Hubertus Pilates and the Exercises He Developed While Imprisoned in a War Camp

According to rentechdigital.com, there are 3,615 Pilates studios in the US as of July 14, 2023. And even if your town doesn’t have one, your local gym might offer Pilates classes — it’s an exercise style with a lot of staying power, and it was started by this guy here: Joseph Hubertus Pilates (1883-1967).

Pilates’ background was interesting — he battled multiple sicknesses in his youth, taking to physical exercise as a way to develop his physical health — by his teens he was trained in gymnastics, body-building, and martial arts. All of this served him very well when, while laboring in a circus in England in 1915, he was rounded up by the British authorities because he was German, and sent to an internment camp called Knockaloe on the Isle of Man. Xenophobia dealt the same hand to thousands of other German emigrants in Britain.

There, Pilates decided to build prisoner morale by teaching them exercises. He later recalled watching the movement of cats, admiring their limberness and strength, and designed his physical routines with this goal in mind. Calling his style “Contrology,” Pilates even got the sick prisoners exercising — he took coiled mattress springs and turned them into resistance devices that patients could use on their beds.

After the war, Pilates found himself back in Germany, training police officers and continuing to develop his methods of physical instruction. But as his country grew increasingly militarized, he left for the United States, marrying his wife Clara on the boat they took en route to their new homeland.

Pilates earned enormous success in New York City and beyond, and continued to teach his exercises until his 80s.