Priorities for Movement

Back in 1980 Philip Friedman and Gail Eisen, two students of Romana Kryzanowska, published the first modern book on Pilates, The Pilates Method of Physical and Mental Conditioning. This was, as far as I can tell, the first place that the "principles of Pilates" were set down in any formal way, though the ideas had certainly been circulating around Pilates studios for the previous 50 years. 

These principles are priorities for how the body should move, which is what Pilates is all about: Pilates is flowing movement from a controlled centre. 

Beyond “Core Strength” with Pilates

The term that is popular now is “core strength”, which is part of what we mean by “centre”, though there is more to it. The point is not simply that your “core” is strong or that you have abs, but that you move from the centre outwards. 

Two of our key concepts in Pilates are the “box” (which is really the rectangle of the torso from the two hips up to the two shoulders) and the powerhouse (the muscles at the core of the body: the abs, the back muscles, the back, inside and outside of the legs). Both "box" and "powerhouse" are included in what we mean by “centre” in pilates. 

Movement From the Centre Is Pilates Movement

Pilates movement comes from the centre, the strongest part of the body. The arms and legs (the “appendages”) are not the focus of attention, even though pilates has a noticeable effect on them. When we use the arms or legs they do not do the work, they enable the work which is to strengthen and deepen the powerhouse.

Learning to move from your centre will make a difference to your body. It is one of the ways that we work with people who have RSI, and it brings a totally different quality into all of your movement, whether that be dancing ballet, playing tennis, or lifting shopping bags and babies.

Movement from the centre is pilates movement.

The traditional Pilates method, still taught by groups associated with Romana Kryzanowska, Jay Grimes and other first generation “classical” teachers, is part of the C19 and 20 physical culture movement. Physical culture had as its aim the development of strong, healthy bodies, and it used gymnastic and stretching exercises to do this.

Mr. Pilates´ method for Body Control, or Contrology as he called it, is recognisably related to the many fitness systems which sprang up in Europe and the USA in the C19 and the first half of the C20.

Many of the actual exercises in Pilates are found in other systems: leg raises, crunches, sit ups, push ups and pull ups were ubiquitous. There is nothing surprising in this: Joseph Pilates was a German who trained in Europe and came into contact with many different physical culture systems which were current in the last decade of the C19 and the first decades of the C20.

What makes something Pilates is not the outward form of the exercise, but how it is done and with what goal.

Pilates was relative indifferent to the aesthetic of the movement and his goal was for a supple body, not a bulky one. He found inspiration in the Greco-Roman exercise tradition more from their fusion of body and mind than from their statues.

This contrasts with Sandow who measured the proportions of statues in museums and consciously worked to imitate it his own development. Pilates is more in the tradition of medical gymnastics because of his preoccupation with the “hygienic” (i.e. health) benefits of bodily movement. 

Pilates fused all the available resources of his time: his use of apparatus fits comes out of the German “heavy gymnastics” (with apparatus) tradition, his mat work looks like “light gymnastics” (without apparatus). The idea that you train on apparatus to be able to train without it is also found in other systems of the period. 

Echoes of this old fashioned physical culture survive in other places, but they are most obvious in Pilates and yoga. Physical culture has a lot to offer 21st century people, and pilates gives us the best experience of it that can be found in the modern world.