OR

source:pilatezenergy.com
09 Dec, 1883
09 Oct, 1967
Advanced emphysema
German
Physical trainer
83
Joseph Pilates was a German physical trainer, writer, and inventor. He is credited for inventing and promoting the Pilates method of physical fitness.
Pilates was born on 9 December 1883 in Mönchengladbach, Germany. He was the son of Greek-born Heinrich Friedrich Pilates, a metal worker and enthusiastic gymnast, and his German-born mother was a housewife.
Growing up, Pilates was a sickly child who suffered from asthma, rickets, and rheumatic fever. Due to this, he dedicated his entire life to improving his physical strength.
As a young child, Pilates was introduced to gymnastics and body-building, and to martial arts like jiu-jitsu and boxing by his father. At 14, he was fit enough to pose for anatomical charts.
Pilates was originally a gymnast and bodybuilder, but when he moved to England in 1912, he earned a living as a professional boxer, a circus performer, and a self-defense trainer at police schools and Scotland Yard.
During World War I, Pilates was interned in a prison by the Britain authorities. While he was there, Pilates taught wrestling and self-defense.
Pilates also studied yoga and the movements of animals and trained his fellow inmates in fitness and exercises.
It was there that he began refining and teaching his minimal-equipment system of mat exercises that later became “Contrology.”
After World War I, Pilates returned to Germany and collaborated with important experts in dance and physical exercise such as Rudolf Laban.
Pilates met his wife, Clara, on a ship while he was migrating to the US in 1925.
Pilates died in New York City in 1967 of advanced emphysema at the age of 83.
Joseph Pilates
Joseph Pilates
Male
Advanced emphysema
Mönchengladbach, Germany
New York City, U.S.
Entrepreneur Smart, energetic and very perceptive people, who truly enjoy living on the edge. Joseph Pilates was passionate about physical fitness. And this inspired his entrepreneurial spirit to invent Pilates as a form of exercise.,
He patented a total of 26 apparatuses in his lifetime.
He invented the Pilates method of physical fitness.
He taught wrestling and self defense in prison during World War I.
He was the inventor and promoter of the Pilates method of physical fitness.