Who Was Joseph Pilates?

Joseph Pilates developed a regiment he called  “Contrology”, which later became known as "Pilates". This method had influences of: greek calisthenics, gymnastics, swimming, martial arts, yoga and diving. He was a sickly child and found that this form of exercise helped him greatly and he dedicated his life to helping others learn this method as well.
In this episode, Alex and Kelly take a look at the German man who started teaching and developing his unique exercise regimen in an internment camp in England during World War 1. We consider why there are stereotypes about the kinds of people who practice pilates. And we work up a plan to bring back turn-of-the century exercise equipment like the belt vibrator, the splendo massager, and the sauna tub with live streamed classes. If you have ever tried pilates and wondered how it all got started, or if you have never tried it, but just want to hear a great story about an interesting dead guy, you should definitely check out this episode!

If you like the content we are creating and would like to support it financially, check our Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/DirtNapCityPodcast

Or, if you prefer to support us in another way, recommend an episode to one of your friends. We appreciate everyone who listens every month and look forward to making this podcast even better with your support.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Dirt Knap City, the show about interesting dead people. We're gonna talk about another dead person today who happened to be interesting at one point in his or her life. You ready to get going? Got some uh clues here for you. I've actually don't have clues, I have a um uh riddle kind of uh oh uh statement that that I like to do.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Why do you always overachieve on these things?

SPEAKER_01 0:39

You're always you're always coming up with something more clever than mine. Well, because when I hear your clues, like it he was the seventh of nine kids, and then you pause for me like that doesn't help you. Well, if it if it had been okay, let's say it had been his father was an optometrist in uh Turkey.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

His father was an architect in California, and he was the oldest of three boys and six children. Who would that be?

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 1:09

That'd be Greg Brady.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Uh oh, see, that's good. You're right. You got me on that one. But Greg Brady's not dead. Yeah, so we couldn't do it. All right, here we go. You ready? Yeah, let's go. This guy was born in 1883 in Münchengladbach, Germany. Have you ever been there? Munchengladbach uh well München is Munich. Uh Munchengladbach. Gladbach. I don't think so. It's it's uh just outside of uh Duscheldorf.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

And uh they're known for the uh I know them because of soccer. They have uh they have a team called uh uh De F De Fullen, the the Voles. Oh okay. But um, anyways, um born in 1883 in Germany, yeah, and died in 1967 in New York.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Must be a writer or a poet. That probably won't help you. But here we go. Ready for this? Uh here's a little hint for you. Yeah, Kelly. At your core, you are a powerhouse, but I know you really are a reformer. I hope you've enjoyed this exercise.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

So I immediately think of Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I know he's still alive and he's Austrian, so it's not him. But um at your core, so something to do with the core, you're a reformer. I hope you've enjoyed say that one more time for me.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

At your core, you're a powerhouse, but I know you really are a reformer. I hope you've enjoyed this exercise. It's not Richard Simmons, is it? No. Died in 1967.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Died in 67.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Um his name is kind of synonymous with a type of exercise that you see today. Not really a type of exercise, more of a um, yeah, sure, a type of you see studios that are this kind of studios, um similar to yoga, maybe.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

Okay. Is this uh Franz von Barr?

SPEAKER_01 3:26

No, but that's a that's a good guess, and you're right, kind of around the wow. I didn't know that you knew that guy's first uh name. That was pretty impressive. I made it. Are you just making that up? Yeah, yeah. Did you really just make that up?

SPEAKER_02 3:39

I don't know what I I all I know is bar is similar to yoga, and it's probably French too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Um got any more clues? Um, well, we're not talking about Pontius from the Bible today.

SPEAKER_02 3:52

We're talking about Pilates. Yes, Joseph Pilates. I had no idea there was a Joseph Pilates.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

There's a Joe Pilates. Joe P. We're gonna talk about Joe Pilates today. So I don't know. Do you have any experience with Pilates at all? Do you know anything about Pilates?

SPEAKER_02 4:13

No, I I know I know they bend your body in weird positions. There's all kinds this this is my perception of Pilates. It is what um uh that Frankel woman, that skinny, skinny girl vodka woman would do. It's it's sort of for uh thin and wealthy and perhaps from New York women.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Okay, well, that's actually um interesting that you'd have that stereotype. That's actually not true. Um, I have been doing Pilates for probably 15 years. Um really big devotee of Pilates. Okay. Um, and I'm none of those things that you just said.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

Uh hold on. Nope, nope, nope. Yeah, you're right, you're right.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

Wow. Um okay. Well, let me tell you about Joe Pilates. So, so um, do you know when you picture Pilates? Do you know what their reformer machine is? Can you picture any of the apparatus or any any of the equipment that they use?

SPEAKER_02 5:16

I I'm imagining something that looks like uh big wooden things hanging from the ceiling. Uh no, I I really don't know much about Pilates.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

So the big one and the the clue, the clue that you didn't get was the reformer. So this is one of the problems with being into it, is that I assume everybody kind of knows about it. So it'll be fun today to to let you know about it. But the reformer is this machine that sits on the floor and it kind of is the about the same size of a yoga mat. What do you call it? Like um spikes? No, it has a carriage that that moves back and forth, and you'd so you'd sit on that and it has springs attached to the carriage to give you resistance. So you can so you can move back and forth on that, and then it has straps coming from it that you can attach your arms and legs to and doing a variety of things with the resistance of that.

SPEAKER_02 6:13

Is this sort of like those little rollers that you that you that you have with your hands and you roll forward and backwards for your for your core?

SPEAKER_01 6:20

I mean, that does that is the same um philosophy behind it, sure.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

This machine that I'm explaining to you, and the reason I'm explaining to you is because later on that'll like if you can picture this now, it'll make more sense later when I'm explaining how he kind of came up with that. But that's called the reformer, and that's kind of sense. But you could do Pilates like without any equipment, you can just do mat exercises um using this, but it's basically all about the core.

SPEAKER_02 6:49

Well, first of all, first of all, Pilates to me sounds like an Italian name, not a German name. So that was a little confusing.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

So his father was actually from Greece. Oh he was grew up in Germany, but but his father was from Greece, and his father was actually a gymnast and metal worker, you know that old combination.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

Did he make shingles?

SPEAKER_01 7:11

No, but uh Pilates, when he was grown up, he actually was uh what you'd call a sickly child. It seems like a lot of people that we talk about were sickly.

SPEAKER_02 7:22

Um and he was very smart, but poor did poorly in school, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:26

I don't know anything about his intelligence, actually. Um, but uh growing up he had asthma, he had rickets. Do you know what rickets is?

SPEAKER_02 7:34

Oh no, that sounds very painful though.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

It's like one of these old-timey diseases that um uh luckily you had to get leeches to get rid of rickets. Um cod liver oil is the treatment for that, but it's uh not that common in the US or Europe anymore, but that's like a lack of vitamin D and lack of calcium, and it would give kids weak bones. He also had rheumatic fever. Rheumatic fever is also one of those old timey diseases, but usually it's it's what you might get if you don't treat strep throat.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

You'd get the rheumatic fever.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Still today, if you have strep throat and you don't do anything about it, you just let it ride and you don't take any antibiotics, it could develop into rheumatic fever. So he had all these things. He was also bullied. And at the age of five, some say he lost sight in his left eye because of that. Now, some also say that was a later in a from a boxing mix mishap because he did box, box fighting, not the somebody, not where somebody takes their hands and puts them on your ears like uh Mr. Edison. But um, but but because he grew up such a sick child, he uh devoted his life to improving physical strength. So he was really into gymnastics like his dad, he was really into um bodybuilding, martial arts, boxing, but he didn't do a lot of weight training. And um pretty much every site you go to to find out about Joseph Pilates, it says a variation of of this quote by the age of 14, he was fit enough to pose for anatomical charts. Hashtag goals, right? It's kind of disturbing to me that um I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 9:13

So so when when you're in a doctor's office and you see a chart up on the wall, it could be Pilates.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Well, yeah, but it just bothers me that somebody would come up to a 14-year-old boy and say, Hey boy, you look fit enough to pose for an amatop anatomical chart. Just doesn't seem right to me.

SPEAKER_02 9:30

Yeah, that could get you arrested.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

So, so um, but he always had this idea that the modern lifestyle, and this is modern, you know, the turn of the century is what we're talking about, was to blame for the poor health that that we'd see from people, particularly when it came to poor posture. Uh in he thought poor posture from people sitting at desks and inefficient breathing. I mean, this was you know the industrial revolution um around you know the time of all that and inefficient breathing. So he thought that modern lifestyle, imagine how different life was in at the turn of the century than it was, you know, 50 years previous.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

Well, and imagine if he could see us today, right? I mean, he'd really say, Told ya.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Yeah. So he designed a series of exercises and a series of equipment or apparatus to uh to help people, and he was doing good by 1912. He moved to England. Now, here's something that I didn't realize um until I was doing research for this, but a lot of Germans moved to Britain around this time, around the 1910s, just prior to World War I. Um, things were getting pretty restrictive in Germany, and Europe, uh and particularly uh England, was a pretty liberal place where you could kind of do your own thing. So a lot of Germans were coming over. So I moved to England and he was a pro boxer. He was also a circus performer. Uh he had a uh gladiator act with his brother, um, and he uh taught self-defense classes at Scotland Yard. So when I saw this, that he was a circus performer, and I thought, well, yeah, this is around the same time as Harry Houdini, right? Uh so I Googled if uh Pilates did Pilates and Harry Houdini know each other. And uh what I got was a quote from a comedian Dwayne Perkins that said, let's just say if Houdini did Pilates, he would have survived that sucker punch to his belly. So there's a callback to uh episode uh episode three. So as I mentioned, a lot of Germans were moving to Britain at the turn of the century, and and so by 1911 there were 50,000 German immigrants in Britain. Most of them were in the service industry, and and they had kind of their own neighborhoods and their own clubs and their own newspapers. Um but then when World War I started in 1914, there was a lot of suspicion of Germans in Britain. In fact, um they made them uh a lot of them thought uh a lot of British people thought that Germans could be spies. Sure. And they would uh so they had started really cracking down on German citizens, really some ugly stuff. They they had a a law where you had to register with the police and you couldn't more move more than five miles, you couldn't move around more than five miles from where you lived. They would sh they shut down all the German clubs, all the German newspapers, all the German businesses. The government forced them to shut down. And then probably worst of all, they in um they put all the males that were of military age that were German in internment camps. Did not know this.

SPEAKER_02 12:46

Yeah, what a what a uh you know reoccurring, uh very unfortunate reoccurring thing that has happened, you know, so many times.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

And when I say military age, I mean between the ages of 17 and 55. So basically all the men that were German had to be put in these prisons, basically, camps, right? In England, like in England, in England, wow. One of the biggest ones was a camp called Nokalo. It's actually on the Isle of Man. Have you ever heard of the Isle of Man? Do you know where that is? Yeah, it's between uh Britain and and Ireland. It's uh it's a an island out in between those two. And so they had 23,000 people in that camp at one time, all German men. Uh and that camp is still it's a tourist attraction today. You can go and kind of see what they had to go through. I'd I would love to uh to check that out.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

Did did uh Pilates get sent there?

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Yeah. So first he got sent to this place called Lancaster Castle. They'd put him in a lot of these old castles, and he taught wrestling and self-defense. I mean, you gotta, it's not it wasn't like um extermination camp. They weren't killing Germans.

SPEAKER_02 13:53

No, no, it was it was just they wanted to hold them in case they were spies or in case uh, you know, because they were at war with Germany.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Right. So they'd have to do something while they were there. So he taught wrestling and he taught self-defense, and during that time he was studying yoga. He would get books and he'd study yoga, but he would also study animal movement, especially he was especially intrigued with the movement of cats. So he said he would lie in the woods for hours hiding and watching animals move and looking and see how the mother taught the young. He would do that when he was a kid, he would do that while he was in these uh camps. He would just kind of look and see how animals moved. And this is where he started his um mat exercises. And he called it, he didn't call it Pilates, he called it contrology. Contrology. Contrology. And the idea was to use the mind to control your muscles and focus on the core. Now, when we talk about the core, which is also called the powerhouse, they're the they're synopsis.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

Ah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

We talk about the core, you you usually are thinking about the abs, right? And it's actually the abs, the lower back, and the hips. It's everything that can kind of keep you from being injured. And if you concentrate on strengthening the core, you can really avoid injury, especially in your old age, even just moving around doing stupid things like you know tying your shoes or buckling your seatbelt, you know, if you're a strong core, that can result in injury. And it's the big reason that I still do Pilates, just make sure that I don't get hurt doing something stupid. Um, and you know, Pilates a little different than yoga because it's more like a workout than yoga is, and it's less of less about the spirituality and the breathing. Uh, but some of the poses are the same. For example, the plank, uh, you'll find, you know, doing a plank is you'll find that in both yoga and and Pilates. So he was sent to the Isle of Man, that Nakalo camp, um, and it was there he was um he was working in the infirmary, you know, the hospital.

SPEAKER_02 16:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

And he was told, he said, Can I work with these people? Can I make them? He thought he thought that his exercises would make people healthy, you know.

SPEAKER_02 16:12

And these are these are German men that are that are just there in the infirmary, and he's like they're just like wanting to help them out.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

And they said, You can do anything you want with them as long as they stay in bed. Because at the time, the kind of the the uh conventional wisdom on on hospitals was that bed rest was the cure to everything.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

Okay, the leeches.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Yeah, that the you need to do have bed rest. So they said you can do anything as you want with these people as long as they stay in bed. So with that um kind of parameter, he invented what I just explained to you was the reformer. He used uh out of a hospital bed, he used uh he had a had springs and he made the carriage thing, and he basically made this reformer exercise machine out of a hospital bed, and technically he was letting them stay in bed. Yeah, even though he was inventing this exercise machine. Isn't that cool?

SPEAKER_02 17:11

To make their to make their core stronger.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, at the time he was focusing on the whole thing, the contrology, all of it, the the controlling the muscles in the the core. But yeah, he was he was uh he was trying to make them healthier.

SPEAKER_02 17:27

And and by the way, I just want to say Contrology. If if I was ever gonna be a professional DJ, that would be my DJ name.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

Yeah, I was gonna say it does sound like kind of a prog rock uh album from back in the day, like um, like uh Steely Dan. Uh did you get the uh 1978 Contrology album from Steely Dan? Right, double album. Um but you know, in 1918 they had the Spanish flu, you know, that a lot of people compared COVID to, and it was the pandemic. Not a single person in um in this camp that uh that Pilates was in got the Spanish flu.

SPEAKER_02 18:05

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Which was kind of a big deal if you compare it to COVID. It's like going around everywhere, and he I think attributed a lot of that to him.

SPEAKER_02 18:15

He thought because these people were strong.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Because he was, yeah, even the ones that were sick, he was preventing them from getting the Spanish flu. Actually, the it might have been because they were isolated on an island. Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say they were on an island, completely quarantined from the rest of the world. But if the Spanish flu had come to that island, it would have ripped through. And uh, who knows if it if it would have had any effect. But um if you compare it to how things are today, I mean, everyone's looking for kind of a secret to um to to making them you know immune from the the pandemic, and uh he thought he had it in Contrology.

SPEAKER_02 18:55

Well, so so a question, I mean, and I guess maybe you're gonna, as you continue continue the story, you might cover this, but why is it that my perception of of this art and this type of exercise, which is now called Pilates, is that it's skinny, um, wealthy white women. And and it turned out it was maybe all different types of body types of because it were just sick, sick German German men. Yeah, like why why why how did it change from because you know you generally think of uh German men as being pretty macho and pretty manly, and you know, let's let's uh roll in the mud and kill some kill some animals and you know wear antlers on our head. I mean, that's the kind of thing I think of like early 1900s German men doing. Sure. And and uh now it's you know who goes to Pilates at soccer moms.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

Well, you know, the exercise uh exercise didn't even really become that popular in the US uh as something that that people did um for a while. Maybe the 50s. Yeah, I mean uh you you think of the the three stooges when they would have that that uh machine that they'd uh hook up with that would move their uh around the waist stomachs, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:10

Yeah, that would kind of wiggle back and forth. That was that was exercise.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

That was kind of exercise. And then Jack Lelane, you know, in the in the 60s and and 70s, and then the Jane Fonda, and they would always and then the running boom, right? We'd kind of always had these uh late 70s, early 80s, these different phases. Uh probably had something to do with um, I mean, I don't think Pilates as we know it today was ever uh like it is today. I mean, he died in 1968, so I don't think he ever got to see it take off the way it is. I think you know, things like bar and and uh yoga, even and Pilates, even those things have been around a long time. I think studios where they can uh have rich white women uh kind of well now there's goat yoga, right?

SPEAKER_02 20:57

You've heard of goat yoga?

SPEAKER_01 20:58

Sure, and you had the bikram yoga with the hot yoga.

SPEAKER_02 21:01

Yeah, you know, there's actually actually I will say I've done the bikram yoga, and the the thing about that is it does first of all, you sweat like crazy, which I think is good for you to sweat, you know, sometimes to really sweat hard and get all your pores cleared out and everything toxins out, but also that heat sort of loosens up your muscles, right? So you so you you have more ability to stretch because everything is kind of looser and warmer versus like trying to just do it from cold.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Now, if you wanted to do a uh I don't if you maybe maybe future episode of Bikram Yoga, that Bikram was a son of a bitch, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:37

He uh Oh, I don't know anything about him.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Oh, he was a scam artist that uh really yeah, was really a bad guy. Um but we have a bikram yoga that now is now a mod pizza, and um every time we pass it, my wife makes the same joke about how they didn't have to um move the ovens.

SPEAKER_02 21:56

And and how it probably smells the same.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Yeah, that's a good one. I'll have to add that next time.

SPEAKER_02 22:02

Smells like pepperoni in here.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

Yep. Yeah, so I I mean I don't know why you have that perception, but probably because, you know, I mean, it's it's it's it's a technique that you can have in a studio and you can teach it. And um it has, you know, it's pretty simple to to to uh but it's also effective, you know. It it totally Wait is it simple?

SPEAKER_02 22:25

You did you kind of you kind of trailed off. You said it's pretty simple too, and then you didn't finish that statement because I've always heard that that actually Pilates is pretty complicated.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

I think it's probably it has basic principles to it. You know, the basic principles are like breathing, concentration, control, centering, precision, flow, movement, balance. Those are some of the basic principles. Now you can get pretty complex on those different like you can with any kind of exercise and and yoga included, right? I mean, anyone can do a cat cow or a child's pose in yoga, but to um to then advance to some of the more uh advanced moves, you know. But I think I think it's easy to uh it's easy to learn and it's stepwise, you know?

SPEAKER_02 23:16

Easy to learn, difficult to master, one of those kind of things.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Yeah, sure. And I think it's one of those things that there's no official certification like Pilates, the um the courts ruled in I think 2000 that there is no proprietary thing called Pilates.

SPEAKER_02 23:35

So I could I could open a Pilates studio tomorrow.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

You could, and there's no such thing as goats, right? And skinny white girls. Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_02 23:43

If if you want to throw away your money, I think that'd be bad for well so going back to uh the the subject of our story. Um, did he eventually get out of the internment camp?

SPEAKER_01 23:54

Yes, yes. So those camps closed at the end of the war. Um, so they were open for from about 1914 to about 1918. He went back to four years. Wow. He went back to Germany, and uh in Germany he started collaborating with dancers. Okay, dancers, and then he was training police officers. Those were his kind of his two markers.

SPEAKER_02 24:16

Wow, pretty, pretty different. Uh I mean I guess I guess I'm I'm immediately my mind goes to female ballet dancers, again, skinny but that's who we're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Female ballet dancers and then police officers. Um and he was training both, he would train police officers. I mean, this guy was a boxer, you know, so he had kind of looked like a tough guy. So he uh he got acceptance from them. But then, you know, by 1925, things in Germany were not looking great. Um if if if if you weren't happy with the the politics in Germany, you you didn't see any uh need to stay there. So he went to the US and he actually met his future uh uh companion. I don't think they were ever actually married, but uh they were together for 40 years. So let's call it his wife, um, his future wife on the ship on the way to New York. Uh it's kind of a great way to meet somebody when you're about to start a new life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, you're going to America, me too. And then they were together for the rest of his life. Isn't that cool? They actually founded a studio in New York City, and they he taught there until the 1960s. Wow. Now, the dancers in New York really loved this studio. They started going there and learning contrology because it built flexibility, it built stamina, it built strength, all those things that you really need as dancers. Well, then society women, and maybe these are the skinny white girls that you're talking about. Society women found out that this is where the dancers were going, and they came to and wanted to get, you know, look like these dancers.

SPEAKER_02 25:58

Manoiva. Have you heard all the dancers are going there?

SPEAKER_01 26:01

Yeah, we should go there too. Is that your 1920s uh New York uh woman?

SPEAKER_02 26:07

If it's good enough for a dancer, it's good enough for me, I say. It's a new character you're working on? Yeah, yeah. Her her her I don't know her name, but her friend's name is Minerva. Okay. Minoiva.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

Well, you can imagine that if this was the place that dancers were going to get flexible, to get strong, to to to uh get their flexibility, and this is where all the women needed to be. So he had a nice little uh uh studio uh going on here. And do you know the name of it? Oh that I don't I don't I think it might have been just called Pilates or Contrology. I mean, Contrology was the thing that everyone wanted to do. Studio Contrology. I mean it was him and his wife that did that did this. Um but here's the irony of all this is during all this time he was actually not a very healthy dude. He um he thought he was healthy, but he was a very heavy drinker. In fact, so much so that a lot of these dance uh uh companies wouldn't let him around anymore. He was drinking was was out of control, and he was a very heavy cigar smoker. Wow, and today those things just don't go together. But I just can't imagine a very heavy cigar, you know, because that's just gonna be really hard to keep you know back in the 50s and 60s we didn't exactly have that connection between health and smoking.

SPEAKER_02 27:39

No, no, it was just something people did.

SPEAKER_01 27:42

Professional athletes endorse cigarettes, sure. Um and and doctors, there's you can find Marlborough ads with testimonials from doctors.

SPEAKER_02 27:53

Yeah, they they they help you lose weight and they control your stress and relaxes, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

So he um but now his wife said that he turned to the drinking and smoking because he was upset that he never got the respect from the medical community that he deserved, and that upset him, so he kind of went on these benders and um and but he's a very heavy smoker and uh actually died of emphysema. Um now he was now he was 83, so you know uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:27

I mean that's even if you were healthy, you could die of emphysema at 83. That would be acceptable.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

Yeah. Um, but when you think of somebody that's so synonymous with like health or the health craze or fitness craze, um dying of emphysema because you smoke too much, uh that just is a little ironic. Um today though, 10 million people per in the just in the US alone participate in Pilates every year. Um, you know, he he thought it was the cure for a lot of different things. Um maybe it's not the cure for all those things that he thought it would be, but it is great for core strength, it's great for avoiding injury, it's great for posture, yeah, flexibility, balance, oh yeah, coordination, anxiety.

SPEAKER_02 29:15

I mean, I I have heard that if you do it and you do it regularly, it can greatly improve your flexibility, your ability to not get injured, you know. Even I think just the stretching parts of it are probably some of the more important, you know, it's kind of what yoga is a lot of that is flexibility and stretching and keeping those areas open so you get proper blood flow because you're improving your blood flow, which means that your um red blood cells get to places to heal faster, white blood cells, etc.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

I mean, I I don't know what I'm talking about, but no, you're right, and it sounds like flexible flexibility is really important in athletics too. And uh a lot of football players are turning toward to Pilates uh to help them um reduce injuries and increase flexibility. The thing about flexibility is the stronger you get, the um the less flexible you are. So without Pilates, you're almost guaranteed to get injured if if you become stronger and stronger and stronger. You're just losing flexibility. So by just doing things like open, you know, in improving the flexibility of your hips, um just that tight, that tightness that you get in your muscles, this really helps people. And people that do Pilates that are football players um are famously kind of injury-free and uh and swear by it. That it turns out that uh Pilates is uh every bit as important as uh time in the weight room. Prior to this research, I had heard a lot about how Pilates had never lifted a weight in his life. I've hadn't seen any evidence about that. I mean, the idea that he was a bodybuilder in his younger years, um, I find it hard to believe that he never lifted any weights. And instead of using, I mean, it's all about resistance, right? And weight in in strength training, it's all about resistance. So whether you're using springs or weights, it's giving you the same or your own body weight, right? Isn't a lot of it just your own body weight? Yeah. So if you do a plank, for example, or uh push-ups. Do you know do you know what hundreds are? Have you ever done hundreds? No, you know what that is? No, that's where you kind of you so picture. This is what I was afraid of with this episode was I gotta describe a lot of uh uh these poses for you. So uh the hundreds are it's kind of the most basic move where you're imagine your um head and neck are off the ground, your legs are also off the ground, right? You're on a mat.

SPEAKER_02 31:50

Are you on your back or on your front?

SPEAKER_01 31:51

Yeah, you're on your back, and then your um your arms are out to the side, but they're straight, and you're pumping them up and down, okay? And you do it a hundred times, I think is why they call it started.

SPEAKER_02 32:04

So you're just basically almost doing like a tiny little sit-up, um, but barely, barely moving.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

You're not moving anything but your arms. So you're kind of in that but you're lifting your legs off the ground. No, you but your legs are staying off the ground.

SPEAKER_02 32:18

Yeah, I'm I'm saying they're they're but they're lifted up. Like you're you're engaging your you have to engage your abs to lift your legs. Like six.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

Well, your legs aren't uh well no, actually you're supposed to have them kind of jackknifed. Oh um, so if you so you're like a V shape, basically, right?

SPEAKER_02 32:36

Uh okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

So any kind of mat exercises that you see, like V sits or hundreds or uh roll-ups or sit-ups or all this kind of stuff is kind of uh derived from Pilates where you're just engaging your core. Wow. Did he have any children? He did have children and didn't bring them to New York. Kind of went to New York by himself and stayed stayed there. I think his wife had died uh in um uh around the time that he went to the camps. Oh, so he was married twice. He was married twice. He had married right before he went to the camps, and then um and then and then I think his wife died, and then his kids didn't come with him.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

Um somewhere there might be um Pilates kids somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

Well, I read that his niece is uh kind of uh uh carrying the torch of the the exercise Pilates torch, although she says that the that they used to pronounce it um um Pilates. Pilates. But uh that never Pilates sounds a lot more you you can't change it now.

SPEAKER_02 33:47

You can't you can't charge $200 an hour for something called Pilates.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

So your perception of this is that it's just kind of a fad.

SPEAKER_02 33:59

No, no, no, no. I th I I think it's difficult. Like I've heard that it is quite difficult, especially when you're starting. Um, it's challenging, physically challenging. I think it was sort of a fad. I mean, I feel like I started hearing about it maybe 10-15 years ago. Like it it is when it became you know, sort of mainstream popular. Because yoga, I mean, yoga is ancient, right? Yoga came from the yogis, and it's yeah, it's been around for thousands of years. Pilates or Pilates, as the wealthy call it. Um, I don't feel like I had ever heard of that. When when did you first hear about it? You had never heard of it in high school, had you? I don't think so. But you had heard of yoga.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

Yeah, yeah. I always found yoga to be intimidating, and also my perception of yoga was that it wasn't it was different than exercise or it's different than working out. Well, whereas Pilates you could incorporate with a workout, and that yoga was more spiritual, even though a lot of the stuff is exactly the same.

SPEAKER_02 35:05

Well, okay, so I've I've done I've probably done 50 yoga classes in my life, and and that's because my wife likes to go and and we did have a a beakram yoga place near our office that a whole group of us went to for like a year, you know, like every other week or something. So my experience with yoga is that it is a lot of stretching. It's a lot of kind of like getting into these positions where you're stretching muscles and it really kind of hurts. You're holding things like planks, but not not as much. But um, but no, I mean it it was about breathing, and it was sort of there was a little bit of a sort of hippie-dippy vibe to it as far as you know, breathe in the love and breathe out the jive kind of thing. But um meditation, guided meditation. No, no, not not not as much. Well, I mean, I would walk out of pretty much any yoga class I've ever done, walk out feeling like I had had a workout. Oh, really? Now, was it was it like a like a hit session, you know, or hit what do they call it, hit uh trainings, you know, like boot camp kind of workout? No, but it was definitely a workout, and my understanding was Pilates was even the next level, it was like taking it a little bit further.

SPEAKER_01 36:16

Yeah, I mean I think that's probably fair to say. I mean, you could you'd leave a Pilates session with really sore.

SPEAKER_02 36:21

Sweatings. So so you asked earlier if I thought Pilates sounded or seemed like a fad. And I would say it's not a fad in that it's going to be gone, but I feel like it had a some buzz around it 10 years ago. You know, it was kind of a big thing. And then I think bar became the thing that that that became more popular to do. Um, the studios that were opening up and and uh becoming popular and charging more money. And and then even during the pandemic, if you'll recall, Peloton, right? The the stationary bicycle, the Peloton, that's been around for a long time, but Peloton made it really, really popular and sort of almost this cultish kind of thing because we bought a Peloton, ironically, before the pandemic, we happened to have got one. Jody had always wanted one. She used to do a lot of spin classes at the gym. So we got one so she could do them here. It worked out great because she did them. But I just remember um listening to the instructors, and I just I couldn't stand it. It was very, I don't know, it felt very disingenuous. That's the big thing with me, with some of that um, you know, what might be kind of considered guided meditation or positive reinforcement. I feel like this person doesn't know me. You know, they're telling me I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, all that sort of thing. And I think on a surface level, that works and it sort of helps your brain, you know, if you say it to yourself, you'll start to believe it. But on the flip side of it, it always felt very disingenuous to me. I'd rather have somebody give me a good hard workout without the pep talk, but maybe a little bit of pep talk at the end, you know, uh, like, hey, you did a great job, you're getting better, that sort of thing, versus, you know, um, you you know you hate yourself. Well, you shouldn't hate yourself. Well, I don't hate myself. You know, I don't I don't need to know about all these things I should be letting go of because there aren't any for me, or not very many.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

I I guess I sound like a grumpy old white dude, but maybe we should start a company where we bring back the that three stooges um machine. And we have medicine balls, yep, yep, yuck. But we no, we we have the thing that that you put around your waist, and then we have but like in a more modern way, like Peloton, where we have an instructor screaming at you while you're doing it.

SPEAKER_02 38:37

They're going, uh what would that uh what would that even sound like?

SPEAKER_01 38:43

I love uh what are the what are those machines called? I mean, they're all they do is just uh uh vibrate you.

SPEAKER_02 38:50

Yeah, they just shake you. They're supposed they're supposed to. I don't know, people thought they could lose weight from them. So we took a tour of a castle one time, um and this person who had founded it was or the person who had built it was um his last name was Bourne. I can't remember his first name, but he was the person who invented the Singer sewing machine, or he was the CEO of the Singer sewing machine company. Maybe it was Singer born. No.

SPEAKER_01 39:17

Sounds like a future episode to me.

SPEAKER_02 39:19

His daughter lived in the castle for a period of time, and there was an exercise room like from the early 1900s, and it had one of those machines. Oh, it did, yeah. Yeah, I've seen one in person, and it was the original one. It's I mean, it's been there the whole time, they never moved it out. It just didn't have a belt, right? It had a belt with the vibrating thing. It had she also had this device that you got into that had light bulbs in it. Uh, you know, kind of a shout back to Edison, but um, you it was a like a coffin thing that opened sort of vertically. You went in it and then it closed around you like a clamshell, and then you turned on these light bulbs, and that was supposed to be good for you for some reason.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

Yeah, that sounds that sounds amazing.

SPEAKER_02 39:58

So so maybe maybe our business idea is to open an exercise studio that uses old fashioned methods in a modern way.

SPEAKER_01 40:08

Oh yeah. Uh email us if you if you would subscribe to something like that.

SPEAKER_02 40:12

If you joined for $65 a month, unlimited classes, um, in the in the Texas area, we we would open it in Bass Drop, right? So we both have to drive to get there.

SPEAKER_01 40:22

So according to Wikipedia, the other besides the reformer, the other apparatuses that the that Pilates invented were one, and it doesn't have links to any of these, so I can't really see what they're what they actually are. One of them is called the Cadillac, one of them is called the Wunderchair.

SPEAKER_02 40:41

Oh, sounds very German.

SPEAKER_01 40:43

Wunderschunchair, the high electric chair, and electric is in quotes, high electric chair.

SPEAKER_02 40:50

I wonder if that's the thing with the light bulbs in it.

SPEAKER_01 40:53

The spine corrector. That sounds like a it sounds like a WWE move. Yeah. Spine corrector.

SPEAKER_02 41:00

He just smashed him with a spine corrector.

SPEAKER_01 41:03

The ladder barrel and the pedipole. Wow. Pedapole.

SPEAKER_02 41:08

Yeah. I mean, those are things that probably, like you said, were allowed the person to stay in a laying down position per the instructions. You can do whatever you want with them, just don't take them out of bed.

SPEAKER_01 41:20

It's just funny because I don't use any, I don't use a reformer anymore. I don't use any of the uh stuff. I use all the mat stuff. You don't need apparatus. I think from his perspective, though, it made it more proprietary, right? If you if you have to buy this machine to do it, otherwise, I'm just teaching a bunch of exercise. How could I possibly make any money off of that? I gotta buy you gotta buy the equipment too. That's the only way to make money off of it.

SPEAKER_02 41:45

Yeah, and I guess I guess you know, if you're thinking about franchising this and you wanted people to buy the equipment as part of their franchise deal. But he never did that. That's the thing, is that now Pilates? He never opened any other studios and never licensed it.

SPEAKER_01 41:58

It was just the one in New York, huh? Right. So now you can you can definitely take classes on how to be a Pilates instructor, but there is no certification or anything like that um the way there is with most things now. That yeah, you know, Moose new equipment. It's it's too bad because um there's now there's just so many variations of it. Just to give you an idea, I went to a Google search and it would say, What are the six principles of Pilates? And then somebody else would say, What are the seven? And you so you'd see a studio in California said this, these are the six principles of Pilates. You'd see another studio say, these are the seven principles of Pilates. So you see another one, these are the eight, these are the nine, these are the East Coast, West Coast thing, right?

SPEAKER_02 42:40

It's like different styles of rap.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

Everybody's got their different number, but there is no kind of franchise way of doing official one-way certification um that's that's accepted by like a Pilates organization right now. They're kind of all over the place.

SPEAKER_02 42:57

The NPO.

SPEAKER_01 42:59

But in a way, also it's a little more um uh important that now his name is so big that uh any kind of core exercise can be referred to as Pilates, like this corner that term.

SPEAKER_02 43:13

Yeah, it's become like Xerox, you know, it's just become uh where where you use the proper name instead of the uh, you know, let's let's have a Zoom call or let's sell it on eBay. Well, you might sell it on a different platform, but you still, you know, eBay it or yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:30

Yeah. So uh I hope you learned a little bit about Pilates today.

SPEAKER_02 43:34

Uh I learned I learned a lot because I didn't know much to begin with.

SPEAKER_01 43:38

Next time you are uh having your abs hurt, uh maybe uh yeah, maybe they hurt right now from all the laughing. Next time you hurt yourself uh trying to put on your seatbelt, maybe think about uh maybe trying to do a Pilates session or something.

SPEAKER_02 43:53

Okay, I will. Hopefully, uh let's do one together.

SPEAKER_01 43:56

All right, man. Would that be weird? That was that was uh yeah, that was uh Joseph Pilates.

SPEAKER_02 44:01

Next time I look at an anatomical chart, I'll I'll think of him.

SPEAKER_01 44:05

Of a 14 year old boy.

SPEAKER_02 44:07

All right, goodbye, everybody. Thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_01 44:11

Bye.