Tights, Testosterone or Tone? Men and Pilates

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Is Pilates a bit, you know, girly? A kind of ballerina yoga where you prance around in, God forbid, tights, doing a few tummy-pulling-in exercises that are too easy for men anyway?  

The answer – as many men have come to understand – is no, of course not. Trawl the Internet for ‘men and pilates’ and you’re bombarded with articles about how football and rugby players, boxers, weight lifters and other sportsmen, amateur and professional, are turning to Pilates to improve their performance.  Men committed to gym workouts are also beginning to see Pilates as an essential, complementary, activity.

Improving your competence in a sport is for many people the main driver towards Pilates, but it’s not limited to sports or fitness fiends. If you’re a couch potato (especially if you’re a couch potato) attending regular Pilates classes will probably be the best decision you’ve made in a long time. If you spend your time hunched over a desk, wouldn’t mind if all gyms were forbidden by law, and at best kick a ball around from time to time, sooner or later your body will start to broadcast areas of annoying discomfort, or nagging spots of pain. 

So what’s so magical about Pilates and what does it do that a session at the gym doesn’t? 

The gym can be an excellent way of keeping fit and/or bulking up, and is often a key part of any fitness regime. ‘Part’ being the operative word. Treating the body as a bundle of isolated units can be dangerous. Focusing on one group of muscles whilst ignoring others can lead to stiffness, weakness in some areas and an imbalance that can easily lead to injury, something that sports professionals have long recognised. 

The central principles of Pilates is to increase the strength, flexibility and control of the body. It recognises the body as a holistic system with everything – muscles, tendons, ligaments, bones and connective tissue – connected together. It works not only the major muscles, but also on the muscles that are commonly forgotten in the gym, such as the deeper intrinsic ones that support the whole body and keep it in alignment. It looks at improving the flexibility of muscle groups as well as their strength – flexible muscles means less risk of pulling or tearing – and at increasing the strength of the core stabilising muscles. Evidence suggests if you’re strong in the core you can lift heavier weights, be it Dumbbells in the gym or that box of books you have to get down from the attic. 

And it’s not necessarily easy. In his entertaining article ‘Pilates for Meatheads’ (www.mensfitness.com/training/pilates-meatheads) Brandon Guarneri, a self styled ‘Meathead’ ‘fairly obsessed’ with training at the gym, describes the sharp transition, at his first Pilates session, from complacency  to amazement at how difficult and challenging he found the exercises. “One 45-second movement and I couldn’t tell if I was going to make it” he says. He concludes that this wasn’t because he was doing anything outrageous or impossible. “It was just that Pilates worked my muscles in a way that they aren’t used to being worked.” 

Brandon Guarneri is talking about working on special equipment at a Pilates studio, of which there are many to choose from. A cheaper alternative is Matwork Pilates, which incorporates all the movements and exercises of a Studio but without the machines.  

Both types are highly recommend if you want a body that works for you rather against you. And you won’t have to wear tights, promise. 

Joseph Pilates - The Movie

Scene: A Hollywood office. Two movie magnates are listening to the presentation of a concept for a movie about Joseph Pilates

Movie Magnate 1:
So, this guy you want to make a movie about – what’s his name? Joseph…ah.. Pie-Lates. Say, is he some kind of a relative to that guy who sentenced Jesus to death?

Presenter:
It’s actually pronounced “Pie lar tees”and no, no relation as far as I know. But funny you should say that, because he was bullied as a child about his name.

MM 1:
OK, so, shoot.

Presenter:
Well, picture this  – young kid, born in Germany at the end of the 19th Century,  very sickly, suffering from asthma, rickets, rheumatic fever, bullied at school, not reckoned to live to adulthood. It’s believed he lost one eye at the age of 5 from an attack by a bully. He becomes one of the leading fitness gurus of the 20thand 21st Centuries  with a unique and highly developed method of exercise which was 50 years ahead of its time.

MM 2:
So, a kind of Rocky meets Fame kind of idea? Overcoming all odds with lots of physical stuff?

Presenter:
Uh, yes, you could say that. It’s certainly a story of how adversity can bring about greatness. He was into everything – martial arts, boxing and dance, as well as gymnastics and yoga. Anyway, Pilates cured himself of his ailments, all by natural means – lots of special breathing and exercising out doors – and travelled from Germany to England to become a professional boxer. He also performed at the circus and taught self defence to the British police force.

MM1:
Sounds like a talented guy. I’m seeing Arnie/Vin Diesel with a bit of Jackie Chan.

Presenter:
Then World War 1 broke out…

MM2:  
So now it’s a war movie?

Presenter
Not exactly. He actually gets interned in a POW camp on the Isle of Man for the war and lives in horrible conditions for 4 years.

MM2
So we’re talking Empire of the Sun/The Colditz Story?

Presenter:
Hmm. The thing is, Pilates doesn’t give up. He gives fitness classes to his cell block inmates. Many of them are too weak to get out of bed. What does he do? He takes springs from the beds, attaches them to the head and foot boards of the bed, and teaches the men how to do resistance exercises without having to get out of bed. The story goes that when the Great Flu Epidemic broke out in 1918, not a single soldier under his care died.

MM1:
Yep, yep, that’s got legs. A kind of secret hero. Jimmy Stewart meets Jason Statham.

Presenter:
Um, yes, if you say so. The point here is that Pilates used all his life experiences in the development of his Method. In his exercises you can see the influences from martial arts, yoga, weight training, boxing. It’s truly unique. And those hospital beds became the models for the equipment, such as the Cadillac and the Reformer, for which Pilates is famous today.

MM2:
Yeah, I’ve heard of those. My wife uses them. She’s always talking about working out on the Cadillac with her personal trainer Manuel.

MM1:
So, this guy, Pile Lates, he’s German right? So does he get mixed up with Hitler?

Presenter:
No, Pilates returns to Germany at the end of WW1, long before Hitler comes to power…

MM1:
Pity.

Presenter:
…but I think he had a good idea of what might be coming, because when he was pressured to teach the German army, he refused, and decided to emigrate to the States.

MM2:

I kind of get this is an interesting story, but where’s the love interest? There’s always got to be a love interest.

Presenter:
There is one! Well, several actually. He wasn’t only into physical fitness. He liked cigars, vodka and whisky. And he liked the ladies. And although he wasn’t classically handsome, with a glass eye, they must have liked him too. He married twice. Then one fateful day he gets on a boat to the USA. He’s no longer young, in his 40’s. It could have been any other boat, and any other time, but it happened to be this one. And on this one was a young woman, also emigrating to the States. She suffered from rheumatoid arthritis. He showed her how to alleviate the pain with his Method. They fell in love and stayed together for the rest of their long lives.

MM2:
Dr Zhivago meets Titanic meets Sleeping Beauty.

Presenter:
I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.

MM2:
Meets Beauty and the Beast.

Presenter:
Ah.  well I don’t think ‘Beast’ is quite fair. He wasn't conventionally handsome, more striking. And not afraid to show off his well muscled and toned body. He was well known for wearing nothing but his trademark white ‘bikini bottoms’, even out doors – especially out doors – summer and winter. His body was in as good a shape in his old age as in his youth. He was described as “a white-maned lion with steel blue eyes and mahagony skin, and as limber in his 80's as a teenager.”

MM1:
So he gets to the good ol’ US of A with his lady love.Then what?

Presenter:
He and Clara set up a studio in New York to teach his Method, which, by the way,  he called ‘Contrology’. It came to be called ‘Pilates’ only after his death. Anyway, you could say he took New York by storm. Over time, hundreds of dancers, athletes and celebrities flocked to the studio. He trained other teachers, who, after his death, spread out across the world, taking the Method with them. Over time the Pilates Method has been added to and adapted so that it is accessible to everybody, no matter what fitness level or age. It is thought that over 15 million people worldwide are using Pilates to tackle chronic aches and pains, joint stiffness, bad posture and muscular weakness. They’re finding that the exercises teach them to perform life’s daily tasks with “zest and ease”. Not bad for a sickly one-eyed boy from pre-war Germany!

MM1:
Yes, it’s got possibilities. I think it needs to be simplified. Let’s say Joseph and Clara are child hood sweethearts torn apart by the War only to meet again by accident in New York?

MM2:
It needs more of a war angle. How about we move it to WWII so he can actually meet Hitler, and spit in his eye? He’s put into a camp and sentenced to death but escapes by using his martial arts and circus skills. Mission Impossible meets The Great Escape.

Presenter:
Now, wait a minute, you can’t…

MM1:
He becomes a billionaire in America, the land of opportunity, with his machines. He and Clara are riding high and then…

MM2:
He cheats on Clara with a beautiful dancer, she leaves him and breaks his heart.

Presenter:
This is crazy! Joseph Pilate’s life is interesting enough without…

MM2:
He lives on, rich and sad, what good is money and success without love?

MM1:
But gets redemption when he rescues Clara from a burning building, only to die from his wounds, in the arms of his loved one. I’m thinking Brad Pitt.

MM2:
My wife would certainly go see it! He’d look good in white underpants. We could do that ‘Curious Case of of Benjamin Button’ thing and CGI him much younger and much older.

MM1:
Angelina might consider the love interest.

MM2:
So, we’ll certainly take an option on it, Mr… Say, where's he gone?

MM1:
How do you like that? He’s walked out. Bummer. I was going to ask him whether Pilates could stop me from seizing up when I’ve been sitting for 5 minutes. I could do with some ‘zest and ease’.

MM2:
It’s a tough life, all right. Lunch, I think. There’s a great little restaurant I know on the next block. Let me call my driver.