Dan's Health Corner

Yeah people. I'm going to talk about Pilates. You might want to leave now though, lest it get too real for you to handle...

We'll start with a bit of history...
Pilates takes it's namesake after it's creator, Joseph Pilates. Born in Germany in 1887 to a swarthy greek gymnast and a german Naturapath, Joseph was a sickly child with rickets, asthma, rheumatic fever (and in my opinion, the vestigial remnants of horns, cloven feet, and a bifurcated tail).

All in all, not very healthy, with the local Fraulein having little interest in (insert your favorite sexual euphemism involving German culture here) with him. Not to be deterred by this, Joseph decided he was going to get healthy, as long as he believed he could. After years of tough training, studying bodybuilding, yoga, and selling his soul, he was competing in body competitions by the age of 14, which is freaky.

In 1912, he moved to England where he was a boxer, circus performer, and trainer. Described by neighbor Bartlby Cottington, young Joseph was a "pretty mellow guy, always carrying around those weights in his uni-tard though". With the onset of WWI, Joseph was taken and interned on the Isle of Man with all other German citizens in what was certainly NOT a prison camp (cheeky English bastards). Here, he began crafting his system and helped the other inmates train to stay healthy. Upon release he moved to the states, where he and his wife began to market the system that would become well known to college students and bored housewives everywhere.

This is Joseph Pilates four years before his death.



















He's basically the buffest octogenarian that has ever walked the Earth. It's been said that on his death bed, he executed one last side leg kick and accidentally kicked the live-in nurse so hard that her 40 year old son who lived five states over pissed blood for a week.

(okay, that last part is total fiction)

Anyways, so why did I go on that terrible rant? Because I'm currently doing pilates at Columbia. At the age of 27, I felt that I needed to do something healthy and opted for this and yoga. Thinking it to be nothing serious, I went to my first class on Tuesday and found out a couple of things;

1) I'm the only boy in the class.
2)I'm not flexible in any way, shape, or form.
3)I'm terribly out of shape.

After an hour and a half, my spine and abs were screaming at me for mercy that I was thankfully able to give them, but not before being absolutely humbled by the experience. I will never make fun of pilates again. Hopefully I'll get better with it and, when combined with yoga, get all sexified. That would be pretty keen.