Popcorn Pilates

The Pil­ates stu­dio where I go is, togeth­er with lots of oth­er stu­di­os, host­ing Pil­ates Day. The first event was watch­ing film of Joseph Pil­ates in action, accom­pan­ied by pop­corn, com­ment­ary, and lots of laughter and aston­ish­ment at his meth­ods. And a hun­dreds com­pet­i­tion, just to get people warmed up.

I’m a big fan of Pil­ates and go at least twice a week when I’m not trav­el­ling. I star­ted on Pil­ates try­ing to avoid hav­ing sur­gery on my knees, which had star­ted dis­lo­cat­ing them­selves on a reg­u­lar basis. I’m for­tu­nate enough to live in a city with a very good rehab­il­it­at­ive Pil­ates stu­dio, which also is afford­able. Dianne Miller was one of the first people in Canada to study and teach Pil­ates, and runs the Dianne Miller Pil­ates Stu­dio (web site not yet oper­at­ive) in a way that I like. It’s a com­fort­able spot, with lots of good teach­ers and a good num­ber of interns. After a few months of Pil­ates, my knee prob­lem had basic­ally gone away and the rest of my muscles were start­ing to work bet­ter as well.

The biggest prob­lem with Pil­ates, and the reas­on for the pop­corn night, is that any­one can call them­selves a Pil­ates teach­er. The Pil­ates Meth­od Alli­ance is fund-rais­ing to cre­ate a cer­ti­fic­a­tion pro­gram. They cre­ated Pil­ates Day, where host stu­di­os hold vari­ous fund-rais­ing events. Pil­ates Day is May 15, but the Dianne Miller stu­dio star­ted a little early.

The Pop­corn night star­ted with a hun­dreds com­pet­i­tion (hun­dreds is one of the basic exer­cises) with cos­tumes, prizes, and much hil­ar­ity. I took pho­tos rather than com­pete; 10 minutes of hun­dreds is more than my abs can stand.

Dianne gave a talk about the prin­ciples of Pil­ates, and the reas­ons for set­ting up a cer­ti­fic­a­tion pro­gram. Then it was time for the pop­corn and the film — black and white foot­age from per­son­al videos made in the 30s, 50s and early 60s. Dianne gave lots of com­ment­ary, anec­dotes about Joe and Clara Pil­ates and how they worked (appar­ently he was the geni­us who came up with it all, but she was the one who actu­ally taught most people), and inter­spersed it with com­ments aimed at the interns as to which muscles to watch and what the effects of each exer­cise are.

Joseph Pil­ates was over 50 at the time the first film was made, and in his 70s for the later ones. His con­di­tion and flex­ib­il­ity was amaz­ing. I felt my knees creak in protest watch­ing some of the exer­cises. He does not seem to have been a patient man, how­ever, and I would believe that Clara was a bet­ter teach­er of his inven­tions. Even know­ing he was being filmed did­n’t stop him phys­ic­ally bend­ing people’s bod­ies in ways that would be con­sidered dan­ger­ous today. But, as Dianne poin­ted out, since nobody ever did get hurt in his stu­dio, he prob­ably had a sense as to just how far he could push people’s bodies.

Our under­stand­ing of bio­mech­an­ics and the import­ance of mov­ing muscles cor­rectly is improv­ing, not only in Pil­ates. In tee-ball classes for 5‑year-olds they teach them how to throw a ball prop­erly, some­thing I nev­er learned as a kid. Maybe the next gen­er­a­tion will have few­er knee prob­lems as well.