bay. His deep sense of empa­thy led him to cre­ate a sys­tem of exer­cises for bed-ridden patients by tak­ing the bed-springs from the frame and using them to pro­vide resis­tance train­ing. This is, per­haps, the early pre­de­ces­sor of what is now called the Reformer appa­ra­tus. We can hypoth­e­size the influ­ence of both his father and mother: his father both a gym­nast and mechanic influ­enced the phys­i­cal and inven­tive aspects of Pilates learn­ing, and his mother influ­enced the nur­tur­ing and car­ing side that remained strong in the face of adverse con­di­tions and sit­u­a­tions. The learn­ing envi­ron­ment of the hos­pi­tal in the intern­ment camp, while dif­fi­cult, was a source of inspi­ra­tion for Pilates that allowed him to exper­i­ment and invent solu­tions for bed-ridden patients.

If Joseph Pilates had not cho­sen to learn from, grow, and over­come adverse con­di­tions, it is highly unlikely his method would be in exis­tence today.

After the war Pilates returned to Ger­many to train the Ham­burg Mil­i­tary Police as well as per­sonal clients. Dur­ing this time he met Rudolf Laban, a famous move­ment ther­a­pist. Today, the Laban Stu­dio inte­grates Con­trol­ogy as a com­po­nent in their approach to health and well­ness [3]. In 1923 Pilates moved to New York City in the United States, where he and his new wife Clara took over a box­ing gym on 939 Eighth Avenue. In the same build­ing were a num­ber of dance stu­dios and rehearsal spaces, and it was this prox­im­ity that lead to the grow­ing aware­ness of Pilates as some­one who could “fix” dancers.

While Joseph Pilates was rec­og­nized and a fit­ness guru, he was also known for lik­ing cig­ars, alco­hol, and women. He died in Octo­ber 1967 at Lennox Hill Hos­pi­tal at the age of 83.

Con­trol­ogy: A Sum­mary of Pilates’ Ideas

The open­ing sec­tion of Con­trol­ogy is enti­tled Civ­i­liza­tion Impairs Phys­i­cal Fit­ness. Con­trol­ogy is the result of Joseph Pilates intense frus­tra­tion with the gen­eral health of peo­ple, as well as what he viewed as mis­guided advice from the med­ical and health sci­ences. Civ­i­liza­tion, in his view, was the root cause of phys­i­cal and men­tal prob­lems. The prob­lem he describes is not one that we are unfa­mil­iar with today:

The con­flict­ing infor­ma­tion, expres­sive of the dif­fer­ent opin­ions of these health author­i­ties, has proved noth­ing less than con­fu­sion worse con­founded… Our so-called health author­i­ties, whose remarks are accepted as law; or so-called sci­en­tists, whose state­ments are reli­giously accepted — they are pri­mar­ily to blame because they fail in their mis­sion to civ­i­liza­tion! [Pilates 1945]

As a result of Pilate sown dis­con­tent with civ­i­liza­tion, he ded­i­cated his life to exper­i­ment­ing, research­ing, prac­tic­ing, and shar­ing his unique approach to body-mind fit­ness. The idea that the Pilates Method is a series of exer­cises that empha­size the core is cor­rect, but incom­plete. Pilates admired ancient Greek cul­ture. He asso­ciates con­trol­ogy with the ancient Greek view that body and mind are inex­tri­ca­bly con­nected and there­fore must be devel­oped simul­ta­ne­ously. He states that the ancient Greeks believed that the neglect of either or both, would result in the com­plete fail­ure to real­ize the very first law of civ­i­liza­tion — (preser­va­tion of life) — the attain­ment and main­te­nance of one’s bod­ily and men­tal per­fec­tion. (Pilates 1934) Poor phys­i­cal health is there­fore an enemy of the mind; poor men­tal devel­op­ment is an enemy of the body. Good health means equi­lib­rium of body, mind, and spirit. Pilates cre­ated con­trol­ogy so there would result a reju­ve­na­tion of mind and body and liv­ing itself would again become an art as it was in the days of the ancient Gre­cians. (Pilates 1945)

Con­trol­ogy devel­ops the body uni­formly, cor­rects wrong pos­tures, restores phys­i­cal vital­ity, invig­o­rates the mind, and ele­vates the spirit. [Pilates, 1945]

The unique fea­tures of con­trol­ogy include: a focus on sup­ple­ness, nat­ural grace and skill that is reflected in all rou­tine move­ments; the uni­form devel­op­ment of mus­cu­lar power com­bined with endurance; gain­ing mas­tery of the mind to con­trol the body; cor­rect wrong pos­ture; and the restora­tion of phys­i­cal and men­tal vitality.

IDEALLY, OUR MUSCLES SHOULD OBEY OUR WILL. REASONABLY, OUR WILL SHOULD NOT BE DOMINATED BY THE REFLEX ACTION OF OUR MUSCLES. [Pilates 1934]

Con­trol­ogy — The Orig­i­nal Thirty-Four Mat Exer­cises: Con­trol­ogy exer­cises our abil­ity to focus, con­cen­trate on our body aware­ness as much as it does mov­ing the body itself. A lack of atten­tive­ness in Pilates is unac­cept­able; the exer­cises require intense concentration.

The only unchang­ing rules you must con­sci­en­tiously obey are that you must faith­fully and with­out devi­a­tion fol­low the instruc­tions accom­pa­ny­ing the exer­cises and always keep your mind wholly con­cen­trated on the pur­pose of the exer­cises as you per­form them. This is vitally impor­tant in order for you to gain the results sought, oth­er­wise, there would be no valid rea­son for your inter­est in Con­trol­ogy. [Pilates 1945] [4]

1. Pre­ci­sion: Pilates believed that the learner must be fully com­mit­ted to learn­ing a spe­cific method­ol­ogy that is fol­lowed faith­fully and with­out devi­a­tion. The move­ments in an exer­cise are extremely pre­cise and require a keen focus and excep­tional body aware­ness to per­form correctly.
2. Con­cen­tra­tion: The mind attends to the body through aware­ness of move­ment and breath dur­ing an exer­cise. If the mind is not con­cen­trated solely on move­ment and breath, there is lit­tle ben­e­fit. A wan­der­ing mind or a mind dis­tracted by thoughts or sounds while exer­cis­ing is a weak mind requir­ing con­di­tion­ing. The exer­cises demand the com­plete inte­gra­tion of body and mind.
3. Patience and Per­sis­tence: Pilates empha­sized these obvi­ous and nec­es­sary qual­i­ties. Con­trol­ogy is designed to alter and trans­form the habits of body and mind to more pro­duc­tive states. Devel­op­ing new habits of body and mind sim­ply require ded­i­cated time and effort.
4. Pro­pri­o­cep­tion: Though Pilates does not use the word, proprioception[3] is an essen­tial skill in con­trol­ogy. Pro­pri­o­cep­tion (from Latin pro­prius, mean­ing “one’s own” and per­cep­tion) is the per­cep­tual abil­ity to per­ceive the rel­a­tive posi­tion of neigh­bour­ing parts of the body. Pro­pri­o­cep­tion is what allows some­one to learn to walk in com­plete dark­ness with­out los­ing bal­ance. [Wikipedia: Pro­pri­o­cep­tion] Unless the indi­vid­ual has the abil­ity to sense the nuances of body move­ment and breath, progress is impaired. Pro­pri­o­cep­tion is a fun­da­men­tal com­po­nent of Contrology.
5. Breath Con­trol: Breath con­trol is fun­da­men­tal is fun­da­men­tal to Con­trol­ogy and is the first and most impor­tant ele­ment to learn.

Lazy breath­ing con­verts the lungs, fig­u­ra­tively speak­ing, into a ceme­tery for the depo­si­tion of dis­eased, dying, and dead germs as well as sup­ply­ing an ideal haven for the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of other harm­ful germs. There­fore, above all, learn how to breath cor­rectly. [Pilates 1945]

Pilates views proper breath con­trol above all. He empha­sizes the impor­tance of:

• Exha­la­tion: Squeez­ing every atom of air from the lungs;
• Rolling the Spine: Rolling back an forth on the spine as a means to cleanse the lungs;
• Cor­rect Breath­ing: The habit of cor­rect breath­ing as a means to fully oxy­genate the blood stream and reduce feel­ings of fatigue.

Func­tional Fit­ness: Func­tional fit­ness is a form of exer­cise that is designed to improve the body’s phys­i­cal responses to real-life sit­u­a­tions. It is quite pos­si­ble to be an suc­cess­ful athelete or dance, but have a body that is not func­tion­ally fit. A per­son that has foc­sued on weight-lifting over a period of years is very likely to have low lev­els of func­tional fit­ness. The Pilates Method is a form of func­tional fit­ness, even though the term is not used by Joseph Pilates: “Cor­rectly exe­cuted and mas­tered to the point of sub­con­scious reac­tion, these exer­cises will reflect grace and bal­ance in your rou­tine activ­i­ties.” (Pilates 1954) The cor­rec­tion of pos­ture is one of the more vis­i­bly notice­able and impor­tant results of Contrology.

Con­trol­ogy — Stated Goals: If we prac­ticed con­trol­ogy with pre­ci­sion, patience and per­sis­tence, what should the observ­able results be? Pilates makes a num­ber of gen­eral state­ments that I have sum­ma­rized as intended results below:

• Ease of Motion and Move­ment: The proper devel­op­ment of mus­cles means that daily activ­i­ties (stand­ing, walk­ing, sit­ting) can be per­formed with min­i­mum effort and max­i­mum plea­sure. Mus­cle devel­op­ment is bal­anced so they sup­port each other and work together flu­idly cre­at­ing a greater sense of ease in motion. “Cor­rectly exe­cuted and mas­tered to the point of sub­con­scious reac­tion, these exer­cises will reflect grace and bal­ance in your rou­tine activ­i­ties.” [Pilates 1945];
• Increased Sense of Plea­sure in Life: Our pace of life is mod­er­ated and our minds are notice­ably calmer though our cir­cum­stances in life remain the same. Con­scious selec­tion of a plea­sur­able lifestyle, or “that which excludes con­stant push­ing, shov­ing, rush­ing, crowd­ing and wild scram­bling all so char­ac­ter­is­tic of our day.”; (Pilates 1945)
• Flex­i­bil­ity: We are phys­i­cally and men­tally more flex­i­ble in our approach to life and embrace the qual­i­ties of stretch­ing and relax­ing our body and mind. We develop the habit of con­stant stretch­ing and relax­ing in our daily routines;
• Pos­ture: Pos­ture is asso­ci­ated with all major activ­i­ties in life. The spinal col­umn is restored to its “nat­ural” state. “If your spine is inflex­i­bly stiff at 30, you are old; if it is com­pletely flex­i­ble at 60, you are young.” (Pilates 1945);
• Diet: Food is eaten only as required, not accord­ing to imposed sched­ules or cus­tom­ary amounts. The amount of food required is asso­ci­ated with the require­ments of activ­ity. Heavy or over-eating is avoided at all times;
• Nor­mal­iza­tion of Body Weight: Con­trol­ogy, when applied with pre­ci­sion, results in the body return­ing to an appro­pri­ate weight;
• Sleep: Sleep is recu­per­a­tive and calm. Pilates linked ner­vous­ness to a lack of exer­cise. If sleep is dis­turbed, exer­cises should be per­formed, rather than lying awake. This helps to relieve the ner­vous energy.
• Body-Mind Con­nec­tion: Pilates states that “you with­out doubt acquire cor­rect phys­i­cal fit­ness with proper men­tal con­trol.” [Pilates 1945] A core idea of con­trol­ogy is that effec­tive “self-instruction” holds the promise of never hav­ing any­thing to “unlearn.” Con­trol­ogy is pre­sented as a tech­nique that leads to cor­rect fit­ness as well as increased men­tal con­fi­dence and bal­ance. The end result is an “active, alert, dis­ci­plined per­son… that is always fully capa­ble of meet­ing all the com­plex prob­lems of mod­ern liv­ing.” [Pilates 1945]

Search­ing For The Essence of the Pilates Method

When we search for the essence of some­thing we look for spe­cific qual­i­ties of some­thing that pro­vides it with a unique iden­tity. What is the essence of the Pilates Method? This ques­tion is often answered in vague terms. For exam­ple, we often see ref­er­ences being made to core devel­op­ment and the devel­op­ment of what is often referred to as the pow­er­house [5]. Through­out the Pilates method, the core area of the body is a pri­mary focal point in all Pilates exer­cises and is viewed as the nexus of body move­ment and aware­ness, but the method is about far more than core devel­op­ment. Today the core is often use a focus for adver­tiz­ing fit­ness pro­grams in reac­tion to the increas­ing lev­els of obe­sity in soci­ety. In my opin­ion, the devel­op­ment of the core area, while impor­tant, is not ade­quate in describ­ing the essence of the Pilates method. I sug­gest that the true essence of the Pilates method is not some­thing purely physical.

Nor is it the atten­tion to pre­ci­sion, pos­ture, align­ment, con­cen­tra­tion, or any par­ti­cluar set of intel­lec­tual con­cepts that serve to guide the process of cor­rectly per­form­ing the exer­cises. While these are of obvi­ous and crit­i­cial impor­tance, they do not describe the essence of the method. Another fea­ture of the Pilates method is often described through its ther­a­peu­tic value, that is, in it’s abil­ity to cor­rect phys­i­cal defi­cien­cies and injuries. Once again these are of obvi­ous and crit­i­cal impor­tance, but do not serve to reveal the essence. The essence of the Pilates method is not some­thing purely phys­i­cal or physical-fitness-centric; it is some­thing more organic, nuclear, and inspiring.

In Con­trol­ogy, Pilates states that, It is the mind itself which builds the body. This idea comes closer to the essence of Pilates. Through­out his youth, Pilates was faced with con­stant adver­sity, and con­sis­tently responded with pos­i­tive action. Through the perserver­ence of mind, he renewed his own sickly and weak body and thereby he changed the course of his life. The power of his inten­tions is an aspect of the Pilates Method that can­not be under­es­ti­mated or under­stated. The fact is that the Pilates Method exists because of Joseph Pilates’ abil­ity to focus on pos­i­tive inten­tions, take pos­i­tive action, remain focused and resilient through­out his own life’s challenges.

If the mind builds the body, then the body is a result of what we choose to think about. This means that the body responds directly to what we think, and there­fore how we feel. The crit­i­cal real­iza­tions here are: a) what we think, the spe­cific thoughts we have, are there because we choose them, not because they have a life of their own; and b) the phys­i­cal reail­ity of the body responds directly to the intel­lec­tual real­ity of the mind. These ideas are very close to those found in Yoga [6], which is an area of fit­ness that Pilates him­self explored. Recent reseearch into mind-body inte­gra­tion reveals that the body and the mind are com­pletely insep­a­ra­ble; the body is the mind and the mind is the body. Can­dace Pert describes this new under­stand­ing as the body­mind [7]. I like to cap­ture the idea of teh body­mind in teh fol­low­ing way:

What the mind thinks, the body feels: what the body thinks, the mind feels.

Aside from some gen­eral ref­er­ences to reli­gion, Pilates did not ven­ture into a spir­i­tual dimen­sion for his method. This may be con­strasted to Yoga, which focused on the devel­op­ment of the mind in order to attain higher spir­i­tual states of real­ity through con­tem­pla­tion and med­i­ta­tion. In the Pilates method, aware­ness and atten­tion are directed entirely on the pre­cise use and move­ments of the body. Although the aims may be dif­fer­ent, both Yoga and Pilates empha­size the impor­tance of con­cen­trat­ing the mind on the present moment to the task at hand.

The essence of the Pilates Method can­not be some­thing sep­a­rate and dis­tinct from the indi­vid­ual and life expe­ri­ences that lead to its cre­ation. The essence of the Pilates Method, in my opin­ion, lies in the power of aware­ness and inten­tion in over­com­ing adver­sity. While this may sound sus­pi­ciously like a new-age spin on Pilates’ work, I believe it serves to cap­ture the essence of his method. The Pilates Method was born out of the sig­nif­i­cant strug­gles faced by Joseph Pilates him­self, and his “method” is really a lifestyle and ori­en­ta­tion to over­com­ing the chal­lenges posed by severe phys­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions and ill­ness through inten­tion and dis­ci­pline. Had Pilates decided to suc­cumb to the adver­sity he faced in life there would be no method for us to explore today. A Pilates exer­cise is a micro­cosm of the aware­ness of adver­sity and the inten­tion to over­come it in life. While an exer­cise like The Hun­dreds obvi­ously serves to develop core strength, its essence is to develop the phys­i­cal and men­tal strength to embrace the inevitable chal­lenges we face in life.

The essence of the Pilates Method lies in its power to inspire the body, mind, and spirit through­out the inevitable con­flu­ence of adver­sity and strug­gle we all face in our life’s journey.

Notes

1. I am using A Pilates Primer: The Mil­len­nium Edi­tion (1998). It con­tains both of Pilates pub­li­ca­tions: a) Return to Life Through Con­trol­ogy; and b) Your Health. For ease of ref­er­ence I will refer to Con­trol­ogy as [Pilates 1945] and Your Health as [Pilates 1934].

2. See Sum­mary of Joseph’s Fam­ily and Birth Records, uplifted from Polestar Cologne Con­fer­ence Brochure.

3. See RUDOLF LABAN. For infor­ma­tion regard­ing the inte­gra­tion of the Pilates method see Laban Health

4. Author’s note: Mod­ern ver­sions of the orig­i­nal Pilates mat exer­cises are some­times prefer­able to the orig­i­nal ver­sion. The issues sur­round­ing mod­i­fi­ca­tions of the exer­cises will be explored in a sep­a­rate entry. Always con­sult a cer­ti­fied Pilates instruc­tor before attempt­ing any of the exercises.

5. Though I could not find the use of the word pow­er­house in any of Pilates’ own writ­ing, it may be pos­si­ble that he used the term through the course of his teaching.

6. See Yoga: The Five States of Mind.

7. See Pos­ture: The Body­mind.