The Pilates method

1983 May

The Pilates method

NEW YORK —In the small studio on East 56th Street people come and go from 7:30 am until 7 pm daily in their attempt to protect their bodies from the abuses of everyday life But rather than worrying about their skin or hair they're stretching their spines arching their backs strengthening their stomachs.

Throughout the day a diminutive woman walks about the room smacking a bottom here tapping a shoulder there As she sips coffee from a champagne glass she looks like actress Ruth Gordon.

"I can't stand drinking out of those plastic things you get at the these days" she says.

Romana Kryzanowska seems to share Gordon's philosophy She is full of life constantly active a woman somewhere between the age of 50 - and 70 with the agility of a girl.

Kryzanowska was a 13-year-old ballet student when Joseph Pilates entered her life.

"I had a bone chip in my ankle that was causing me great pain, so I went to him to see if he could do anything about it He just moved it off the spot where it was pressing and hurting broke the calcium deposits around it down and in 10 lessons I was back in my ballet classes and I had no pain And that's how I discovered Joe Pilates."

Today after a long career as a free-lance ballet dancer Kryzanowska is heir to the exercise program of Joseph and Clara Pilates. She and her fellow disciple John Winters have become gurus for many a dancer actor and banker.

"The name Pilates comes from this man who made and put these exercises together scientifically," Kryzanowska says "They're fabulous they're corrective they're preventive to injury.

"It's a system of control so no matter whether you're a polo player a tennis star a football player or a ballet dancer you are put into shop to do what you want to do."

Mere mortals join the deities of dance business and athletics to undergo the rigors of the Pilates exercise method Natalia Makarova Eddie Albert Candice Bergen Lauren Bacall and Laurence Oliver even the elegant Francoise de in Renta, pay their respects in the Spartan sixth-floor studio that lies in the shadow of Phillip Johnson's post-modern AT&T Tower.

The Pilates method is the forerunner of nearly every contemporary exercise method, Kryzanowska says. Both Richard Nickolaus and John Alexander are former Pilates students. The aerobics and isometrics routines are also descendants.

Joseph Pilates, a German boxer, and his wife, a kindergarten teacher, emigrated to Chicago in the 1920s via Britain, where they had developed a training program for police men. But soon they were in New York attracting artists and dancers.

The first disciples were Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, pioneers of modern dance. As dance and athletics became more popular with Americans, so did Pilates' reputation. By the late '70s, the method evolved into a corporation, with Kryzanowska and Winters serving as directors, a popular exercise book has been published to explain the method; studios have opened (some not accredited) in large cities outside of New York.

"We've had a Bengal lancer, a polo player, ballet dancers, writers, models, actors, photographers, scientists, pianist," Kryzanowska says. "In polo, for instance, you sit into the horse, to one side. You can always tell the players, because they're getting a crooked spine and an injured hip. Sometimes they shatter their shoulder when coming against another polo player at 50 miles an hour.

"It's a very fast, strong, heavy game, requiring coordination and strength and not just rib strength, but inner strength. Why would this simple rather easy (Pilates) method improve such a violence? Because it gives you a deeper sense of control on how to use your strength. So we teach them how to straighten them-selves, and, actually, their polo game is better afterwards, because they have more control and they have more power and more channeled energy."

The Pilates method focuses on concentration, control, learning how to center one's skeletal frame, flowing movement, precision and breathing. Each exercise strengthens one's stomach and spine, develops mental awareness about the proper body stance, and prepares for additional physical work.

"It's a foundation for anything ...... Please see Stretch on Page 2

Stretch and bend for pain-free play?

Continued from Page 1

you might want to do, and if you don't do anything else, it keeps you in good shape," Kryzanowksa says. "Anybody can injure himself at any time. But if you know a little more about the joints of your body and don't lose control of them, you're not so apt to injure yourself, because you know how to position yourself, how to hold your stomach and torso correctly."

The first step of the Pilates method is called "The Hundred," a routine designed for the cardiovascular system. It is followed by excerises such as "The Seal" and "The Roll-Up," which are tumbling routines; "The Corkscrew," "The Saw" and "The Spine Stretch," which are bending/stretching movements. Like the popular inversion boots, Pilates is designed to stretch the spine as well as to strengthen the stomach and back.

"When your stomach is held, used and is tight, it supports you," the effervescent woman says. "If you have a mushy stomach, how can you hold legs up, if you're a dancer? If you have a mushy stomach, a mushy backside, how are you going to any thing well? You have to be strong, and these exercises do it."

Although originally designed as a self-defense program for policemen and later as a warmup regimen for dancers, the Pilates Method is a program for people of all ages, says Philip Friedman, co-author with Gail Eisen of the book, The Pilates Method of Physical and Mental Conditioning (Doubleday & Co., $13.96; Warner Books, $6.95).

"That's the lovely thing about Pilates because you can set your own regimen and to set your own limit, to gradually work up to your own ability. Obviously as you get older your upper limit is not as high as it once was, but the benefit of the exercise is incalculable."

Friedman, who has been a Pilates devotee for eight years, says the method is a "spiritualization" of athletic activity in that it allows a person to concentrate on his or her body form and physical appearance while developing a sense of gracefulness and poise.

"In all this talk of fatty deposits, losing weight and improving the cardiovascular system, what gets lost is the interest in graceful posture. Pilates is an adjunct to all this, because it perfects all other athletic activity while developing a sense of posture."

Friedman says the Pilates book, which has found popularity in both the hardback and paperback mar ket, was written from a neophyte's perspective. Indeed, the layout, photography and instructions give one as careful instructions as possible.

"It was an attempt to write as clear and as precise a book as possible so people would not become sloppy in their work. It was also written from a learner's status so that people would know what to expect from their progress."

Both Friedman and Kryzanowsak point out that the primary concern of anyone using the Pilates method is concentration, because one must retain control of one's muscles at all times to achieve the goals stressed by the originator.

"The challenge of Pilates is to concentrate," he says. "It is most important not to try too hard, not to progress too quickly. The secret is, if you hurry through it, you're not going to benefit from it."

Another advocate of Pilates is Laura Flagg, a principal dancer with the Dallas Ballet. She turned to Romana Kryzanowska in 1973 after snapping her patellar ligament, a tendon in the knee.

"It took three months of intensive exercise with the Pilates people to get me back to classes and dancing. The entire experience was educational as far as being a dancer is concerned and learning about the alignment of my body," the 26-year- old ballerina says. "You can't do anything without strong back muscles, stomach muscle, thighs and calves. It's quite something else."

Flagg, who has been dancing since she was 9 years old, says Pilates is an exercise program that will benefit anyone.

"It gives your body a central focus, it teaches you good posture and just makes you feel better. Anybody can benefit from the program it and I'm not just talking people with swaybacks."

The Pilates method works almost as well at home as in the New York studio. The only difference is that the studio has gadgets to work with, mirrors to check one's progress and instructors to point out mistakes. And although other exercise programs are similar to Pilates, none is quite like this method..