A few months ago, as my jogging companion and I huffed and heaved our way through Central Park, I gasped out, “There… must… be… an easier way.” “There is,” she responded. “Pilates.” She knew how to pronounce it (pi-lah-teez), she knew who did it (Julia Roberts, Sharon Stone, Madonna), and she knew it had completely changed Melanie Griffith’s life. But neither she nor any of my other friends, all of whom were suddenly talking about it, could actually describe what it was. I gathered that it was some sort of stretching regimen that could magically make you longer and stronger, without the sore joints and the dripping sweat. Then I found Mari Winsor’s new book, “The Pilates Powerhouse,” in which the personal-trainer-to-the-stars claims that Pilates not only takes inches off your stomach, thighs and buttocks, but also reduces stress, gives you confidence and makes you “operate on a higher level of consciousness.” Having completely missed out on yoga, step, qi gong and tae bo, I resolved not to let this bandwagon pass me by.
Pilates is a series of low-impact flexibility and muscle exercises developed by the German fitness guru Joseph Pilates. For decades it’s been a secret of the physical elite, practiced by dancers and athletes trying to minimize injuries; choreographers Martha Graham and George Balanchine sent their students to Pilates for training. Now, as aging boomers and refugees from the high-impact workouts of the ’80s discover it, Pilates has made its way from dance studios and physical therapists’ offices to high-end health clubs across the country. A small book and video industry has also sprung up for those who want to try it at home. A decade ago 5,000 people did Pilates; today, by some estimates, Pilates has touched the lives of 5 million Americans.
It touched mine at the Reebok Sports Club/NY. Upon enrolling, I was assigned a personal trainer, Sharon Korty, who is tall and smiley and costs $75 an hour. I figured I’d do the bulk of my training in the free classes the gym offers, but Sharon told me to stay away–novices need individual attention. “If you’re in a big group,” she said, “how will you learn the choreography and understand the fine details? How will you get into the true essence of Pilates?”
That essence is a mix of yoga and Jane Fonda with a dash of tai chi thrown in. Most of the exercises start from a supine position and involve lifting some combination of limbs, head and back. The more complicated ones require the use of springs and pulleys, rigged up on special equipment reminiscent of medieval torture contraptions. The scarily named Reformer (pictured) offers advanced levels of resistance, but can also make certain exercises easier, since you’re not fighting gravity by yourself. The Cadillac–two springs hooked up to parallel poles–helps hold you in place as you work your thighs, buttocks and lower back. The exercises are generally much harder than they look, but while my muscles occasionally shake getting into position, they never, to my surprise, actually hurt.
The Pilates method requires that you control all your movements from “the powerhouse” (also known as the “six-pack”): the muscles in the center of your body that connect your abdomen to your lower back and buttocks. Sharon is sweet and unfailingly chipper, which is why I was caught off guard when she turned out to be the sternest of taskmasters–urging me to quicken the pace on each exercise, not letting me cheat even the tiniest bit. She could tell when I was using my back muscles instead of my abdomen to lift my back, and she sounded not just disappointed but genuinely sad when I clunked my legs down rather than using my stomach muscles to lower them gracefully. In our first session I didn’t understand what she meant half the time, barking out orders like “Pull your navel to your spine!” It took me a few sessions to realize that that was exactly what she meant; and by then, to my surprise, I had actually figured out how to do it.
The claim Pilates makes is this: by focusing on your powerhouse, the exercises recenter and realign your body, improving your posture, draining tension away from your neck and shoulders, increasing circulation and flexibility and balance. Because you do only five to 10 repetitions of each exercise, and the movements are small and controlled, Pilates strengthens and lengthens your muscles without bulking them up–hence the attraction for dancers and actresses. In fact, I did walk out of each session feeling a little calmer and a little taller, and I wondered if dancers always felt this light on their feet. While I hadn’t completely transformed my body after two months, I was certainly more aware of it; outside of class, I’d remind myself not to slouch, and I’d scold myself for sudden and jerky movements, just as Sharon would scold me.
I never realized how clunky and awkward I really was until I watched Sharon do the exercises with a fluidity and elegance I could never hope to match. Fishing for approval at the end of each session, I’d ask her if I was any good. She’d smile and tell me I was “getting better.” For her, Pilates isn’t just an exercise, it’s an art. You can always, she said, be more precise, more graceful, more beautiful. And, as with all the arts, hierarchy and lineage are of the utmost importance. Sharon studies advanced Pilates with “master teachers”–people who studied with Pilates himself. In fact, the director of the Pilates Studio in Manhattan has won trademark lawsuits that prevent other people from using the Pilates name to market their (presumably less pure) versions of the exercises.
I’ve stopped doing Pilates, mainly because it’s too expensive, and all the personal attention started to feel self-indulgent. My muscles do look and feel more toned, but I never reached the heights of spiritual enlightenment Winsor had promised. Even though the typical Pilates body is long and sleek, the typical Pilates student happens to be a dancer, and at this point, I doubt I’ll ever look like one. And while advanced Pilates workouts are as heart-poundingly aerobic as anyone could want, I missed my high-impact, high-exhaustion, run-till-you-drop endorphin rush through Central Park. But I know that as soon as I tear up my joints pounding the pavement, Pilates will be there for me. I miss Sharon, but I also feel like she’s still with me–a voice in my head reminding me, as I walk down the street or sit at my desk, to focus on my powerhouse and to always, always pull my navel to my spine.
Pilates Power These exercises look a lot easier than they are. Use your abdominal muscles to control all your movements with patience as well as grace.
THE HUNDRED (BEGINNER)
How: Pull your knees into your chest, bring your legs up, then lower them. Pump your arms up and down 100 times, inhaling and exhaling through your nose every five counts.
Why: To warm up the body, get your blood pumping and your breath circulating
THE SHORT SPINE MASSAGE (INTERMEDIATE)
How: With your feet in the straps, stretch your legs out in front of you. Then lift them up and over your head. Roll down your spine and stretch your legs out again.
Why: To stretch out the lower back while strengthening the ‘powerhouse’
THE TEASER (INTERMEDIATE)
How: Pull your knees into your chest, then extend your legs out at a 45-degree angle. Roll up into a V with your arms pointing at your toes. Bring your arms back to your ears and roll back down to the mat.
Why: To exercise balance, control and breathing
title: “Grace Under Pressure” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-10” author: “Cecile Flannagan”
But help is on the way: an innovative kind of mechanized training known as gyrotonics. Performed on a contraption called a pulley tower, it is a series of exercises that combine elements not only from dance but also gymnastics, yoga, swimming and tai chi. Practitioners hope that gyrotonics takes a place next to yoga and Pilates as an exercise method of choice. I knew immediately what I wanted: that tower was my ticket to looking like a dancer.
But first I had some fear to overcome. The metal pulley tower stands about seven feet tall and rests on carved wooden feet. Leather straps for hands and feet dangle from various parts of the machine, amid weights, pulleys and wires. The device seems better suited to torturing heretics than fitness training. Even so, the tower is user-friendly; its parts move smoothly and quietly. Its operating principle is simple: by making your arms, legs and other body parts move in controlled, smooth arcs, it expands your range of motion and increases strength and flexibility without injury. And if you are lucky, gyrotonics founder Juliu Horvath says, “You will go beyond narcissistic repetition and find the unexplored parts of the body.”
For us beginners, the circular nature of gyrotonics is mighty confusing. A Pilates machine, to which gyrotonics is often compared, is based on a linear principle. The Pilates Reformer (when will they invent a machine called The Welcomer?) demands that you push and then pull, move up or move back, lift or lower. If only gyrotonics were that easy. I sit, facing away from the tower, and place each hand on top of handles. My task is to reach out first with my left hand–still on the handle, which rotates under my palm–push outward and then pull back toward myself, and then do the other hand. I have watched my teacher, a soft-spoken German man named Jurgen Bamberger, do this with no trouble. Bamberger hovers behind me and gently intones instructions. “Reach,” he says, “twist more–no, the other way–turn, good.” Then he pokes me in my lower back, gently pulls my hips back down to the seat and extends my upper back by nudging it into a flatter position. “Bring your chin down,” he says. “Now try the other arm.” Finally I complete a rudimentary exercise and am exhausted. I want to go home.
After a few more attempts, I realize that reaching with my left hand sets my shoulders in motion, up toward my ears, and Bamberger doesn’t like that. Reaching (dancers must know this, I suspect) means that the rest of you stays still, allowing the arm to extend. After the fifth repetition, I imagine I’m getting it. My neck already feels more swanlike. Then Bamberger regards me sternly, his eyes startlingly large behind his thick, wire-rimmed glasses, and informs me that I have to attempt to breathe and do the exercises. Once again, I’m lost.
But, he assures me when we are done, I’m no worse than most. To start gyrotonics, you don’t need any experience in dance–just the $50 to $75 that an hour of private instruction will cost you. As in Pilates, a typical beginner session consists of the student, the teacher and the machine. “You don’t need any background in movement at all,” says Bamberger. “We all have the ability to move.” The machines, he says, simply amplify and channel our natural human ability.
And since the weights can be adjusted on the tower, injuries can be treated. Indeed, practitioners claim that the system even promotes healing. A Manhattan-based general contractor, Jon Rickard, 48, credits gyrotonics for having healed his back injury. “I wrenched my back out skiing,” he explained. “My cousin is a dancer, and referred me to the gyrotonics studio.” Rickard began slowly, using no weights and doing just the movements. “I’ve had no problems for the last year, and I’m skiing,” he says. Rickard plays tennis and bikes, and visits the Yogamoves studio in midtown Manhattan twice a week. “This is my gym,” he says.
Horvath, the 58-year-old father of gyrotonics, seems unsurprised by the success of the technique he invented in the late 1970s while living in a shack in the Virgin Islands. Resolutely New Age in style, he claims to be a “universal being,” who exists in several dimensions and whose work is pushing the human race farther down its evolutionary path with his machines and techniques. Recently Horvath has been jetting around the globe training teachers and dealing with the company that is mass-producing his Gyrotonic Expansion System machines. He hopes someday there will be a tower in most gyms.
There are skeptics. “I’ve talked to scores of Pilates instructors,” says Peg Jordan, editor of American Fitness magazine, “and they’re sort of lukewarm on it. I don’t see it as much of a trend.” Loren Fishman, a physician who specializes in rehabilitation and physical therapy and the author of “Back Pain,” worries that gyrotonics could be harmful to people with certain problems. “Those kinds of motions are exactly what isn’t good for someone with scoliosis, for example,” Fishman says. “I just wonder how much the gyrotonics teacher knows about people’s injuries.”
Still, there are already about 100 gyrotonics studios worldwide, with fans like the actress Susan May Pratt, who calls the regimen vital to her training for a role as a ballerina in the movie “Center Stage.” She probably lost her dancer envy, too.
