Oldest Living Disciple Of Joseph Pilates Tells All

May 28, 2024
4 min read

By John Briley

Special to The Washington Post

The Palm Beach Post April 04 003

I confess. It does me no credit, but I looked to have sport with 79-year-old Romana Kryzanowska.

How could a woman billed as the oldest living disciple of Joseph Pilates, the maddeningly particular German developer of the eponymous core fitness discipline that has exploded in popularity, not be an easy target of ridicule? Be honest. Would you have expected the self-anointed empress of a strenuous exercise routine, who generally holds court at Drago's Gymnasium in New York, to be anything but a stern, humorless dominatrix brimming with narcissism and defensive of her late mentor?

Yet, by the time she finished answering my first question, she had me in her thrall.

Kryzanowska (pronounced Crows-now-skah) anticipated every journalistic trap I tried to set and pirouetted through them with the grace of, well, a seasoned Pilates master. Sure, she bristled at the few questions that cast Joseph Pilates as a tyrannical, idiosyncratic bone crusher (more on this later), but her bristle was warm, her smile constant and her answers flowed into one another like a smooth exercise routine.

And then I took her class. For 45 minutes Kryzanowska led a mat routine and

glided about the room as if she were directing a musical. When it ended, I knew I'd learned something from someone who knows how to teach. I felt that if I practiced Pilates for 45 minutes thrice weekly, as Kryzanowska suggests, I, too, could waltz through life with perfect posture, unflappable self-confidence and a flock of devotees in my wake.

But I also know, deep down, that one could throw a life-time into Pilates (Kryzanowska started studying in 1941 and began teaching in 1944) and never reach her plane. Herewith, notes from our interview.

Q. Why is Pilates better than yoga and other disciplines?

A. Everything is good if done well. Yoga, weightlifting, whatever you do. It is all good. But Pilates does everything for the body that you would want. If you just want to trim only your thighs, you can do that. If you want to tighten your tummy, you can do that only, without working other parts of the body.

Q. So why is Pilates so special? It sounds like I could do any exercise routine and stay in shape.

A. Pilates is good for everyone -- young, old, sick, healthy, crippled. Joseph Pilates was a champion skier, wrestler and boxer. He taught us to work within the line of the body. Stretch and strength, with control. He was a very simple man; he liked things in a straight line. Watch children. They do everything-that's nature. Pilates is nature, too. You work within your joints, not outside.

Q. What drove Joseph Pilates to Invent this discipline?

A. He had terrible asthma and rickets as a child, and he wanted to improve his health. He was interned in a World War I camp and began developing the exercises there.

But he also borrowed a lot of the principles from the ancient Greeks and how they trained their Olympians. He had a great library and was always studying. He was a genius of the body.

Q. I heard he had some very eccentric habits, like teaching in his underwear while smoking cigars.

A. That's slander. He was a kind and loving man. He did smoke cigars, good ones, but never in the studio. And he wore his little blue shorts, yes, but they weren't underwear. He was very proud of them. We have a picture of him in a major snowstorm standing outside in those shorts. He loved the outdoors.

Q. He also reportedly stood on people's stomachs - often very thin, female people and some say he was hard to work with. Is this true?

A. He would stand on people's stomachs, yes, as part of training to show just how powerful your "powerhouse" is. (She points to her own stomach.) But he never hurt anyone. He was very tender and loving, but he was also strict.

If you left one article out of place, he would warn you once nicely. If you did it again, he would warn you again, not so nicely. The third time, you were out. He would say, "Leave and don't come back!" Everything has its place. He liked order.

Q. Did he ever make a student cry?

A. No, no. He was a nice man.

Q. Do you stand on people's stomachs?

A. No. I don't want a lawsuit. We didn't have lawsuits and all that nonsense back then. It is so much different today.

Q. You are the oldest living disci- ple of Joseph Pilates. Who will succeed you?

A. My daughter, Sari Santo, who also studied with Uncle Joe when she was just a girl. She teaches with me.

Q. Uncle Joe?

A. That's what we called him.

Q. How much Pilates do I need to stay in shape?

A. Joseph always said, "Take 30 lessons, three times per week for 10 weeks, and you will see you have a new body." If you do this three times per week for 45 minutes, you will stay in shape.

Q. Have you ever found anything that gave you as much joy as practicing Pilates?

A. Pilates has been my life. I will turn 80 on June 30. I am nev- er sick and can do all of my exercises. When Pilates is done right, and it rarely is, every exercise melts into the next one. You nev er stop. It is like ballet.

Oldest Living Disciple Of Joseph Pilates Tells All

By John Briley

Special to The Washington Post

The Palm Beach Post April 04 003

“first generation” Pilates teachers/ elders (teachers trained by Joseph Pilates himself).

Romana Kryzanowska (June 30, 1923 – August 30, 2013) was an American Pilates instructor who started as a student of Joseph Pilates and his wife Clara at their studio on Eighth Avenue in New York. After the death of Joseph Pilates in 1967, Clara Pilates continued the studio for a few more years, and in 1970 Romana Kryzanowska became the director of what was by that time called "The Pilates Studio.