0:00

Welcome to Maintenance

0:02

Phase, the podcast that lays on

0:04

its back and bicycles its

0:06

legs up and down.

0:12

I

0:20

feel like you've answered the first question, which

0:23

is, Mike, what do you know about Pilates? Literally,

0:25

I did Pilates for like three weeks. And that's like

0:27

all I

0:27

remember doing. And then I quit because

0:29

it was hard. My tummy hurt. I'm

0:32

Aubrey Gordon. I'm Michael Hubbs. If you would like

0:35

to support the show, you can do that at Patreon. You

0:37

can also get the same audio content

0:39

on Apple Podcasts as a subscriber.

0:42

And you can buy t-shirts, mugs, tote bags,

0:44

all manner of

0:45

things at TeePublic. Michael,

0:48

today we are talking about

0:51

Pilates. Pontius Pilates.

0:54

That's what I always

0:55

think of as like a church kid every single

0:57

time. We are going to be talking about the

0:59

very surprising story

1:02

of how Pilates

1:04

came to be. I'm

1:05

so excited. I know nothing about Pilates.

1:08

It's just like a workout. Yeah. The way it

1:10

was sold to me originally was like it's like a combination

1:12

of like yoga and like CrossFit.

1:14

And then I signed up and I did it like

1:17

three times and then I didn't

1:20

see immediate results. And then I stopped. What

1:22

were the results you were looking for? I don't even

1:25

know. I was like, I just want to be like strong

1:28

and like flexible.

1:29

And then I wasn't either one. And I've

1:31

remained so. You wanted to be a willowy

1:33

Pilates lady? Also, the lady who was teaching

1:35

it, who was extremely nice, was like the buffest

1:38

human being I've ever witnessed in my entire life.

1:40

And she was like five foot one. And I

1:42

was like, this is the short queen energy that I want

1:44

so bad. But I also don't want to work out like

1:46

six hours a day. Fair.

1:48

I had a whole journey, Aubrey, a

1:50

whole emotional journey in that class. So

1:52

I am proud to report that this episode

1:55

is not going to be a ruiner. I'm

1:57

also proud to report that we don't have any really.

1:59

huge content notes. Wow,

2:02

for once. It just means we're not going to like get

2:04

into like extremely gnarly

2:06

oppressive attitudes today. Yeah, Pilates

2:09

seemed totally fine to me. It was just like

2:11

group exercise and you were stretching and doing set

2:13

ups and stuff like it was. Yeah, it was fine. I can I

2:15

can see why people like it. Are you ready

2:18

to get a little primer on Pilates

2:20

and then we'll dig in on this big long story

2:22

of where it comes from. The riddiest. So

2:25

Pilates was originally called contralogy.

2:28

Oh, I can see why they changed

2:31

the name. Yeah, that's terrible. It's not

2:33

great. It sounds like some sort of eye surgery.

2:35

Pilates is basically just a workout, right?

2:38

It's sort of focused on muscle

2:40

tone posture, this

2:42

kind of mind-body connection and

2:45

particularly on building abdominal strength.

2:48

Okay, the original set is about 50 individual

2:51

repetitive exercises that

2:53

can be done either on a mat or with

2:55

specific Pilates

2:56

equipment. Some

2:58

of the things that you talked about before things like yoga

3:01

and Tai Chi and Kapwera are

3:04

shaped over decades

3:07

or centuries by a whole

3:09

bunch of practitioners often

3:12

from like a shared geographic region

3:14

or ethnic community or religious tradition

3:17

or what have you. Right. That is

3:19

not the case with Pilates. There

3:21

is a single inventor.

3:23

It's Bob Pilates. It's Joseph

3:25

Pilates. Wait, so that's where the word comes from. It's

3:28

not even like a fancy word. It's literally just a dude's last

3:30

name. It's his name. Okay. Joseph

3:33

Pilates was born on December 9th, 1883

3:35

in Germany. His

3:38

mother was a naturopath

3:40

and his father was an avid

3:42

gymnast who had a gym. Oh,

3:44

okay. As a child, Joseph

3:47

Pilates reportedly had asthma,

3:50

rickets and rheumatic fever.

3:53

Mm-hmm. His father introduced

3:55

him to bodybuilding, boxing,

3:57

gymnastics and jujitsu.

3:59

And Joseph

4:02

Pilates talked a lot about finding strength

4:05

and finding relief in

4:07

his sort of workouts, right? That

4:09

that became a real source

4:10

of joy and strength for him. Strongmen

4:13

were sort of celebrities at the time. And

4:17

Joseph Pilates especially grew

4:19

up admiring a kind of strongman

4:22

celebrity of his day, someone named

4:24

Eugene Sandow. He

4:27

reportedly wrapped a chain

4:29

around his arm and broke it

4:31

by flexing his muscles. All

4:33

right. Some of these don't sound real. Well,

4:37

the thing that I was thinking is I was like, listen, I'm wearing a necklace that's

4:39

on a chain. I bet I could break that one. Yeah,

4:41

I guess it's like

4:42

defined chain for me, champ. He bent

4:45

iron bars was part of his act

4:47

just like, and at one

4:49

point he fought a lion.

4:52

These I don't know.

4:55

This is just taken from Eugene Sandow's like Tinder

4:57

profile. He

5:00

went on to open a line of gyms.

5:03

He wrote books. He published a magazine

5:06

and he argued that body culture

5:09

should train the whole body

5:11

in order to, quote, get rid of

5:13

the defects

5:14

that civilization and the changes it

5:16

has brought are responsible for making

5:18

humans neglect their own body. It's

5:21

the civilizational stuff again. We still see this now. It's

5:23

so fucking weird. Yeah, it's wild. Humans

5:27

are under

5:27

some sort of weird witches hex to just

5:29

do like the same stupid bullshit over

5:31

and over again in like many

5:34

domains, but especially in health and wellness.

5:35

So Joseph Pilates

5:38

in his young adulthood pursues

5:41

both gymnastics and bodybuilding

5:43

professionally. He was married

5:46

and widowed by the time he

5:48

turned 30. Oh, in 1912

5:52

at age 29, Joseph

5:54

Pilates moves from Germany to England

5:57

and he starts working in a wild

5:59

rain.

5:59

of jobs. He

6:02

is briefly a self-defense

6:04

trainer for local police and then

6:07

Scotland Yard. He

6:09

was a professional boxer and

6:12

he was a circus performer.

6:15

Oh, like a Cirque du Soleil, like acrobat

6:17

situation? He did two things. One,

6:20

he was a contortionist, so

6:22

he would be the guy who bends himself

6:24

into a pretzel, right? And two,

6:27

he did a thing that is hard to imagine as a

6:29

circus now because like my God, you

6:31

can't get away from it in city parks

6:33

in the US. He was the guy who

6:35

posed as a statue. Oh,

6:38

they used to do that in circuses? Apparently,

6:41

in his they did. So like look how bendy

6:43

I am and look how still I can hold myself. The

6:46

two greatest prize traits.

6:49

I mean, before TV,

6:50

there wasn't that much else to do, so you're

6:52

just watching a guy not move. Within a couple

6:54

of years, he settles in Blackpool,

6:57

which is a northern coastal town

6:59

in England. That is where he was

7:02

in 1914 at the outbreak

7:04

of World War One. Oh, OK. Do

7:07

you know much about what

7:10

the Brits did in response to the outbreak

7:12

of World War One? Well, I mean, they they thought

7:15

it. Sure. Yeah.

7:16

Yeah. I don't know specifics. World

7:18

War One began in July of 1914. By

7:22

August of that year, the British government

7:25

passed the Aliens Restrictions

7:26

Act. That

7:29

allowed them to intern anyone

7:32

who they suspected of espionage or

7:34

believed to otherwise

7:35

be a threat to national security.

7:38

Or anyone who held still for too long. Suspicious.

7:42

So over the course of the war,

7:45

over the course of I think the camps are open

7:47

for about five years, Britain

7:50

interned 116000 people under the Aliens Restrictions

7:52

Act.

7:52

That's

7:55

a huge infrastructure. According to

7:57

National Geographic at this time,

7:59

there were 57,000

8:01

German immigrants in Britain. Oh,

8:04

they locked up like everybody basically. They

8:07

went off the rails with this

8:09

thing, right? They went all in.

8:11

Joseph Pilates was a single man. He wasn't

8:14

fluent in English. He was a traveling

8:16

circus performer. In

8:18

a world where you're rounding up over 100,000 people, that

8:22

guy seems suspicious, right? It's sort of the

8:24

conclusion that they

8:24

come to. They would just go around humming 99

8:27

red balloons and

8:29

see who could hum along. From the future!

8:32

No, no, no, it's a shelf balloon. Joseph Pilates

8:34

was then required to register

8:36

himself as a quote unquote alien

8:39

with the local police station.

8:41

Good sign. And ultimately

8:44

he was sent to Nakalo internment

8:46

camp on the Isle of Man. Nakalo

8:49

was one of the largest

8:51

internment camps that the Brits operated.

8:54

Nakalo alone housed 23,000 prisoners

8:56

of war and 3,000

9:00

guards between 1914

9:01

and 1919. These

9:06

places were awful. A Swiss

9:08

doctor visited these internment

9:10

camps during World War I and

9:13

afterwards came up with the term barbed

9:15

wire disease to characterize the

9:17

sort of trauma and mental illness that he witnessed

9:19

there. It was seen as sort of a counterpoint

9:22

to shell shock, combatants had shell

9:24

shock and prisoners of war had barbed

9:26

wire disease was sort of the idea. Nakalo

9:30

internment camp is where Pilates is

9:32

reportedly

9:32

born. No way,

9:34

it's from a internment camp?

9:37

From a fucking internment

9:39

camp developed by Joseph

9:42

Pilates while he is a detainee. No

9:44

way, so I mean, I guess that makes sense why

9:46

it's all these kind of like do it yourself like

9:48

body weight style exercises. Totally,

9:51

so Joseph Pilates was there for

9:54

pretty much the entire remainder of the

9:56

war. He's there for four years. He

9:59

spoke and

9:59

wrote extensively

10:02

after the fact about the inspiration

10:04

for Pilates. Do you want to

10:06

know

10:07

what inspired him? Oh,

10:10

did he see like an upside down bicycle?

10:13

He's like, I should make kicks from that. The

10:15

thing that inspired him was the feral

10:18

cats that came to the camp in

10:20

search of food scraps. Wait, what?

10:22

So it's like cat exercises. He

10:25

said that he watched the ways that they stretched

10:28

and moved. And was

10:30

like really impressed by how sort

10:33

of limber they were. And he believed

10:35

that to be linked to their alertness

10:37

and their quick reflexes. I mean, probably

10:40

true. He's not wrong. We

10:42

got to get some cat movements. Yes,

10:44

this is downward cat. It was

10:46

because they were interned designed

10:49

not only to tend to folks physical

10:51

health, but also their mental health.

10:54

Right. He had this idea that

10:56

the mind and body are connected, which

10:58

is a very popular idea, but that

11:01

that connection can be lost. And he

11:03

developed what he called contrology to

11:05

sort of reestablish that connection. So

11:08

you read his actual instructions

11:10

on how to sort of do these exercises. There's

11:13

a lot of instruction about what

11:14

to focus on and what your mind should

11:16

be doing right while you're sort of doing these

11:18

exercises. Right. It's actually like kind

11:21

of a more appealing origin story

11:23

than a lot of other forms of exercise, where

11:25

it's like a guy trying to cope with this terrible situation.

11:28

There's

11:28

like lots and lots and lots of

11:30

better things about this. While

11:32

he was there, he reportedly led large

11:35

groups of internees in

11:37

these exercises. So

11:41

many articles, Mike, referred

11:43

to this as he had a captive

11:46

audience, which is so that's

11:49

not even like really a pun. Yeah.

11:52

But also like God help me if I have

11:54

to spend four years with a fucking fitness influencer.

11:57

Yikes. Yeah. Yeah.

11:58

Yeah. Did any of them use the phrase? is thin

12:00

mates. The person was. No,

12:04

no, no, we're not doing this. We're

12:07

not. I got more.

12:08

We can do these all. Michael, it's been a long

12:10

time since I fired you, but I feel

12:13

the time has come. You're

12:16

due for a review, Mike. So

12:20

this camp is also where Joseph Pilates

12:23

first developed his Pilates

12:25

equipment. There's Pilates equipment. Do you

12:27

know you've never seen the Pilates equipment

12:30

like the Reformer, I think is the most widely

12:33

used one. No. Hang

12:35

on. I'm going to send you a couple of pictures

12:37

of people using them.

12:39

Oh, wow. I never use these. Yeah,

12:41

yeah, yeah. So they're basically just like it's a series

12:43

of like springs and pulleys and that kind

12:45

of thing to add resistance to whatever you're

12:47

doing. Right. You see these in movies

12:49

sometimes somebody has like a strap on their feet

12:52

and then they sort of lift themselves

12:55

up and down with this series of pulleys by

12:57

like closing their legs or whatever and it sort

12:59

of slides them back and forth. It looks very

13:01

comical

13:01

to be honest, but I'm sure it's

13:03

a good workout. It looks goofy, but I bet it's

13:06

good. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like I'm a fan of

13:08

resistance and this kind of stuff. You like sliding

13:10

back and forth. I do like rolling. Famously,

13:12

I like sliding back and forth. Some people know about you.

13:14

Some of you are comfortable discussing publicly. Oh,

13:18

no. Oh, Mike. No, my

13:20

DMs. That's your fun fact when

13:21

I introduce you at cocktail parties. This is Aubrey. She

13:23

likes sliding back and forth. So Joseph

13:26

Pilates worked with a lot

13:28

of different kinds of people in this internment

13:30

camp, but particularly

13:33

focused on people who were in the infirmary.

13:36

He focused there because he was like that

13:38

felt like him, right? That felt like a place where

13:40

he could help. It felt like something that he recognized

13:43

and he had sort of seen the benefits

13:45

of movement in his own life and wanted to bring that

13:47

to more folks, which I imagine

13:50

led to some really helpful conversations and

13:52

some really exhausting

13:53

conversations. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The

13:55

beds in the barracks where most folks

13:58

slept were made of solid.

13:59

It was just a hardwood platform.

14:03

But the beds in the infirmary had springs,

14:05

which were way better for sleeping.

14:08

And they also gave Pilates an opportunity to

14:10

kind of tinker with parts. So

14:12

he started messing around with the springs

14:15

and first started rigging springs over

14:17

patients' beds so that they could

14:20

rest with their limbs elevated, for example,

14:22

like in cartoons, right? Yeah, traction.

14:24

Yeah, totally, exactly. And then

14:27

he started using those springs for

14:29

resistance

14:29

in different positions around

14:32

the bed frame and started doing his exercises

14:35

using the bed springs, right? Like those little

14:37

cords that everybody bought during the pandemic.

14:39

Yeah. The little rubber. The resistance bands.

14:42

Sloopity bands, yeah. So those

14:45

were some early prototypes

14:47

for equipment like the Reformer that

14:49

is still used in Pilates today.

14:51

Have I seen this man? I don't think you've shown me this man.

14:54

Are there photos of this man? We can see a photo of this

14:56

man. I want to see a photo of this man. I want

14:58

a mental image. You sound like

14:59

Hickey Palmer. Sorry to this man.

15:02

I'm the opposite of that. I'm

15:04

seeking more information about this man. Here

15:06

we go. Here he is when he's older. I

15:08

actually think that when he's older is like the

15:10

best,

15:10

wildest look at this guy. Oh,

15:12

wow, he's standing on a woman as

15:14

she's doing a sit-up. Holy shit. He

15:17

really enjoyed to stand on

15:19

people while they were working out. That was like

15:21

a thing that he did a lot of. Thank you to my

15:23

Pilates lady for not doing that

15:26

to me. For not standing on your abdomen.

15:28

My little abs. Show me a younger

15:30

one. Show me him in his peak physical form. Yes,

15:32

he is. Hang on.

15:34

Oh, no, that's him getting stood. Wait, here's him

15:36

getting stood on. He also requested

15:38

it, apparently. He was averse with

15:41

the standing

15:41

on. You keep doing

15:43

it. You can't tell. You

15:47

can't touch my people what we're like.

15:51

Very nervous.

15:52

Oh, wow. OK, so he's in. It's

15:56

like Grandpa underwear. It's

15:58

like a Speedo.

15:59

But it goes up like above his belly

16:02

button. It's a very diaper look.

16:04

He's being stood on and like,

16:06

I guess he's like doing a crunch as

16:08

he's being stood on and he's wearing ballet shoes.

16:11

Yeah, those are great. Those I've been

16:13

looking for like summer slippers. He's

16:15

got because of the way he's laying down, it looks like

16:18

he's wearing a little crop top. He really does.

16:20

I know. So then here is this is the other

16:22

photo that we've got. Joseph Pilates reportedly

16:24

at 57, which I struggle

16:26

to believe. Oh, yeah. And then at 82. Oh,

16:29

OK. Yeah. So he's he's

16:31

in he's in the diaper speedos. Obviously.

16:35

And he's out in the snow in

16:37

the 82 year old one, which

16:38

is demented. It looks like

16:40

maybe bare feet or in ballet shoes. He

16:42

also has a very deep

16:45

tan. You can see his transition into

16:47

influencer over this time,

16:50

because he's like at first he's just like a buff younger dude.

16:52

And then you can tell he's been like sort of on the circuit

16:54

for a while by the time he's an older guy.

16:56

So after he is released

16:58

from internment, Joseph

17:01

Pilates moved back to Germany.

17:03

First, he settled in Hamburg, then in

17:05

Berlin. He worked as a

17:07

boxing trainer and owned a

17:10

boxing gym.

17:12

He got remarried in that time

17:14

to another woman we know nothing about. OK.

17:17

He also filed his first patent in 1923 for

17:21

a piece of exercise equipment that he invented. OK.

17:24

Ultimately, he patented 26 devices

17:27

in his lifetime. Wow. Were

17:29

they mostly like Pilates, like resistance

17:31

bandy type stuff? Would you like to hear the

17:34

names of

17:34

his inventions? Yes, please. Trapeze

17:37

table. Wonder chair.

17:39

Magic circle. Foot

17:43

corrector. Pedopole.

17:47

Oh, no. Tough one.

17:49

Pedopole. Head harness.

17:52

That sounds like what you had as a kid to fix your teeth.

17:54

I agree. I was going to say,

17:56

I don't even have to translate head harness to

17:58

queer. Toe

18:01

and finger correctors, spine

18:03

corrector, ladder barrel,

18:06

guillotine and catapult. This

18:09

feels very like as seen on TV. Yeah,

18:11

totally. Are you tired of doing sit-ups

18:13

the normal way? Get the wonder

18:15

chair. Yeah, absolutely.

18:18

So ultimately what leads him to leave

18:20

Germany, because he does leave Germany, is

18:23

a job offer. Because he

18:25

had trained with police in Britain and

18:28

with Scotland Yard, he was asked

18:30

to train the German military police.

18:34

But that was part of an attempt

18:36

to begin to rebuild the nation's military.

18:39

And his experience at Nakalo left

18:41

him staunchly anti-war.

18:44

So he refused the job and was like, also

18:46

I don't like that we're rebuilding our

18:48

military. I don't want to be here for another war.

18:51

And in an extremely prescient move,

18:54

he immigrated to the US in April

18:56

of 1926. Dude, this is

18:58

by far the least problematic influence you've

19:01

ever discussed on the show. Honestly.

19:04

So he was like

19:04

anti-Nazi? Not

19:07

a given for this field. He

19:10

moves because a boxer

19:12

that he's training wants him to move to

19:14

New York and keep training

19:15

him. And

19:16

as an incentive, that

19:19

boxer's manager agrees to

19:21

finance a studio for

19:24

Pilates to teach his method in. Wow.

19:27

So they fully pay for him to

19:29

start a business and to run his

19:32

Pilates classes. Dude, this honestly,

19:35

I don't know why the Pilates

19:35

people are not marketing this more. It's

19:38

wild, right? It was developed in

19:40

an internment camp and the first studio

19:42

was a guy who was fleeing the Nazis? He

19:45

wasn't fleeing the Nazis. This

19:47

is the 20s, right? It's not

19:49

like things are imminent. He's just like, I

19:51

don't want to be in a state that's trying to build

19:53

up its military like this. It's not quite

19:56

as good as like anti-Nazi, but it's

19:58

still like canceling Germany.

19:59

because it's problematic. Absolutely agree.

20:02

On the boat over from

20:05

Germany, he meets a

20:08

woman named Clara Zunner, and

20:10

she becomes his wife.

20:12

Did he divorce wife too? We have no idea,

20:15

don't know. Okay. Couldn't tell ya. Lost

20:17

to time. They open a studio in New York

20:19

City. It's near a bunch of the city's ballet

20:22

studios. So, contralogy,

20:25

as he's calling it at this time, quickly

20:28

gained a following among dancers

20:31

who wanted to improve their

20:33

performance and also particularly reduce

20:35

their injury recovery time. His

20:38

role in the dance world is really cemented

20:43

when he successfully

20:44

rehabilitates a

20:46

modern dance icon named Ruth

20:48

Sandeney from an injury

20:51

that she thought was going to end her career. And

20:54

he's like, no it's not, and she goes to

20:56

him, and she is able to dance again,

20:58

and it becomes this huge sensational

21:01

sort of story. From there,

21:03

actors start to join in. He becomes a trainer

21:06

to Lawrence Olivier, Lauren

21:09

Bacall, and Catherine Hepburn.

21:11

And he develops a crew of sort

21:14

of

21:14

local devotees too. So,

21:17

many of them become pilates

21:19

instructors themselves. His classes

21:21

were $5 a piece. That sounds

21:23

expensive

21:23

for back then. Doesn't it? For

21:26

the 20s? Wait, let's put it in an

21:28

inflation calculator. Wait, do it, do it, do it. Five

21:31

dollars. Holy shit!

21:36

Whoa, okay, this is really stretching

21:39

to the stars. It's not for

21:41

the people.

21:42

Yeah, exactly.

21:43

At this point, sort of early

21:45

in the life of the studio, the

21:48

Method's sort of biggest asset

21:50

is one of its best instructors. Kathy

21:53

Grant is a famous black

21:55

dancer and chorus girl in New York

21:58

who came to Josephine. Pilates

22:00

for injury rehabilitation. And

22:02

she loved his methods so much that

22:04

she trains to become sort of certified

22:07

in Pilates. She trains more than 2,200

22:10

hours to get that certification. Wait,

22:12

what? 2,200 hours? That's like a college

22:14

degree. Her classes quickly

22:16

become some of the most popular in

22:19

the city because she's known to

22:21

be really fun, really

22:23

encouraging, and also really tough.

22:25

She was also known for creating adaptive

22:28

exercises for disabled students and

22:31

exercises to deal with specific sort

22:33

of symptoms that folks were experiencing. So

22:36

she gets more and more popular and moves to

22:38

larger and larger venues and ultimately ends up

22:40

teaching Pilates at the

22:42

Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. This

22:45

is the most

22:45

wholesome episode we've ever done, actually. I

22:48

was not expecting this. She is widely

22:50

cited as one of the most instrumental

22:53

sort of mentors in launching

22:55

a generation of Pilates

22:57

instructors. There are many,

23:00

many, many people who credit her as

23:02

their mentor, which is really

23:04

fucking cool. She seems nice. He

23:06

seems fine. Watch it. Last time I

23:08

said this halfway through an episode, it turned out we had a police

23:11

brutality subplot coming. So

23:13

there's probably more information you're going to tell me.

23:15

Yeah, totally. Pump the brakes,

23:18

buddy.

23:19

It's not going to be anything like that. But

23:21

he's just kind of a dick. He's

23:23

also very eccentric. So he

23:26

usually ran classes in his

23:29

tight little short shorts, his little somewhere

23:32

between briefs and shorts. He

23:34

wore those shorts. He wore sandals. And

23:36

that is it. His studio is

23:38

decorated with paintings, photos,

23:41

and sculptures of him. Oh,

23:43

nice. OK. And

23:45

most of them are him either naked

23:48

or in a loincloth. All

23:50

right, we're getting closer to problematic stuff.

23:53

We're getting back into familiar Mike and Aubrey

23:55

territory.

23:56

I didn't want to. We were going to get a nice

23:58

little detour with Cassie. and now we're back to the

24:00

weird shit that we normally traffic

24:03

in. He's about to mention Hunger Games. I

24:05

read a biography of him called Caged

24:07

Lion. And the biographer talks about

24:09

the first time he met him and he was like, he

24:11

shook my hand and then kept sliding

24:13

his hand up my wrist. And

24:16

he was like, I couldn't figure out what he was doing. It was

24:18

like for such a long time. And he was like, then I realized

24:20

he was taking my pulse. Oh, what? So

24:24

not the king of boundaries. Yeah, that's

24:26

a creep though. That's a weird creep. Totally.

24:31

But again, there's not anything like more sinister

24:33

than this that I'm aware of. Nothing came

24:35

up in the research except that he

24:37

had a really bad temper and was just like a dick

24:40

to a lot of people. And particularly

24:42

to students, if they frustrated

24:43

him, he would throw people out of class

24:46

regularly if they frustrated him. Not great, but

24:49

grading, but also still grading on a curve.

24:51

C minus you pass. Yeah,

24:54

C is for cookie and that's good

24:56

enough for me. So there's a 1962

24:59

profile of him in Sports Illustrated

25:02

that recounts this moment that the author

25:04

witnesses, the author of the article witnesses, Joseph

25:07

Pilates is telling a student off

25:09

for moving and I quote, like an elephant.

25:12

Oh yeah, that's not good. And it really upsets

25:14

her. She says he's calling

25:16

her an elephant. He says, quote,

25:19

I wouldn't insult the elephant. An

25:21

elephant could walk into this room and you

25:23

wouldn't hear it. An elephant walks

25:26

delicately, but you clump, clump,

25:28

clump. That doesn't sound

25:29

accurate about elephants. Americans,

25:32

baseball players, joggers,

25:34

weight lifters, straighten the knees

25:37

is what he says to her. Americans,

25:39

baseball players, joggers, weight lifters,

25:41

straighten the knees is like a

25:44

phrase that will come up again. I didn't even understand what

25:46

it means. He is profoundly

25:48

disapproving

25:48

of Americans.

25:51

Actually, let's do this quote now. This

25:54

is in his interview with

25:56

Sports Illustrated. So this is him talking

25:58

directly to.

25:59

the reporter and

26:02

this is the brickiest brick. I'm so sorry,

26:04

but it's wild as hell. The

26:06

fact that he talks

26:07

shit on Americans all the time is just gonna make me like him

26:09

more. Careful. Okay, he

26:11

says, Americans, they

26:13

wanna go 600 miles an hour and they don't

26:15

know how to walk. Look at them in the street,

26:18

bent over, coughing. You

26:21

men with gray faces, why can't

26:23

they look like animals? Look at a cat,

26:25

look at any animal. The

26:28

only animal that doesn't hold its stomach

26:30

in is the pig.

26:32

What? By exercising

26:34

your stomach muscles, you wring out the body.

26:37

You don't catch colds, you don't catch cancer.

26:40

You don't get hernias. Do animals

26:42

get hernias? I mean, maybe. I

26:45

don't know, Joseph. He seems

26:47

very confident. Do animals

26:49

go on diets? Eat what you want, drink

26:51

what you want. I drink a quart

26:53

of liquor a day, plus some beers

26:56

and smoke maybe 15 cigars. What?

26:59

And what do Americans do? They play golf,

27:02

they play baseball, they use half of their muscles,

27:04

a quarter of their muscles. They get fat,

27:06

they go jogging, they go on crazy diets, they

27:09

jump up and down in crazy exercises, they

27:11

have bad backs, they have beer bellies,

27:14

they slouch, they complain, they

27:16

have hernias. They

27:18

slouch, they complain, they have

27:20

hernias. This is fucking

27:23

incoherent. What else do you even say?

27:26

This is a rant that he goes on

27:29

often. He writes a couple of books

27:31

and this kind of stuff is in there where

27:33

he's like, why aren't Americans more like cats?

27:36

Okay. But

27:39

also he's like, the problem with Americans is like

27:41

they eat bad, they don't exercise, and then he's like, I

27:43

drink beer every day. I smoke

27:46

cigars. This is big drunk

27:48

uncle energy. Yeah, it really is like, what

27:50

do Americans do?

27:50

They play golf, they play baseball, they use

27:52

half their muscles, a quarter of their muscles. What

27:55

are you talking about? They're playing sports. What are you

27:57

talking about? They're playing the wrong sports? So I was

27:59

a prom kid. like you just fully

28:01

goes into the sketch. He also

28:03

writes books during this time. He

28:06

publishes a book in 1934 and one in 1945. His

28:10

first book is

28:12

called Your Health, a corrective system of exercising

28:14

that revolutionizes the

28:17

entire field of physical education. Which

28:19

I'm sure you read because you're

28:20

also a weirdo on

28:23

this stuff, but in a much better and different

28:25

way than him. I also read Return to Your Life Through Contrology.

28:32

What were they like?

28:34

They're bonkers. It's

28:37

a lot of photos of him doing

28:39

the exercises so you can see how to

28:41

do it, right? Which makes a lot of sense. But

28:44

the narrative parts are bananas. Also as

28:46

he's publicizing these books, he

28:48

starts making absolutely wild claims.

28:51

He claims that the detainees

28:53

that he trained with in

28:55

his internment camp, quote, ended

28:58

the war in better shape than when

29:00

it started. Oh. And that not

29:03

one of them got the flu during

29:05

the influenza

29:06

epidemic during the war. You

29:08

need to have more than one opinion in your life. You

29:10

can't just be like, we did exercise

29:13

so the internment camps were okay. Nobody

29:15

got the flu. Yeah. Nobody

29:18

got the flu. He

29:20

has some good stuff in his books.

29:23

To be totally honest, he talks about

29:25

the importance of, quote, hobbies

29:27

and all forms of play for, quote,

29:30

vitality and moral uplift. Okay. He's

29:33

like, it's really important to have a good

29:35

time. He advocates for pleasurable

29:38

living and he sort

29:40

of decries the working world

29:43

for leaving us with too little

29:45

energy for fun and pleasure and

29:47

relationships

29:48

and like social time. Oh, I know. Capitalist

29:50

critique, he is a European. Listen. He's

29:53

like, you guys need

29:54

paternity leave and stronger consumer protections.

29:57

But then there's also stuff like this.

29:59

It starts talking about circulation as quote an

30:02

internal shower.

30:03

Oh, OK. And keeps

30:05

talking about the importance of quote fresh,

30:08

pure blood, which absolutely

30:10

seems like it should be published on the Daily Stormer.

30:13

Or like some weird Silicon Valley. Yeah,

30:15

yeah, yeah,

30:16

yeah. Like any youthful blood shit. Yeah. Or

30:18

the guy who's harvesting blood from his son or

30:20

whatever. Yeah. He keeps yelling

30:22

in his book. And when I say yelling, I mean sentences

30:26

in all caps. Oh, really? Like

30:28

fully going for it? It is like you have been

30:30

dropped into a Lindy West essay

30:32

collection. Just like, OK, it's happening

30:34

now. He

30:37

keeps yelling about how our minds should

30:39

be able to dominate our bodies.

30:41

OK. He writes, quote, in all

30:43

caps. Ideally, our muscles should

30:46

obey our will reasonably. Our

30:48

will should not be dominated by the reflex

30:50

actions of our muscles. When brain cells

30:53

are developed, the mind too is developed.

30:55

OK, I would I would also like

30:57

to control my impulses when it comes to

30:59

my use of the Internet, but I cannot. Yeah,

31:02

he's talking about like your body should

31:04

do everything your mind wills it to

31:06

do. I mean, I'd love that, too. I

31:08

could fly. Sure. You could be Superman.

31:10

Yeah. What's your kryptonite

31:12

if you're Superman? I mean, actually

31:14

Grindr, but for the show, probably say

31:16

blueberries or something. These are also very

31:19

clearly the work of the guy

31:21

who kept yelling about how Americans should be more

31:23

like animals. OK. He has

31:26

a passage in which again, like

31:28

on its face, you and I would probably agree

31:30

with him where he is going

31:32

off on quacks

31:35

and sort of scammy, quote unquote miracle

31:37

cures. Oh, cool. And I am

31:40

sending you the quote. Unproblematic

31:44

King Joseph Pilates. Nope, that's

31:47

not true.

31:47

It is very doubtful indeed

31:49

whether a really sane and intelligent

31:52

person would even think of attempting

31:54

to prove that any of these many highly

31:56

recommended cures accomplish one iota

31:59

toward improving.

31:59

health of anyone much less affecting

32:02

a cure. Not the best

32:04

writer. He shines in other ways. Pardon

32:06

this thought. But is it not idiotic,

32:09

figuratively speaking, to permit oneself

32:11

to be led around

32:12

by one's nose by these wholly

32:15

mercenary, unscrupulous, and irresponsible

32:17

exploiters who, through

32:20

their misleading advertisements, fake

32:22

references, and unconscionable methods,

32:25

prey upon

32:25

the blind credulity of the public?

32:28

That was one sentence. Think it

32:30

over, you saps. Hocus Pocus

32:33

is Hocus Pocus by any other name.

32:36

This is basically our show, if

32:38

written by an AI to

32:41

be in, like, 1850s speak.

32:44

Now see here. Think it

32:46

over, you saps. Hocus Pocus is

32:48

Hocus Pocus. I'm tired

32:51

of all the humbug, Aubrey. I got

32:53

to think it over, you saps. And I was like,

32:55

that's going in the show. I don't

32:56

care. It's pretty good. So

33:01

Joseph Pilates lived

33:04

in New York City as a fitness

33:07

eccentric and, you know, general

33:10

unsettling dude until

33:12

his death in 1967 at the age of 83. He

33:17

dies of emphysema.

33:18

Oh, because of the smoking. Likely because

33:21

of the cigars. That's what it's generally attributed

33:23

to. He runs his

33:25

studio in New York for 40

33:28

years. And

33:30

his wife continues to run it after his

33:32

death. But after she passes away

33:35

in 1977, 10 years later, the

33:38

studio passed through a handful of owners

33:40

before finally sort of closing for good.

33:42

But in his lifetime,

33:45

Pilates never really goes mainstream.

33:49

Its popularity starts to

33:51

rise in the wake of the 80s.

33:53

Right. So in the 80s,

33:56

fitness was dominated by cardio,

33:58

by aerobics.

33:59

by bodybuilding, which were

34:02

all intense and pretty high

34:04

impact forms of exercise. And

34:06

people were just generally tired.

34:08

Pilates

34:11

sort of emerged at that time as a

34:13

gentler, more focused form

34:15

of exercise. Infomercials

34:18

started selling Pilates equipment in the US

34:20

in 1996, which is a pretty good gauge

34:23

of its sort of quote unquote going mainstream. It

34:25

was an infomercial thing? Yeah, yeah,

34:27

yeah, yeah, yeah. You could buy a Pilates

34:29

reformer. Oh, so it was like the equipment

34:32

that they were selling. Absolutely.

34:34

Interesting, okay. From there,

34:37

a bunch of celebrities started doing

34:39

it and sort of touting its virtues publicly.

34:42

Madonna starts doing Pilates, Jennifer

34:45

Aniston, Jane Seymour, Uma

34:47

Thurman, Gwyneth Paltrow. And

34:49

just a parade of like skinny 90s

34:51

women. Just willowy

34:54

white, wealthy women. Yeah,

34:56

just the wispy broads of the

34:58

Trapper Keeper era. In the

35:01

2010s, Pilates popularity starts to

35:03

slump and it slumps so dramatically. The

35:06

New York Magazine published a piece called

35:08

The Pilates-pocalypse.

35:10

How the method that

35:12

started the boutique fitness trend is going

35:15

bust. Basically it found

35:17

based on some market research, which like

35:19

question mark about the methodologies

35:22

of market research kind of always for

35:24

me. But their estimates

35:26

based on that market research was that

35:29

about 10% of Pilates folks stopped

35:33

doing Pilates in 2011 alone. That

35:36

there's a pretty significant decrease and that's mostly

35:38

because just sort

35:41

of the blooms off the rose as often

35:43

happens with

35:43

fitness trends, right? It starts to seem sort of

35:45

dated. It starts to be seen as

35:48

too expensive. It starts to be seen as

35:50

boring. And now there's stuff like

35:52

bar and there's a bunch of different kinds of yoga

35:54

that are more available in the US and

35:57

there are like all kinds of fitness

35:59

classes. Soul cycle

36:01

is starting to come onto the scene. Yeah,

36:03

these things are always cyclical because they fundamentally

36:06

can never deliver on their promises and

36:08

people oftentimes crave a little bit more variety

36:11

than just doing the same thing over and over again. Yeah, that's

36:13

what I was going to say is even if there aren't

36:15

promises, you got to mix it

36:17

up. Especially with these things where they're fundamentally interchangeable.

36:19

Group exercise

36:22

seems to be very beneficial, but also like, do

36:25

you want to do yoga? Do you want to do CrossFit? Do you want to do Pilates?

36:27

For most normal ass people, if you're working

36:29

a nine to five job and you don't get like

36:31

a ton of exercise, if you're doing like twice

36:33

a week, you go to some like exercise class. It's

36:36

not super important like what

36:38

the actual class is.

36:39

In terms of the data

36:41

on Pilates, it bears out pretty much

36:44

the same thing. It has basically the

36:46

same benefits of other kinds of exercise,

36:48

right? There are particular benefits

36:51

to it. Maybe in some cases,

36:53

there are like lots and lots of

36:55

health claims about Pilates as there

36:58

are with so many fitness regimens,

37:00

but none of those are definitively

37:03

borne out by the data, right?

37:04

Cochran says that, quote, while

37:07

there is some evidence for the effectiveness of Pilates

37:09

for low back pain, there is no conclusive

37:11

evidence that it is superior to other forms

37:13

of exercise. Another

37:15

meta-analysis found that there was

37:18

evidence that Pilates was more effective

37:20

than other forms of exercise, but

37:22

this is the difference between something that's statistically

37:25

significant and something that's clinically significant.

37:27

So the one study is reporting on like it's statistically

37:30

significant that it's a little bit better,

37:32

but clinically, that doesn't change your

37:34

approach. That doesn't mean that

37:36

a ton of doctors are going to start prescribing Pilates,

37:39

all that kind of stuff, right? I can hear a

37:41

bunch of our listeners opening a new tab

37:43

to write us an email and I will say, if

37:46

it

37:46

worked for you, you don't have to

37:48

tell us that. God bless. We believe you

37:51

just because something on average

37:53

is not necessarily like the

37:55

cure-all doesn't take away from

37:57

you that it worked. So like if- If

38:00

it was good for your lower back and you love Pilates

38:03

in a genuine way, that's great. We're so

38:05

thrilled for you. You don't have to correct us that

38:07

we said an average was not your

38:09

individual experience.

38:10

A little coda to

38:13

the Joseph Pilates story.

38:18

Joseph Pilates name and image have

38:20

been subject to some really fascinating

38:22

lawsuits in recent years. The

38:25

first one is in 1992. So this is well

38:27

after Joseph Pilates has passed

38:30

a Pilates teacher named Sean Gallagher

38:32

bought the trademarks and the

38:34

brand name of Pilates for $17,000.

38:38

Oh, that's like nothing.

38:40

Even in 1992 dollars. That is a song.

38:43

Yeah. Right. For

38:45

this kind of transaction with that purchase.

38:48

He received boxes containing

38:50

over a thousand photos and

38:52

old company materials and all kinds of

38:55

sort of proprietary

38:55

stuff from the studio

38:57

and the company. He's buying this from the old studio

39:00

owners and he starts sending

39:02

cease and desist letters to other

39:05

instructors and businesses who are

39:07

using the

39:07

word Pilates. Oh, it's a patent

39:10

troll thing. You buy up the property

39:12

and then you just like threaten people with lawsuits and they settle

39:14

for like whatever a couple hundred or a couple thousand bucks

39:16

and you basically just like make money this way.

39:18

He argues that he's not

39:21

a patent troll because he really is a Pilates

39:23

teacher and he really does care about the legacy

39:25

and all of this kind of stuff. Right.

39:29

In 1998, one of his cases

39:31

makes its way to federal court in the Southern

39:33

district of New York. Two

39:35

years later in 2000, the case finally

39:38

wrapped up with the judge ruling

39:40

that Pilates was a generic term

39:42

like aerobics or yoga

39:45

and that it was there for free for anyone

39:47

to

39:48

use. So okay. Say goodbye

39:50

to that 17 grand dude. So all

39:52

it took was like one person to challenge this and it basically

39:54

just immediately gets overturned.

39:56

Yeah, totally. And like the ruling

39:58

also sort of.

39:59

some aspersions on Gallagher and was like, we

40:02

know you're not doing this on the up and up. So

40:05

knock it off, right? Well,

40:07

that might've sent somebody else packing. It did not

40:09

stop Sean Gallagher. And

40:12

there was a new piece about him

40:14

last year in

40:17

the New York times. He

40:19

is now saying that he is the rightful

40:21

owner of all the photos and materials that

40:23

he got in those boxes that came with

40:25

the trademark and what have you.

40:28

He says that that is because he wants to protect

40:30

the integrity of the Pilates method.

40:32

But his critics

40:34

say that those images already existed in other

40:37

places and were already in use. You can find

40:39

them on the internet. He didn't put them there. But

40:42

essentially he has started reporting other

40:44

people's posts on Instagram. If

40:46

they use a picture of Joseph Pilates

40:49

that is one of the ones in his fucking

40:50

boxes. That's hella funny.

40:53

What a shitty epilogue. What a weird

40:55

way to spend your time.

40:56

It's like bonkers and they're all

40:58

people who are like, I wanted

41:01

you to see how to do these exercises

41:03

properly. So here are photos of the

41:05

founder of this thing doing it

41:07

the way he thinks you should do it. So

41:10

one woman received those complaints

41:13

on Instagram. And Instagram

41:15

pulled one of her posts

41:16

down. She then did a

41:18

fairly common thing. She shared

41:21

a screenshot of Instagram's message

41:23

being like, what the fuck? That message

41:25

from Instagram includes a tiny thumbnail

41:28

of the original image. So he reports

41:30

that one too. Oh nice, okay. And gets

41:32

it taken down as well. Right,

41:34

like that's the level that

41:36

this dude is operating

41:39

at. Other people have written to him ahead

41:41

of time to ask clarifying questions

41:43

about what they can and can't use only

41:46

to find that their questions prompted

41:48

him to go back through their feeds and

41:50

report past posts as copyright

41:52

violations. Is he making any money on this? Or

41:54

he's just like reporting people and getting stuff taken

41:57

down. He's just getting things taken down at this point. That's

41:59

so weird.

41:59

One of those was a violation

42:02

because the person posting

42:05

posted a picture of themselves holding

42:08

Sean Gallagher's book and

42:10

advising her followers to buy

42:12

it. Okay. And he's like, report

42:15

this post. You didn't have authorization to use that

42:17

photo. Like she is marketing your

42:19

book, dude. Yeah. What are you mad

42:21

about? I always wanted to write an

42:23

article about this when I said a post of like how

42:25

easy it is for just one random

42:27

busy body to just like ruin it

42:29

for everybody for like no reason.

42:32

And fields where like this isn't happening,

42:34

it's just like luck that some random ass

42:37

dude hasn't like made this a project.

42:38

Totally. So here is

42:40

a quote from a New York Times

42:42

piece about this set of lawsuits

42:46

called The Fight for the Soul

42:48

of Pilates. Nice. There

42:50

you go. When she was notified by Metta that the second

42:52

of her accounts had been removed after complaints from

42:55

Mr. Gallagher, she clicked the box

42:56

to indicate that she questioned the validity

42:58

of his copyright claim. Mr. Gallagher said

43:01

Metta notified him that it would restore

43:02

Ms. Kelly's account unless he took legal

43:05

action to assert his ownership of the images she had

43:07

posted. That is when he sued her.

43:11

So cut it out unless you're actually going to back

43:13

this up with legal claims. And he's like, yeah, I'm going

43:15

to back it up with legal claims. Okay. You

43:17

thought you were going to call my bluff. Nice try.

43:21

God. This is only making me stronger. That

43:24

case is making its way through the court system now,

43:27

but

43:28

it is a fascinating weird

43:31

arc for Pilates to take, right?

43:33

That it is started in ostensibly

43:36

a pretty altruistic

43:39

way, right? Whether or not you're

43:41

like a big fan of how Joseph Pilates

43:43

goes about things, like it seems

43:45

like his motivations here were genuinely

43:48

pretty good. And over

43:50

time that legacy sort of

43:53

grows and then gets

43:55

big enough to be a target for extremely

43:58

petty

43:58

patent. Yeah, I like

44:01

the episodes that are just like, we're not like

44:03

canceling anything. It's just like, here's like a fun

44:05

story. This is a fun story. Of

44:08

this thing that like, if you don't do Pilates, that's fine.

44:10

If you do Pilates, that's fine. Don't care.

44:13

But here's probably something you didn't know about it.

44:14

Yeah, this is Halo Top.

44:16

This is Angela Lansbury. This is...

44:19

I mean, we kind of cancelled Halo Top though,

44:21

but this is different. We were just like, it's

44:23

fine. It's just mostly air. Honestly,

44:26

that's like most of our episodes. It's fine, but air.