Pilates Instruction

Never.  BodywoRx has accommodated clients from ages 14-101.  Yes you read it right…101.  Pilates can be done at any age because Pilates benefits all with bodies that want to keep their body moving and their spine flexible and young.

Pilates is a method of movement that focuses on core postural muscles that support the spine and overall body balance…the little guys that don’t get attention in weight training, but do the everyday work of supporting your natural functions.

Pilates is the continuum of healing after physical therapy.

Pilates and physical therapy are separate modalities.  However physical therapist are now intrigued with Pilates because of the progress that clients make when doing Pilates.  Pilates was developed to improve physical strength for the whole body system to eliminate dis-ease.  Originally Joseph Pilates took injured and sick people through the method of movements with the definite intention of rehabilitating them and then later rehabilitated dancers in New York.

This day in age we cannot say that Pilates is a form of rehabilitation.  Physical therapy which is known for rehabbing clients, often gets a client back to the way they were functioning prior to a sickness or injury.  Pilates improves the body beyond the “normal” way the client was functioning.  In order to see remarkable changes within your body, a client must work with an experienced Certified Pilates instructor who is comprehensively educated and offers equipment training!  The equipment takes clients through movements that they can’t do on their own and opens the door for tremendous progress and change.

Pilates is your foundation for enjoying your life.  Do Pilates so that you can keep doing all the activities you love throughout your life.  Or use Pilates to gain back your strength…and enjoy again the things that you use to do.

It will give you the tools and body memory to do all the things you love more efficiently with healthy and supportive movements. Pilates will be your Strength, Flexibility, Awareness, and Breath Training along with increasing your Stamina and Core Development.  In short you will be able to pick up your kids and grand-kids, play golf, shovel snow, bike around town, swim, practice yoga, continue your labor job, play, etc. because your body will be supportive and strong from doing Pilates.

In order to see remarkable changes within your body, a client must work with an experienced Certified Pilates instructor who is comprehensively educated and offers equipment training!  The BodywoRx Clinic offers you the opportunity to work with a an instructor that is a certified Pilates teacher who is also a graduate of The Pilates Center world renowned Teacher Training Program.

Don’t have the experience of going to a gym without a qualified instructor…you may attend a mat class and think you are doing Pilates, when really you are doing movement and stretches inspired by the Pilates Method.  Ask for the instructors training background and know that you are paying for and doing the true Pilates Method exercises.  It is these exercises that promote change in the bodies efficiency.

Insurance does not yet cover Pilates.  However, you can use your health flex/spending account to cover the cost of your Pilates sessions. In addition, many doctors will write a script so you can get the continuing support and healing your body needs to maintain good health.

Insurance does not yet cover Pilates.  However, you can use your health flex/spending account to cover the cost of your Pilates sessions. In addition, many doctors will write a script so you can get the continuing support and healing your body needs to maintain good health.

Comfy clothes.  Don’t worry, the instructor will give very detailed instructions every step of the way to support your new movements.

Start your learning with a certified instructor.  The instructor will help you learn supplemental ways to continue your learning at home once you understand the basics of Pilates.  The basics are only learn properly when working with a comprehensively trained instructor.

You must use what you have in matwork.  While doing matwork you must support your body solely which is more difficult than being supported by a Reformer.  The Pilates equipment, including the Reformer, supports and assists your body’s weight and movement allowing the deeper muscles to work with less strain…creating a deeper workout to occur without stressing the body’s joints and muscles.

Joseph Pilates invented equipment with specific specification for the Pilates Method exercises.  The equipment must be used in conjunction with the exercises to allow the body to be supported the way Joseph Pilates intended.  Pilates was not meant to be practiced without equipment.  The equipment is essential to the bodies progress in uniform development!

The BodywoRx Clinic offers authentic Pilates equipment manufactured by Gratz Industries which includes the Magic Circle, the Mat, the Reformer, Electric Chair, Wunda Chair, Barrel(s), Cadillac, Arm Chair, Pedi Pole, Twist Pole, Head Corrector, Foot Corrector, and more.

“To achieve the highest accomplishments within the scope of our capabilities in all walks of life we must constantly

strive to acquire strong, healthy bodies and develop our minds to the limits of our ability.”

– Joseph Hubertus Pilates

Pilates is a guy’s name…Contrology is Pilates’ legacy! 

Joseph Pilates is the guy who developed “Contrology”.

When he died, Contrology became known as and was re-named Pilates.

Joseph H. Pilates was born in 1883 in Mönchengladbach, Germany. His father, Heinrich Friedrich Pilates, was a prize-winning gymnast, and his mother worked as a naturopath.

Pilates was a sickly child and suffered from asthma, rickets, and rheumatic fever, and he dedicated his entire life to improving his physical strength. Besides skiing frequently, he began studying body-building, yoga, “kung fu” (probably what is now known as qigong), and gymnastics. By the age of 14, he was fit enough to pose foranatomical charts. Pilates came to believe that the “modern” life-style, bad posture, and inefficient breathing lay at the roots of poor health. He ultimately devised a series of exercises and training-techniques and engineered all the equipment, specifications, and tuning required to teach his methods properly.

Pilates was originally a gymnast, diver, and bodybuilder, but when he moved to England in 1912, he earned a living as a professional boxer, circus-performer, and self-defense trainer at police schools and Scotland Yard. Nevertheless, the British authorities interned him during World War I along with other German citizens in an internment camp, first in Lancaster Castle where he taught wrestling and self-defense, boasting that his students would emerge stronger than they were before their internment. It was here that he began refining and teaching his minimal equipment system of mat exercises that later became “Contrology”. He was then transferred to another internment camp on the Isle of Man. During this involuntary break, he began to intensively develop his concept of an integrated, comprehensive system of physical exercise, which he himself called “Contrology”. He studied yoga and the movements of animals and trained his fellow inmates in fitness and exercises. It is said that these inmates survived the 1918 flu pandemic due to their good physical shape.

After World War I, he returned to Germany and collaborated with important experts in dance and physical exercise such as Rudolf Laban. In Hamburg, he also trained police officers. When he was pressured to train members of the German army, he left his native country, disappointed with its political and social conditions, and emigrated to the United States.

In about 1925, Pilates migrated to the United States. On the ship to America, he met his future wife Clara. The couple founded a studio in New York City and directly taught and supervised their students well into the 1960s. “Contrology”, related to encouraging the use of the mind to control muscles, focusing attention on core postural muscles that help keep the body balanced and provide support for the spine. In particular, Pilates exercises teach awareness of breath and of alignment of the spine, and strengthen the deep torso and abdominal muscles.

Joseph and Clara Pilates soon established a devoted following in the local dance and performing-arts community of New York. Well-known dancers such as George Balanchine, who arrived in the United States in 1933, and Martha Graham, who had come to New York in 1923, became devotees and regularly sent their students to the Pilates for training and rehabilitation. His exercise regimen built flexibility, strength and stamina. Soon after it became known that ballerinas were attending the Pilates gym on 8th Avenue, society women followed.

Joseph Pilates wrote several books, including Return to Life through Contrology and Your Health, and he was also a prolific inventor, with over 26 patents cited.[4] Joe and Clara had a number of disciples who continued to teach variations of his method or, in some cases, focused exclusively on preserving the method, and the instructor-training techniques, they had learned during their studies with Joe and Clara.

Joseph Pilates died in 1967 at the age of 83 in New York.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pilates

Pilates has been a vehicle for training elite athletes.  It has kept the spine young and flexible of the elderly.  A large population of women have found empowerment through Pilates teaching and participation.  Pilates has help the triangle, rectangle, hourglass, diamond, and round shaped people find inner strength in their core systems.  It has allowed the youth to gain tonality in muscles throughout the body to reverse the demands of sitting and inactivity.  Men are constantly challenged with the thousands of exercises to master.  Pilates give youth and health to any age person.

People of all genders, fitness levels, walks of life, ages, sizes and shapes are doing Pilates.  Pilates was designed by a man for men.  It was started by a man that taught men.  Men have been actively involved with Pilates from doing, to teaching, to building the industry from the beginning stages until current time.  MEN PRACTICE PILATES!

Pilates principles is to get into the powerhouse of movement and emphasizes moving from the center of the body.  Men’s fitness demands core strengthening, flexibility, balance, uniform development, and efficient movement patterns that work in harmony.  Pilates doesn’t just isolate muscles, instead it will integrate all to stabilize the trunk and protect the back…allowing men to do daily work, activities, and cross training with ease.