Evolve Movement Collective - Pilates

Evolve Movement Collective offers the best in classical Pilates exercise, adhering closely to the spirit of Joseph Pilates’ work, in a spacious and welcoming studio. The certified instructors who work at the studio have a minimum of 600 hours of teacher training and are able to work safely with you and to offer you the best core training available. They offer private sessions, semi privates, equipment classes and mat classes. If you are recovering from an injury, looking to cross train, or perhaps you simply want to become or stay fit, no matter what age, gender, or body type. 

---

Joseph H. Pilates

The History: J. H. Pilates

Joseph Hubertus Pilates was a German born boxer and gymnast. He went to England in 1912, where he worked as a self-defense instructor for detectives at Scotland Yard. At the outbreak of World War I, Joe was interned as an “enemy alien” with other German nationals. During this time, Joe refined his ideas and trained other internees in his system of exercise. He rigged springs to hospital beds, enabling bedridden patients to exercise against resistance, an innovation that led to his later equipment designs. After his release, Joe returned to Germany but when German officials asked Joe to teach his fitness system to the army, he decided to leave Germany for good.

In 1926, Joe immigrated to the United States. During the boat trip, he met Clara, a kindergarten teacher, whom he later married. Joe and Clara (who dressed in a nurse’s outfit when she taught!) opened a fitness studio in New York working mostly with men who worked in the area.

By the early 1960s, Joe and Clara could count among their clients many New York dancers. The studios of the New York City Ballet were in the same building as Pilates’ gym. George Balanchine studied “at Joe’s,” as he called it, and also invited Pilates to instruct his young ballerinas at the New York City Ballet. Although Joe did not devise his technique for dancers, it is this affiliation that caused people to think that only dancers did Pilates.

Joe continued to train clients at his studio until his death in 1967, at the age of 87. In the 1970s, Hollywood celebrities brought the technique from New York to Los Angeles. In the late 1980s, the media discovered Pilates because of the stars who studied Pilates. The public took note, and the Pilates business boomed. “I’m fifty years ahead of my time,” Joe once claimed. He was right. Today, over 10 million Americans practice Pilates, and the numbers continue to grow.

---