Maintenance Phase - Pilates

00:00:00.000 welcome to maintenance phase the podcast that lays on its back and bicycles its legs

00:00:17.960 i feel like you've answered the first question which is mike what do you know about pilates

00:00:24.920 Literally, I did Pilates for like three weeks, and that's like all I remember doing.

00:00:28.780 And then I quit because it was hard.

00:00:30.480 My tummy hurt.

00:00:32.380 I'm Aubrey Gordon.

00:00:33.720 I'm Michael Hobbs.

00:00:34.580 If you would like to support the show, you can do that at Patreon.

00:00:37.320 You can also get the same audio content on Apple Podcasts as a subscriber.

00:00:42.220 And you can buy t-shirts, mugs, tote bags, all manner of things at TeePublic.

00:00:47.420 Michael, today we are talking about Pilates.

00:00:52.460 Pontius Pilates.

00:00:53.440 that's what i always think of as like a church kid every single time we are going to be talking

00:00:59.040 about the very surprising story of how pilates came to be i'm so excited i know nothing about

00:01:07.700 pilates it's just like a workout yeah the way it was sold to me originally was like it's like a

00:01:11.920 combination of like yoga and like crossfit and then i signed up and i did it like three times

00:01:18.080 and then i didn't see immediate results and then i stopped what were the results you were looking

00:01:24.060 for i don't even know i was like i just want to be like strong and like flexible and then i wasn't

00:01:30.040 either one and i've remained so you wanted to be a willowy pilates lady also the lady who was

00:01:35.260 teaching it who was extremely nice was like the buffest human being i've ever witnessed in my 0.94

00:01:39.980 entire life and she was like five foot one and i was like this is the short queen energy that i

00:01:44.180 want so bad, but I also don't want to work out like six hours a day. Fair. So I had, I had a

00:01:49.540 whole journey, Aubrey, a whole emotional journey in that class. So I am proud to report that this

00:01:54.640 episode is not going to be a ruiner. I'm also proud to report that we don't have any really

00:01:59.780 huge content notes. Wow. For once. It just means we're not going to like get into like

00:02:05.040 extremely gnarly oppressive attitudes today. Yeah. Pilates seemed totally fine to me. It was just

00:02:10.600 like group exercise and you were stretching and doing sit-ups and stuff like it was yeah it was

00:02:15.300 fine i can i can see why people like it are you ready to get a little primer on pilates and then

00:02:20.800 we'll dig in on this big long story of where it comes from the readiest so pilates was originally

00:02:26.960 called contrology oh i can see why they changed the name yeah that's terrible it's not great it

00:02:33.920 sounds like some sort of eye surgery pilates is basically just a workout right it's sort of

00:02:38.920 focused on muscle tone, posture, this kind of mind-body connection, and particularly on building

00:02:46.600 abdominal strength. The original set is about 50 individual repetitive exercises that can be done

00:02:53.900 either on a mat or with specific Pilates equipment. Some of the things that you talked about before,

00:02:59.800 things like yoga and tai chi and capoeira are shaped over decades or centuries by a whole

00:03:09.500 bunch of practitioners, often from like a shared geographic region or ethnic community or religious

00:03:16.260 tradition or what have you, right? That is not the case with Pilates. There is a single inventor.

00:03:23.320 It's Bob Pilates.

00:03:24.780 It's Joseph Pilates.

00:03:26.680 Wait, so that's where the word comes from. It's not even like a fancy word. It's literally just

00:03:29.580 the dude's last name it's his name okay joseph pilates was born on december 9th 1883 in germany

00:03:37.680 his mother was a naturopath and his father was an avid gymnast who had a gym oh okay as a child

00:03:46.540 joseph pilates reportedly had asthma rickets and rheumatic fever his father introduced him

00:03:55.680 to bodybuilding, boxing, gymnastics, and jujitsu. And Joseph Pilates talked a lot about finding

00:04:04.280 strength and finding relief in his sort of workouts, right? That that became a real source

00:04:10.820 of joy and strength for him. Strongmen were sort of celebrities at the time. And Joseph Pilates

00:04:18.520 especially grew up admiring a kind of strongman celebrity of his day, someone named Eugene Sandow.

00:04:25.680 he reportedly wrapped a chain around his arm and broke it by flexing his muscles

00:04:32.980 all right some of these don't sound real but okay well the thing that i was thinking is i was like

00:04:38.800 listen i'm wearing a necklace that's on a chain i bet i could break that one yeah i guess it's

00:04:42.380 like define chain for me champ he bent iron bars was part of his act just like okay and at one

00:04:49.740 point he fought a lion these i don't know this is just taken from eugene sand i was like tinder

00:04:58.260 profile he went on to open a line of gyms he wrote books he published a magazine and he argued that

00:05:08.160 body culture should train the whole body in order to quote get rid of the defects that civilization

00:05:15.140 and the changes it has brought are responsible for making humans neglect their own body.

00:05:20.520 It's the civilizational stuff again. We still see this now. It's so fucking weird.

00:05:25.380 Yeah, it's wild. 1.00

00:05:26.880 Humans are under some sort of weird witch's hex to just do like the same stupid bullshit 1.00

00:05:31.540 over and over again in like many domains, but especially in health and wellness. 0.99

00:05:36.540 So Joseph Pilates in his young adulthood pursues both gymnastics and bodybuilding professionally.

00:05:44.340 he was married and widowed by the time he turned 30. Oh, in 1912 at age 29, Joseph Pilates moves

00:05:55.020 from Germany to England and he starts working in a wild range of jobs. He is briefly a self-defense

00:06:04.360 trainer for local police and then Scotland Yard. Okay. He was a professional boxer and he was

00:06:12.700 a circus performer oh like a cirque de soleil like acrobat situation he did two things one

00:06:20.180 he was a contortionist so he would be the guy who bends himself into a pretzel right

00:06:25.740 and two he did a thing that is hard to imagine as a circus now because like my god you can't

00:06:31.520 get away from it in city parks in the u.s he was the guy who posed as a statue oh they used to do

00:06:38.640 that in circuses apparently in his they did so like look how bendy i am and look how still i can

00:06:44.800 hold myself the two greatest prize traits i mean before tv there wasn't that much else to do so

00:06:52.740 you're just watching a guy not move within a couple of years he settles in blackpool which is a

00:06:58.200 northern coastal town in england that is where he was in 1914 at the outbreak of world war one

00:07:05.780 oh okay do you know much about what the brits did in response to the outbreak of world war one

00:07:13.200 well i mean they they fought it sure yeah yeah i don't know specifics world war one began in july

00:07:20.580 of 1914 by august of that year the british government passed the aliens restrictions act

00:07:27.860 that allowed them to intern anyone who they suspected of espionage or believed to otherwise

00:07:35.860 be a threat to national security or anyone who held still for too long suspicious

00:07:41.240 so over the course of the war over the course of i think the camps are open for about five years

00:07:48.980 britain interned 116 000 people under the aliens restrictions act that's a huge infrastructure

00:07:56.700 According to National Geographic, at this time, there were 57,000 German immigrants in Britain.

00:08:03.800 Oh, they locked up like everybody, basically. 1.00

00:08:06.340 They just, they went off the rails with this thing, right?

00:08:10.040 Like they went all in.

00:08:11.740 Joseph Pilates was a single man.

00:08:13.440 He wasn't fluent in English.

00:08:15.380 He was a traveling circus performer.

00:08:18.200 In a world where you're rounding up over 100,000 people, that guy seems suspicious, right?

00:08:23.780 It's sort of the conclusion that they come to.

00:08:25.280 They would just go around humming 99 red balloons and see who could hum along.

00:08:30.660 From the future!

00:08:33.460 Joseph Pilates was then required to register himself as a quote-unquote alien

00:08:39.120 at the local police station. 1.00

00:08:41.760 Good sign.

00:08:42.600 And ultimately, he was sent to Nakalo internment camp on the Isle of Man.

00:08:49.220 Nakalo was one of the largest internment camps that the Brits operated.

00:08:53.680 okay nakalo alone housed 23 000 prisoners of war and 3 000 guards between 1914 and 1919

00:09:04.460 wow these places were awful a swiss doctor visited these internment camps during world war one

00:09:12.160 and afterwards came up with the term barbed wire disease to characterize the sort of trauma and

00:09:18.460 mental illness that he witnessed there it was seen as sort of a counterpoint to shell shock

00:09:23.180 right combatants had shell shock and prisoners of war had barbed wire disease was sort of the idea

00:09:28.300 yeah nakalo internment camp is where pilates is reportedly born no way it's it's from a 0.94

00:09:35.700 internment camp from a fucking internment camp developed by joseph pilates while he is a 0.57

00:09:43.440 detainee no way so i mean i guess that makes sense why it's all these kind of like do-it-yourself 0.97

00:09:48.480 like bodyweight style exercises. Totally. So Joseph Pilates was there for pretty much the

00:09:55.400 entire remainder of the war. He's there for four years. He spoke and wrote extensively after the

00:10:02.720 fact about the inspiration for Pilates. Do you want to know what inspired him? Oh, did he see

00:10:10.920 like an upside down bicycle? He's like, I should make kicks from that. The thing that inspired him

00:10:16.640 was the feral cats that came to the camp in search of food scraps. Wait, what? So it's like

00:10:23.380 cat exercises? He said that he watched the ways that they stretched and moved and was like really

00:10:31.420 impressed by how sort of limber they were. And he believed that to be linked to their alertness

00:10:37.820 and their quick reflexes. I mean, probably true. He's he's not wrong. We got to get some cat

00:10:43.460 movements. Yes, this is downward cat. It was because they were interned, designed not only

00:10:50.060 to tend to folks physical health, but also their mental health, right? He had this idea that the

00:10:56.840 mind and body are connected, which is a very popular idea, but that that connection can be

00:11:02.340 lost. And he developed what he called contrology to sort of reestablish that connection. So when

00:11:08.620 When you read his actual instructions on how to sort of do these exercises, there's a lot

00:11:13.400 of instruction about what to focus on and what your mind should be doing while you're

00:11:18.180 sort of doing these exercises, right?

00:11:19.760 It's actually like kind of a more appealing origin story than a lot of other forms of

00:11:24.680 exercise where it's like a guy trying to cope with this terrible situation.

00:11:28.200 There's like lots and lots and lots of better things about this.

00:11:32.020 while he was there he reportedly led large groups of internees in these exercises

00:11:38.980 so many articles mike refer to this as he had a captive audience which is so gross that's not

00:11:49.360 even like really a pun yeah but also like god help me if i have to spend four years with a

00:11:55.860 fitness influencer yikes yeah yeah yeah did any of them use the phrase thin mates

00:12:01.160 no we're not doing this we're not i got more we can do these all day michael it's been a long

00:12:10.680 time since i fired you but i feel the time has come you're due for a review mike

00:12:17.700 so this camp is also where joseph pilates first developed his pilates equipment there's

00:12:26.920 pilates equipment do you know you've never seen the like pilates equipment like the reformer i

00:12:31.100 think is the most uh widely used one no hang on i'm gonna send you a couple of pictures of people

00:12:37.940 using them oh wow i never used these yeah yeah so they're basically just like it's a series of

00:12:43.540 like springs and pulleys and that kind of thing to add resistance to whatever you're doing right

00:12:48.720 you see these in movies sometimes somebody has like a strap on their feet and then they sort of

00:12:53.700 lift themselves up and down with this series of pulleys by like closing their legs or whatever

00:12:59.100 and it sort of slides them back and forth it looks very comical to be honest but i'm sure it's i'm

00:13:03.720 sure it's a good workout it looks goofy but i bet it's good yeah you know what i mean like i'm a fan

00:13:07.840 of resistance and this kind of stuff you like sliding back and forth i do like famously i like

00:13:12.760 sliding back and forth. Something people know about you. Something you're comfortable discussing

00:13:15.680 publicly. Oh, no. Aubrey. Oh, Mike. No, my DMs. That's your fun fact when I introduce you at

00:13:22.540 cocktail parties. This is Aubrey. She likes sliding back and forth. So Joseph Pilates worked

00:13:27.240 with a lot of different kinds of people in this internment camp, but particularly focused on

00:13:33.820 people who were in the infirmary. He focused there because he was like, that felt like him,

00:13:39.300 right that felt like a place where he could help it felt like something that he recognized and

00:13:43.260 he had sort of seen the benefits of movement in his own life and wanted to bring that to more folks

00:13:48.480 which i imagine led to some really helpful conversations and some really exhausting

00:13:53.480 conversations yeah right yeah the beds in the barracks where most folks slept were made of

00:13:59.440 solid wood it was just a hard wood platform but the beds in the infirmary had springs which were

00:14:06.420 way better for sleeping. And they also gave Pilates an opportunity to kind of tinker with

00:14:10.820 parts. So he started messing around with the springs and first started rigging springs over

00:14:17.600 patients' beds so that they could rest with their limbs elevated, for example, like in cartoons,

00:14:23.660 right? Yeah, traction. Yeah, totally. Exactly. And then he started using those springs for

00:14:29.660 resistance in different positions around the bed frame and started doing his exercises using the

00:14:35.560 bed springs, right? Like those little cords that everybody bought during the pandemic.

00:14:39.900 Yeah. The little like rubber. The resistance bands. Sloopity bands. Yeah. So those were

00:14:45.540 some early prototypes for equipment like the reformer that is still used in Pilates today.

00:14:51.940 Have I seen this man? I don't think you've shown me this man. Are there photos of this man?

00:14:55.120 We can see a photo of this man. I want to see a photo of this man. I want to I want a mental

00:14:58.820 image. You sound like Kiki Palmer. Oh, sorry to this man. I'm the opposite of that. I'm seeking

00:15:04.380 more information about this man ah here we go here he is when he's older i actually think that

00:15:09.060 when he's older is like the best wildest look at this guy oh wow he's standing on a woman as she's

00:15:15.120 like doing a sit-up holy shit he really enjoyed to stand on people while they were working out

00:15:20.840 that was like a thing that he did a lot of thank you to my pilates lady for not doing that to me 0.96

00:15:26.260 for not standing on your abdomen my little abs show me a younger one show me him in his peak

00:15:31.440 physical form yes yes hang on oh no that's him getting stood wait here's him getting stood on

00:15:37.240 he also requested it apparently oh he was verse with the standing on you keep doing it you can't

00:15:45.280 you can't tell you can't tell straight people what we're like

00:15:48.960 very nervous oh wow okay so he's in oh it's like grandpa underwear it's like a speedo

00:15:59.560 but it goes up like above his belly button it's a very diaper look he's being stood on

00:16:05.660 and like i guess he's like doing a crunch as he's being stood on and he's wearing ballet shoes

00:16:11.140 yeah those look great i've been looking for like summer slippers he's got because of the way he's

00:16:17.000 laying down it looks like he's wearing a little crop top he really does i know so then here is

00:16:21.620 this is the other photo that we've got joseph pilates reportedly at 57 which i struggle to

00:16:27.020 believe oh yeah and then at 82 oh okay yeah so he's he's in he's in the diaper speedos

00:16:33.380 and he's out in the snow in the 82 year old one which is demented in it looks like maybe bare

00:16:41.200 feet or in ballet shoes he also has a very deep tan you can see his transition into influencer

00:16:48.300 over this time because he's like at first he's just like a buff younger dude and then you can

00:16:53.040 tell he's been like sort of on the circuit for a while by the time he's an older guy so after he

00:16:58.020 is released from internment joseph pilates moved back to germany first he settled in hamburg then

00:17:05.580 in berlin he worked as a boxing trainer and owned a boxing gym he got remarried in that time to

00:17:14.880 another woman we know nothing about okay he also filed his first patent in 1923 for a piece of

00:17:21.620 exercise equipment that he invented okay ultimately he patented 26 devices in his lifetime

00:17:28.020 wow were they mostly like uh pilates like resistance bandy type stuff would you like

00:17:33.360 to hear the names of his inventions yes please trapeze table wonder chair magic circle

00:17:40.880 foot corrector pedo pull oh no tough one pedo pull head harness that sounds like what you had 0.72

00:17:53.100 as a kid to fix your teeth i was gonna say i don't even have to translate head harness to queer

00:17:58.700 uh toe and finger correctors spine corrector ladder barrel guillotine and catapult this 0.51

00:18:08.600 this feels very like as seen on tv yeah are you tired of doing sit-ups the normal way get the

00:18:15.100 wonder chair yeah absolutely so ultimately what leads him to leave germany because he does leave

00:18:21.880 germany is a job offer because he had trained with police in britain and with scotland yard

00:18:29.400 he was asked to train the german military police but that was part of an attempt to begin to rebuild

00:18:37.380 the nation's military. And his experience at Nakalo left him staunchly anti-war. So he refused

00:18:45.060 the job and was like, also, I don't like that we're rebuilding our military. I don't want to

00:18:49.080 be here for another war. And in an extremely prescient move, he immigrated to the U.S. in

00:18:55.720 April of 1926. Dude, this is by far the least problematic

00:18:59.960 ever discussed on the show honestly someone who's like anti-nazi

00:19:05.620 not a given for this field he moves because a boxer that he's training wants him to move to

00:19:14.700 new york and keep training him and as an incentive that boxer's manager agrees to

00:19:21.560 finance a studio for pilates to teach his method in wow so they fully like pay for him to

00:19:29.860 start a business and to run his like Pilates classes. Dude, this honestly, I don't know why

00:19:35.960 the Pilates people are not like marketing this more. It's wild, right? It was developed in an

00:19:40.520 internment camp and the first studio was a guy who was like fleeing the Nazis. He wasn't fleeing

00:19:45.900 the Nazis. This is the 20s, right? It's not like things are imminent. He's just like, I don't want

00:19:51.920 to be in a state that's like trying to build up its military like this. It's not quite as good as

00:19:56.660 like anti-nazi but it's still like yeah canceling germany because it's problematic absolutely agree

00:20:02.260 on the boat over from germany he meets a woman named clara zuner and she becomes his wife did

00:20:13.120 he divorce wife too we have no idea don't know okay couldn't tell you lost to time they open

00:20:18.680 a studio in new york city it's near a bunch of the city's ballet studios so contrology as he's

00:20:26.660 time quickly sort of gained a following among dancers who wanted to improve their performance

00:20:34.140 and also particularly reduce their injury recovery time. His role in the dance world

00:20:41.000 is really sort of cemented when he successfully rehabilitates a modern dance icon named Ruth

00:20:48.680 Saint-Denis from an injury that she thought was going to end her career. And he's like,

00:20:54.600 no it's not and she goes to him and she is able to dance again and it becomes this like huge

00:21:00.340 sensational sort of story from there actors start to join in he becomes a trainer to

00:21:06.740 lawrence olivier lauren bacall and katherine hepburn wow and he develops a crew of sort of

00:21:14.200 local devotees too so many of them become pilates instructors themselves his classes were five

00:21:22.100 dollars a piece that sounds expensive for back then doesn't it for the 20s yeah wait let's put

00:21:28.020 it in an inflation calculator wait do it do it do it five dollars holy shit uh 85 dollars and 70 0.82

00:21:36.140 cents whoa okay this is really uh stretching to the stars it's not for the people yeah exactly

00:21:43.220 at this point sort of early in the life of the studio the method's sort of biggest asset is one

00:21:50.720 of its best instructors. Kathy Grant is a famous black dancer and chorus girl in New York who came

00:21:58.920 to Joseph Pilates for injury rehabilitation. And she loved his methods so much that she trains to

00:22:05.800 become sort of certified in Pilates. She trains more than 2,200 hours to get that certification.

00:22:12.120 Wait, what? 2,200 hours? That's like a college degree. 0.97

00:22:14.780 Her classes quickly become some of the most popular in the city because she's known to be 0.74

00:22:21.420 really fun, really encouraging, and also really tough. She was also known for creating adaptive

00:22:27.880 exercises for disabled students and exercises to deal with specific sort of symptoms that

00:22:33.920 folks were experiencing. So she gets more and more popular and moves to larger and larger venues and

00:22:39.600 ultimately ends up teaching Pilates at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU.

00:22:44.900 This is the most wholesome episode we've ever done. I was not expecting this.

00:22:49.600 She is widely cited as one of the most instrumental sort of mentors in launching

00:22:55.460 a generation of Pilates instructors. Like there are many, many, many people who credit her as

00:23:02.080 their mentor, which is like really fucking cool. She seems nice. He seems fine. Watch it. Last time 0.91

00:23:08.720 i said this halfway through an episode it turned out we had like a police brutality subplot coming

00:23:13.220 so there's probably more information you're gonna tell me yeah totally watch and pump the brakes 0.91

00:23:18.080 buddy yeah it's not gonna be anything like that but he's just like kind of a dick okay he's also 0.84

00:23:23.860 very eccentric so he usually ran classes in his tight little short shorts his little like 0.89

00:23:31.380 somewhere between briefs and shorts diaper he wore those shorts he wore sandals and that is it

00:23:37.200 his studio is decorated with paintings photos and sculptures of him oh okay and most of them

00:23:46.180 are him either naked or in a loincloth we're all right we're getting closer to like problematic

00:23:52.420 stuff we're getting back into familiar mike and aubrey territory i didn't want to we were going 0.85

00:23:58.240 to get a nice little detour with kathy grant and now we're back to the weird shit that we normally

00:24:02.760 trafficking he's about to mention hunger games i read a biography of him called caged lion 0.67

00:24:07.860 and the biographer talks about the first time he met him and he was like he shook my hand and then

00:24:13.040 kept sliding his hand up my wrist oh and he was like i couldn't figure out what he was doing it

00:24:18.500 was like for such a long time and he was like then i realized he was taking my pulse oh what

00:24:23.620 so not the king of boundaries that's a weird creep totally but again there's not anything

00:24:32.020 like more sinister than this that i'm aware of nothing okay came up in the research except that 0.95

00:24:37.600 he had a really bad temper and was just like a dick to a lot of people and particularly to

00:24:42.960 students if they frustrated him he would throw people out of class regularly if they frustrated 0.93

00:24:47.720 him not great but grading but also still grading on a curve c minus you pass yeah c is for cookie

00:24:55.780 and that's good enough for me.

00:24:57.940 So there's a 1962 profile of him in Sports Illustrated

00:25:01.380 that recounts this moment that the author witnesses,

00:25:05.040 the author of the article witnesses.

00:25:06.960 Joseph Pilates is telling a student off for moving

00:25:10.520 and I quote, like an elephant.

00:25:12.580 Oh yeah, that's not good. 0.98

00:25:13.600 And it really upsets her.

00:25:15.580 Yeah.

00:25:16.040 She says he's calling her an elephant.

00:25:18.080 He says, quote, I wouldn't insult the elephant.

00:25:21.220 An elephant could walk into this room

00:25:23.560 and you wouldn't hear it.

00:25:24.720 an elephant walks delicately but you clump clump clump that doesn't sound accurate about elephants

00:25:30.880 americans baseball players joggers weightlifters straighten the knees oh is what he says to her

00:25:38.540 okay americans baseball players joggers weightlifters straighten the knees is like a

00:25:43.740 phrase that will come up again i don't even understand what it means he is profoundly

00:25:48.320 disapproving of Americans. Actually, let's do this quote now. This is in his interview

00:25:55.760 with Sports Illustrated. So this is him talking directly to the reporter. And this is the

00:26:02.900 brickiest brick. I'm so sorry, but it's wild as hell. The fact that he talks shit on Americans

00:26:07.960 all the time is just going to make me like him more. Careful. Okay. He says, Americans, 1.00

00:26:13.160 they want to go 600 miles an hour and they don't know how to walk. Look at them in the street. 1.00

00:26:18.320 bent over coughing you men with gray faces why can't they look like animals look at a cat

00:26:26.040 look at any animal the only animal that doesn't hold its stomach in is the pig what yeah by 0.51

00:26:34.060 exercising your stomach muscles you wring out the body you don't catch colds you don't catch cancer

00:26:39.600 you don't get hernias do animals get hernias i mean maybe i don't know joseph

00:26:46.000 He seems very confident.

00:26:49.220 Do animals go on diets?

00:26:50.860 Eat what you want.

00:26:51.800 Drink what you want.

00:26:52.980 I drink a quart of liquor a day, plus some beers and smoke maybe 15 cigars.

00:26:58.960 What? 0.77

00:26:59.620 And what do Americans do?

00:27:01.320 They play golf.

00:27:02.220 They play baseball.

00:27:03.180 They use half of their muscles, a quarter of their muscles.

00:27:05.700 They get fat.

00:27:06.720 They go jogging.

00:27:07.520 They go on crazy diets.

00:27:08.600 They jump up and down in crazy exercises.

00:27:11.140 They have bad backs.

00:27:12.780 They have beer bellies.

00:27:14.040 They slouch.

00:27:14.940 They complain. 0.99

00:27:16.000 they have hurt they slouch they complain they have hernias this is fucking incoherent what's 0.97

00:27:24.320 he even saying this is a rant that he goes on often he writes a couple of books and this kind 0.97

00:27:32.180 of stuff is in there where he's like why aren't americans more like cats okay but also he's like

00:27:39.800 the problem with americans is like they eat they eat bad they don't exercise and then he's like

00:27:43.460 i drink beer every day i smoke cigars this is big drunk uncle energy yeah it really is like

00:27:49.880 what do americans do they play golf they play baseball they use half their muscles a quarter

00:27:53.780 of their muscles yeah what are you talking about they're playing sports what are you talking about

00:27:57.100 they're playing the wrong sports so i was a prom king okay like he just fully goes into the sketch

00:28:03.580 he also writes books during this time he publishes a book in 1934 and one in 1945

00:28:10.500 uh his first book is called your health a corrective system of exercising that revolutionizes

00:28:18.100 the entire field of physical education which i'm sure you read because you're also a weirdo on this

00:28:24.500 stuff but in a much better and different way than him i also read return to your life through

00:28:30.800 contrology what were they like they're bonkers it's a lot of photos of him doing the exercises

00:28:40.400 so you can see how to do it. Right. Which makes a lot of sense. But the narrative parts are

00:28:45.480 bananas. Also, as he's publicizing these books, he starts making absolutely wild claims. He claims

00:28:53.200 that the detainees that he trained with in his internment camp, quote, ended the war in better

00:28:59.800 shape than when it started. Oh, not one of them got the flu during the influenza epidemic during

00:29:07.780 the war you need to have more than one opinion in your life you can't just be like we did exercise

00:29:13.040 so the internment camps were okay nobody got the flu yeah nobody got the flu he has some good stuff

00:29:22.660 in his books to be totally honest he talks about the importance of quote hobbies and all forms of

00:29:29.060 play for quote vitality and moral uplift okay he's like it's really important to have a good time

00:29:36.200 he advocates for pleasurable living and he sort of decries the working world for

00:29:43.580 leaving us with too little energy for fun and pleasure and relationships and like social time

00:29:49.540 he is a european listen he's like you guys need paternity leave and stronger consumer protections

00:29:56.720 but then there's also stuff like this he starts talking about circulation as quote an internal

00:30:02.600 shower uh okay and keeps talking about the importance of quote fresh pure blood which

00:30:09.780 absolutely seems like it should be published on the daily stormer or like some weird silicon valley 0.79

00:30:15.120 youthful blood shit yeah or the guy who's harvesting blood from his son or whatever 0.96

00:30:20.740 yeah he keeps yelling in his book and when i say yelling i mean sentences in all caps 0.99

00:30:27.300 oh really like fully going for it it is like you have been dropped into a lindy west essay

00:30:32.720 collection just like it's happening now uh he keeps yelling about how our minds should be able

00:30:39.820 to dominate our bodies okay he writes quote in all caps ideally our muscles should obey our will

00:30:47.100 reasonably our will should not be dominated by the reflex actions of our muscles when brain cells

00:30:53.100 are developed the mind too is developed okay i would i would also like to control my impulses

00:30:59.180 when it comes to my use of the internet but i cannot yeah he's talking about like your body

00:31:04.000 should do everything your mind wills it to do i mean i'd love that too i could fly sure you could

00:31:10.160 be superman yeah what's your kryptonite if you're superman i mean actually grinder but for the show

00:31:15.740 probably say blueberries or something these are also very clearly the work of the guy who kept

00:31:21.840 yelling about how americans should be more like animals okay he has a passage in which again like 0.90

00:31:28.340 on its face you and i would probably agree with him where he is going off on quacks and sort of

00:31:35.940 scammy quote-unquote miracle cures oh cool and i am sending you the quote unproblematic king

00:31:45.220 Joseph Pilates. Nope, that's not true. It is very doubtful indeed whether a really sane and

00:31:51.520 intelligent person would even think of attempting to prove that any of these many highly recommended

00:31:57.160 cures accomplish one iota toward improving the health of anyone, much less affecting a cure.

00:32:03.300 He's not the best writer. He shines in other ways. Pardon this thought, but is it not idiotic,

00:32:09.120 figuratively speaking, to permit oneself to be led around by one's nose by these 0.99

00:32:14.300 holy mercenary unscrupulous and irresponsible exploiters who through their misleading

00:32:20.820 advertisements fake references and unconscionable methods prey upon the blind credulity of the

00:32:27.720 public that was one sentence think it over you saps hocus pocus is hocus pocus by any other name

00:32:35.680 this is basically our show if written by an ai to be in like 1850s speak

00:32:43.220 now see here think it over you saps hocus pocus is hocus pocus i'm tired of all the humbug aubrey

00:32:52.620 i got to think it over you saps and i was like it's going in the show i don't care it's pretty

00:32:56.740 good it's pretty good so joseph pilates uh lived in new york city as a fitness eccentric and you

00:33:08.800 know general unsettling dude until his death in 1967 at the age of 83 he dies of emphysema oh

00:33:19.260 because of the smoking likely because of the cigars that's what it's generally attributed to

00:33:23.640 he runs his studio in new york for 40 years wow and his wife continues to run it after his death

00:33:33.340 but after she passes away in 1977 10 years later the studio passed through a handful of owners

00:33:40.340 before finally sort of closing for good but in his lifetime pilates never really goes mainstream

00:33:47.880 its popularity starts to rise in the wake of the 80s right so in the 80s fitness was dominated by

00:33:57.620 cardio, by aerobics, by bodybuilding, which were all like intense and like pretty high impact

00:34:04.720 forms of exercise. And people were just generally like tired, right? Pilates sort of emerged at

00:34:12.300 that time as a gentler, more focused form of exercise, right? Infomercials started selling

00:34:19.420 Pilates equipment in the US in 1996, which is a pretty good gauge of its sort of quote unquote

00:34:24.320 going mainstream it was an infomercial thing yeah yeah yeah there were pilates you could buy a

00:34:29.300 pilates reformer oh so it was like the equipment that they were selling absolutely okay from there

00:34:36.940 a bunch of celebrities started doing it and sort of touting its virtues publicly madonna starts

00:34:43.280 doing pilates jennifer aniston jane seymour uma thurman gwyneth paltrow and just a parade of like

00:34:50.820 skinny 90s women. Just willowy white, wealthy women. Yeah, just the wispy broads of the 1.00

00:34:58.400 Trapper Keeper era. In the 2010s, Pilates popularity starts to slump and it slumps

00:35:04.540 so dramatically that New York Magazine published a piece called The Pilatespocalypse. How the

00:35:11.900 method that started the boutique fitness trend is going bust. Sure. Basically, it found based

00:35:17.620 on some market research which like question mark about the methodologies of market research

00:35:22.980 kind of always for me right um but their estimates based on that market research was that about 10

00:35:30.340 percent of pilates folks stopped doing pilates in 2011 alone okay that like there's a pretty

00:35:36.880 significant decrease and that's mostly because just sort of the blooms off the rose as often

00:35:43.020 happens with fitness trends right it starts to seem sort of dated it starts to be seen as too

00:35:48.140 expensive it starts to be seen as boring and now there's stuff like bar and there's a bunch of

00:35:53.660 different kinds of yoga that are more available in the u.s and there are like all kinds of fitness

00:35:59.220 classes right soul cycle is starting to come onto the scene right yeah it's all these things are

00:36:03.880 always cyclical because they fundamentally can never deliver on their promises and people

00:36:08.960 oftentimes crave a little bit more variety than just doing the same thing over and over again

00:36:12.860 Yeah, that's what I was going to say is like, even if there aren't promises, like you kind

00:36:16.800 of got to mix it up.

00:36:17.820 Especially with these things where they're like fundamentally kind of interchangeable,

00:36:20.740 like group exercise seems to be very beneficial, but also like, do you want to do yoga?

00:36:25.820 Do you want to CrossFit?

00:36:26.580 Do you want to do Pilates?

00:36:27.660 Yep. 0.93

00:36:27.900 For most normal ass people, if you're like working a nine to five job and you don't get 0.85

00:36:31.360 like a ton of exercise, if you're doing like twice a week, you go to some like exercise 0.85

00:36:35.180 class, it's not super important like what the actual class is.

00:36:39.300 In terms of the data on Pilates, it bears out pretty much the same thing. It has basically the

00:36:46.280 same benefits of other kinds of exercise, right? There are particular benefits to it. Maybe in some

00:36:53.100 cases, there are like lots and lots of health claims about Pilates, as there are with so many

00:36:58.960 fitness regimens. But none of those are definitively borne out by the data, right?

00:37:04.440 Cochran says that, quote, while there is some evidence for the effectiveness of Pilates for

00:37:09.640 low back pain, there is no conclusive evidence that it is superior to other forms of exercise.

00:37:15.240 Another meta-analysis found that there was evidence that Pilates was more effective than

00:37:20.620 other forms of exercise. But this is the difference between something that's statistically significant

00:37:25.720 and something that's clinically significant. So the one study is reporting on like it's

00:37:29.640 statistically significant that it's a little bit better but like clinically that doesn't change

00:37:34.660 your approach that doesn't like mean that a ton of doctors are going to start prescribing pilates

00:37:39.060 all that kind of stuff right i can hear a bunch of our listeners opening a new tab to write us an

00:37:44.140 email and say like if it worked for you great you don't have to tell us that god bless we we believe

00:37:51.020 you just because something on average is not necessarily like the cure-all doesn't take away

00:37:57.520 from you that it worked. So like if it was good for your lower back and you love Pilates in a

00:38:03.200 genuine way, like that's great. We're so thrilled for you. You don't have to correct us that we said

00:38:08.000 an average was not your individual experience. So a little coda to the Joseph Pilates story.

00:38:17.020 The Joseph Pilates name and image have been subject to some really fascinating lawsuits

00:38:23.200 in recent years the first one is in 1992 so this is well after joseph pilates has passed

00:38:29.340 a pilates teacher named sean gallagher bought the trademarks and the brand name of pilates

00:38:36.600 for seventeen thousand dollars oh that's like nothing even in 1992 dollars that is a song

00:38:43.140 right um for this kind of transaction with that purchase he received boxes containing over a

00:38:51.100 thousand photos and old company materials and all kinds of sort of proprietary stuff from

00:38:56.760 the studio and the company. He's buying this from the old studio owners. And he starts sending

00:39:02.600 cease and desist letters to other instructors and businesses who are using the word Pilates.

00:39:08.980 Oh, it's a patent troll thing. You buy up the property and then you just like threaten people

00:39:13.480 with lawsuits and they settle for like whatever, a couple hundred or a couple thousand bucks.

00:39:16.900 and you basically just like make money this way.

00:39:18.960 He argues that he's not a patent troll

00:39:21.780 because he really is a Pilates teacher

00:39:23.620 and he really does care about the legacy

00:39:25.360 and da-da-da-da-da, all of this kind of stuff, right?

00:39:27.820 Sure.

00:39:28.680 In 1998, one of his cases makes its way to federal court

00:39:32.960 in the Southern District of New York.

00:39:35.360 Two years later in 2000,

00:39:36.900 the case finally wrapped up with the judge ruling

00:39:40.380 that Pilates was a generic term like aerobics or yoga

00:39:44.740 and that it was therefore free for anyone to use so okay say goodbye to that 17 grand dude so all

00:39:51.980 it all it took was like one person to challenge this and it basically just immediately gets

00:39:55.280 overturned yeah totally and like the ruling also sort of cast some aspersions on gallagher and was

00:40:01.780 like we know you're not doing this on the up and up so right knock it off right okay while that

00:40:07.600 might have sent somebody else packing it did not stop sean gallagher oh no and there was a new piece

00:40:13.880 about him last year in the new york times he is now saying that he is the rightful owner of all

00:40:22.400 the photos and materials that he got in those boxes that came with the trademark and what have

00:40:27.020 you he says that that is because he wants to protect the integrity of the pilates method

00:40:32.580 his critics say that those images already existed in other places and were already in use you can

00:40:39.040 find them on the internet he didn't put them there but essentially he has started reporting

00:40:43.960 other people's posts on instagram if they use a picture of joseph pilates that is one of the ones 0.97

00:40:49.860 in his fucking boxes that's hella funny what a what a shitty epilogue what a weird way to spend 0.89

00:40:56.240 your time oh it's like bonkers and they're all people who are like uh i wanted you to see how 0.99

00:41:01.860 to do these exercises properly so here are photos of the founder of this thing doing it the way he

00:41:08.360 thinks you should do it. So one woman received those complaints on Instagram and Instagram

00:41:15.280 pulled one of her posts down. She then did a fairly common thing. She shared a screenshot 0.97

00:41:21.780 of Instagram's message being like, what the fuck? That message from Instagram includes a tiny 0.98

00:41:27.400 thumbnail of the original image. So he reports that one too. Nice. Okay. And gets it taken down

00:41:33.140 as well okay right like that's the level that this dude is operating at other people have

00:41:40.360 written to him ahead of time to ask clarifying questions about what they can and can't use

00:41:45.060 only to find that their questions prompted him to go back through their feeds and report past posts

00:41:51.980 as copyright violations is he making any money on this or he's just like reporting people and

00:41:55.880 getting stuff taken down he's just getting things taken down at this point okay one of those was a

00:42:01.520 violation because, uh, the person posting posted a picture of themselves holding Sean Gallagher's

00:42:09.500 book and advising her followers to buy it. Okay. And he's like, report this post. You didn't have

00:42:16.180 authorization to use that photo. Like she is marketing your book, dude. What are you mad

00:42:21.900 about? I always wanted to write an article about this when I was at HuffPost of like how easy it

00:42:25.860 for just one random busybody to just like ruin it for everybody for like no reason. And fields

00:42:33.320 where like this isn't happening, it's just like luck that some random ass dude hasn't like made

00:42:37.860 this a project. Totally. So here is a quote from a New York Times piece about this set of lawsuits

00:42:45.360 called The Fight for the Soul of Pilates. Nice. There you go. When she was notified by Meta that

00:42:52.220 the second of her accounts had been removed after complaints from Mr. Gallagher, she clicked the

00:42:56.640 box to indicate that she questioned the validity of his copyright claim. Mr. Gallagher said Meta

00:43:01.380 notified him that it would restore Ms. Kelly's account unless he took legal action to assert

00:43:05.700 his ownership of the images she had posted. That is when he sued her. So cut it out unless you're

00:43:12.720 actually going to back this up with legal claims. And he's like, yeah, I'm going to back it up with

00:43:15.860 legal claims okay you thought you were gonna call my bluff nice try god this is only making me

00:43:22.200 stronger that case is making its way through the court system now but it is a fascinating

00:43:29.820 weird arc for pilates to take right that it is started in ostensibly a pretty altruistic way

00:43:39.600 right whether or not you're like a big fan of how joseph pilates goes about things like it seems

00:43:45.800 like his motivations here were genuinely pretty good and over time that legacy uh sort of grows

00:43:53.860 and then gets big enough to be a target for extremely petty patent yeah i like the episodes

00:44:01.820 that are just like we're not like canceling anything it's just like here's like a fun story

00:44:06.240 of this thing that like if you don't do pilates that's fine if you do pilates that's fine don't

00:44:12.640 care but here's probably something you didn't know about it yeah this is this is halo top this is

00:44:17.280 angela lansbury this is yeah i mean we kind of canceled halo top though but this is this is

00:44:22.460 different we're just like it's fine it's just mostly air honestly that's like most of our

00:44:26.740 episodes it's fine but air

00:44:42.640 Thank you.

Maintenance Phase - July 04, 2023

Pilates

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