WHAT IS PILATES ?

Born in Germany in 1880, boy with fragile health, he starts to practise sport and became an eager sportsman throughout his life and an accomplished athlete, in 1912 he settles down in England. When World War 1 began Pilates was a prisoner, there he starts to elaborate a gymnastic methos on the floor which was very efficient. He tested on the prisoners the effects of his exercices.Most of the peolpe were infected by the flu whitch killed thousands of people at that time, exept the group of prisoners he trained. His notority just started.

Pilates who was a nurse, refined his technique while working in a hospital during the war to prevent muscular losses in the injured soldiers, while caring for their injuries.Pilates made them practise exercices with springs attached to their beds. Assistance and resistance was at the base of the conception of the apparatus that completed the Pilates method.

In the 20's, Pilates got settled in the United States, where he opened his first of Body Conditioning(1926). The succes of his method became clear in the early 80's, when an important center of preventive medicine(St Francis Memorial Hospital S.Francisco) based the reeducation on the Pilates Method. Pilates lived until the age of 87 and left behind him a technique, a way of life and a tradition.

There are about 800 Pilates studios in the world.