He developed Pilates while looking for a solution to his own diseases: Who is Joseph Pilates?
Joseph Hubertus Pilates, the creator of Pilates, was born in Germany in 1880. When he was born, he had rickets and asthma, and doctors told his family that he would not live very long.
Joseph Pilates spent most of his time at home, browsing through various books on medicine and especially Far Eastern sports, looking for solutions to save himself from these two troubles. He aimed to seek solutions to his own diseases by reading medical and sports books. That's why he specialized in yoga, skiing, dance, self-defense sports, and weight training, and created Pilates as a combination of all these...
When the First World War started, he was employing British police officers in England. Later, he returned to Germany and started employing soldiers who were seriously injured in the war, lost various organs, or whose organs were about to lose their functions.
Joseph Hubertus Pilates (9 December 1883 – 9 October 1967) was a German-born physical trainer, writer, and inventor. He is credited with inventing and promoting the Pilates method of physical fitness. He patented a total of 26 apparatus in his lifetime.
He achieved tremendous success with classical pilates movements. In 1926, he decided to go to America, where he met his wife Clara, who was a nurse, and they opened their first Pilates studio together in New York. For a long time, men were his first customers, and then women also started taking lessons.
The husband and wife began to constantly create new movements, constantly try them on their own bodies, and teach and have their students perform the Pilates movements with which they were successful...
Joseph Pilates trained boxers and New York ballet students who had very heavy training programs. When he died in 1967 at the age of 87, he left behind dozens of classical pilates movements he created, thousands of people who got rid of posture disorders, whose bodies were in shape, who got rid of excess weight, and who built healthy muscles...
DETAILS FROM THE LIFE STORY OF JOSEPH PILATES, THE INVENTOR OF PILATES
Joseph Hubertus Pilates was born on December 8, 1883, in Monchengladbach, Germany. Joseph was one of the family's four children. Joseph's father, who spent his childhood suffering from rickets, asthma, and rheumatic fever, was an award-winning gymnast and his mother was a naturopath (treatment with physical methods). Joe, who is very fragile due to his illnesses, has been the subject of ridicule from time to time. This situation and the family background probably affected Joe's lifestyle, range of motion, and interest in health.
Joseph Pilates went to England in 1912. When World War I broke out in 1914, Joe's German citizenship made him a citizen of an enemy country and he was sent to an internment camp on the Isle of Man. In this camp, Joe not only gave fitness, wrestling, and defense training to his friends but also started working with the injured in the camp. He invented beds using pulleys, springs, and straps to help bedridden patients in the camp hospital with their exercises. These adapted beds constitute the primitive versions of the pilates equipment we know today as reformer and Cadillac.
Many attempts have been made to make the Pilates name a brand. Finally, in 2000, the court ruled that pilates was an exercise technique like yoga and karate, and therefore it could not be turned into a brand or monopolized by an individual.