About Pilates

​Pilates is for everybody that likes to keep their body strong and fit. Pilates will improve the strength, mobility and flexibility of all your body muscles and increases the strenght of your core​​. It can help you to prevent or recover from a back or neck pain, and allows you to relieve stress and tension in your muscles and joints. By doing pilates one will regain correct body posture​​ and coordination. In case of imbalances in your body (e.g. handiness or misalignments) pilates will be able to identify these imbalances and re-train the body to improve them. On the long term it will avoid wear and tear of ligaments, bones and joints and helpts you to regain full body balance. Not only can pilates prevent the possibility of an injury, for example when exercising​ other sports (jogging), it also works to strengthen and regain mobility, or correct the neuromuscular patterning ​after an injury.

Joseph Pilates

The one to thank for the unique way of Pilates movement is the German Joseph Pilates, born in Germany in 1883 and the founder of what he called "Contrology". Appearing to have been a frail child, suffering from asthma, rickets and rheumatic fever, and having a strong drive to overcome these ailments, Joseph Pilates became a master in gymnastics, bodybuilding, diving, and several other physical activities. After he moved to England, and the First World War broke out, he - being German - was interned on the Isle of Man, where he developed his own technique of physical fitness, and ultimately worked with patients to cure them from wartime injuries and diseases. It was also during this period when he invented several pieces of equipment, of which the reformer and cadillac are now still used in many Pilates studios. Joseph Pilates emigrated to the USA in the early 1920s and, together with his wife Clara, developed and started teaching his method in their first Pilates studio in New York in 1926. Soon, circus performers, gymnasts and dancers recognized the value of his work, and his deep understanding of how the human body moves. Over the course of his career, Joseph Pilates developed over 600 exercises. His guiding philosophy was that one should exercise the body as a whole, in order to achieve optimal body alignment, positioning and balance. For him "Contrology" was not only a series of exercises, but also a holistic way of life, and a path to total health.

You will feel better in ten sessions, look better in twenty sessions, and have a completely new body in thirty sessions.
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- Joseph Pilates

The Pilates principles

According to Joseph Pilates, 6 principles should be prevalent when exercising and teaching. These principles are as follows:

1. Breath
2. Concentration
3. Center
4. Control
5. Flow
6. Precision

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​During the course of further and recent development of Pilates, taking into account new development and discoveries, several principles were added by followers and successors of Joseph Pilates, such as by the founder of BASI Pilates, Rael Isacowitz:

• Awareness
• Balance
• Efficiency
• Harmony

​All these principles are equally important, yet at times, certain principles may be stressed more than others.

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"Physical fitness is the first requisite of happiness. Our interpretation of physical fitness is the attainment and maintenance of a uniformly developed body with a sound mind fully capable of naturally, easily, and satisfactorily performing our many and varied daily tasks with spontaneous zest and pleasure."

- Joseph Pilates