Joseph Pilates

debunking the least followed advice from Joseph Pilates that you need most.

We're going to have an incredible time here on the evidence based Pilates podcast.

This is your host, Dr. Adam McAtee, licensed physical therapist and passionate Pilates instructor of over 17 years.

And we love to ask questions.

And as an exercise scientist, as a physical therapist, I love asking questions.

In here, I'm going to question the value of a common narrative provided in the Pilates industry regarding a specific Joseph Pilates quote, which is not meant to be disrespectful to educators or disrespectful to Joseph Pilates.

This is 100% about the specificity of this quote being continued to share or shared nowadays to new Pilates instructors or the Pilates industry at large.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to go through a recent piece of content that was shared and popularized, or it was popular, and also had a lot of backlash to it.

Many men say they show up expecting a light workout, then discover they can barely lift their arms while holding a two-pound weight.

A little ironic because Joseph Pilates, the man who developed Pilates, to help rehabilitate wounded soldiers during World War I.

So who's taking Pilates at all, anybody?

I have not taken Pilates.

And I think that's like the biggest thing that's lost in how Pilates is taught today.

And I really, from the work that I've done with some of my older mentors, that is the secret sauce Joseph Pilates had that was almost bigger than him.

it was something very, very magical.

And so that magic, I think, is one of the hardest concepts for new instructors to really understand.

So it's like we went backwards in such a severe way when this was like sun exposure was the way to heal yourself.

Joseph Pilates knew it.

They knew this in military hospitals.

Like this was not controversial.

How I get time for books, I don't quite know.

In the Pilates industry, Eva Rinker has written a biography of Joseph Pilates, a German woman.

This book is really cool because she's a German historian, a German biographer.

She has no skin in the game.

So it's just a factual book about Joseph Pilates.

where there are lots of great books, but most people, if they knew him, they have an opinion of him.

And if they didn't know him, then they would like a myth around him, whereas she just wants facts.

Let's get into why there's it's gonna help improve your strength training But first explain the difference between like a map Pilates and then there's like the reformer

Pilates and Pilates was created by someone called Joseph Pilates and he noticed actually during the war that if he attached Springs to hospital beds Which is how the Cadillac and the reformer was born that he could help patients recover So the reformer and the Cadillac work was leading up to the mat work.

So the mat work is actually the advanced work.

Interesting.

Yeah.

And I would say don't use equipment to begin with, just your own body weight on the mat and build it up.

But so Joseph Pilates has this famous quote, which I really believe in.

He says, after 10 sessions, you'll feel a difference.