The History of Pilates:
From Joseph Pilates to Today

Hamburg and New York: The Method Takes Form, 1919–1945

After the war, Pilates returned to Germany and worked in Hamburg, training police officers and continuing to develop his method. He was reportedly approached to train the new German army under the rising Nazi government — an offer he refused. In 1925, he emigrated to the United States, and on the ship crossing the Atlantic he met Clara, a nurse who would become his wife, his collaborator, and ultimately the keeper of the method after his death.

The Pilates studio on West 56th Street in New York City — in the same building as the New York City Ballet — became the defining environment for the development of the classical method. The proximity to the dance world was not coincidental. George Balanchine sent his dancers to Pilates for conditioning and injury rehabilitation. Martha Graham and her company trained there. The method's emphasis on elongation, postural precision, and breath efficiency was a natural fit for the dance world, and the dance world gave Pilates its first sustained professional community.

Joseph Pilates published two books: "Your Health" (1934) and "Return to Life Through Contrology" (1945). The second contains the 34-exercise mat sequence that defines classical mat Pilates today — accompanied by Pilates' own eccentric philosophical framework blending anatomy, vitalism, and personal conviction. The writing is dense, opinionated, and fascinating. Reading it makes clear that Pilates was less interested in exercise science than in a comprehensive theory of human health that exercise was embedded within.

The Elders: keeping the method alive, 1967–1990

Joseph Pilates died in 1967, aged 83, in a fire at his studio — though some accounts dispute this cause and note that he was in poor health in his final years. Clara continued teaching at the studio until her own death in 1977. The method he left behind was kept alive by a small group of his direct students, later called the "Elders" — teachers including Romana Kryzanowska, Kathy Grant, Eve Gentry, Ron Fletcher, Lolita San Miguel, Bruce King, and Mary Bowen. Each had trained directly with Joseph or Clara and each carried their interpretation of the method forward.

Romana Kryzanowska, who had trained with Pilates as a young dancer and later ran the original studio, became the most influential of the Elders. Her lineage — Romana's Pilates — is considered the most direct transmission of the classical method. Many of the most respected classical teachers working today trained under Romana or her direct students.

For nearly two decades after Pilates' death, the method remained a specialised practice known primarily in dance, physical therapy, and a small network of dedicated teachers and clients. It had not yet reached its popular audience — that required two developments: the end of the intellectual property fight that had limited the spread of training programmes, and the emergence of the boutique fitness industry in the 1990s and 2000s.

The trademark decision and the contemporary explosion, 1992–2010

In 1992, Sean Gallagher purchased the rights to the Pilates name and began enforcing them — arguing that "Pilates" was a proprietary trademark that could only be used by licensed teachers. This created a years-long legal battle involving multiple Pilates teachers who had been using the term freely. In 2000, a US federal court ruled that "Pilates" had become a generic term — like yoga or karate — and could not be trademarked. The decision opened the market to independent teacher training programmes and allowed the method to proliferate rapidly.

Moira Merrithew and Lindsay Merrithew founded STOTT Pilates in Toronto in 1988, developing a biomechanically updated version of the method that explicitly incorporated neutral spine alignment, current understanding of spinal anatomy, and a systematic teacher training curriculum. STOTT became the dominant contemporary teacher training organisation globally — today the majority of Pilates instructors in commercial studios are STOTT-trained or trained in STOTT-influenced programmes.

The 2000s saw the emergence of boutique Pilates studios — small, design-conscious spaces offering reformer classes at premium prices to urban professional clients who were not dancers or rehabilitation patients. CorePower, Club Pilates, and dozens of independent boutique studios brought reformer Pilates to a mass market audience. The aesthetic of the boutique reformer studio — clean, minimal, expensive — became a significant cultural signifier in the cities where it took hold.

Where the method stands today

Pilates today is a genuinely global practice with two largely distinct communities. The classical community — connected through teacher lineages to Joseph Pilates himself — maintains the original apparatus, the original exercise order, and the original spring configurations. For them, the method is a precise inheritance that should be transmitted accurately.

The contemporary community — represented most influentially by STOTT and the boutique studio format — has incorporated four decades of sports science, functional anatomy, and motor learning research into the method. The exercises are similar, the principles overlap, but the rationale and the biomechanical emphasis differ in ways that are meaningful in practice.

Both communities agree on the essential things: the primacy of breath, the integration of the whole body, the importance of precision and control, and the understanding that Pilates is a practice that deepens over years, not weeks. The debate between them — often heated, occasionally petty — is ultimately a sign of the method's vitality. A practice that no one cares enough about to argue over is not a practice worth having.

Further reading