AS A MAN who does advanced Pilates (I’m level 3 now; there’s talk about level 4), it has taken me a while to come fully out of the closet. Not about the man thing: I adjusted to that years ago. No: I mean about the Pilates, a form of exercise that, despite being quite fashionable, still has a big image problem in the eyes of one of the main genders.
Part of it is the name. Its eponymous derivation from the system’s creator notwithstanding, Pilates sounds somehow girly. This is doubly unfortunate, because not only was Joseph Pilates a man, but he was a man’s man. A German, a professional boxer, a circus performer and a police self-defence trainer among other things, he developed his exercise system for wounded soldiers while interned by the British during the first World War: all impeccably masculine credentials.
The surname was character-building. It came from his supposedly Greek father; and as most people now know, it rhymes (loosely) with “free gratis”. Naturally, the young Joseph P’s schoolmates ignored this and pronounced it as in Pontius Pilate, thereby implying that the two were related.
No doubt this helped make Pilates the man he became: a very colourful and eccentric man. But the point is that the very name of his exercise system thereby enshrines the macho creed of: no pain, no gain. And yet, it doesn’t sound manly. Even with the knowledge that its practitioners include Tiger Woods, Roy Keane, and the All Blacks rugby team, Pilates still sounds like something only women do.
I’m reminded of an incident some years ago when, in one of those ritual humiliations a newspaper inflicts on feature writers, I was dispatched to attend a ballroom dancing class and report on the experience. The main dance on the day in question was the cha-cha-cha; and it soon became clear that even the men who were there voluntarily were just as crippled with embarrassment as I was at having to say “one-two, cha-cha-cha!” while simultaneously moving their hips.
So the female instructor, who had seen this many times before, changed the wording from “one-two, cha-cha-cha!” to “one-two, one-two-three!”. And miraculously, the men all instantly relaxed. It was pathetic, we knew. But “one-two-three” made it sound like football training (whereas probably the only time “cha-cha-cha” has ever been heard in a sporting arena is when the team-mates of Kilkenny hurler James “Cha” Fitzpatrick are pleading for a pass), and therefore legitimate.
Not that “controlology”, which was the name Pilates himself gave his exercise regime, was good either. It emphasised the basic idea: re-educating people about breathing and the use of muscles, to maximise the body’s core strength. But it has negative connotations too: nobody wants to be a control freak.
I started doing Pilates about three years ago, for health reasons, after spending several weeks with a severe pain that ran from my right shoulder-blade down my arm. It was probably the result of spending long hours slumped at the computer, shoulders tensing progressively as my column deadline approached and then passed, with no end in sight. (Your shoulders must get very tense all right – Diary Ed).
Whatever: for a while, the only thing that made the pain stop was immersion from the neck down in a hot bath. Unable to sleep, I took to having hot baths in the middle of the night, before the fear of drowning made me look for a more long-term solution. That was when a (male) colleague (quietly) suggested Pilates. And all I can say is that the problem hasn’t returned since.
My apologies in advance for name-dropping, but I’m told that the writer Martin Amis had a similar experience – hip pain in his case – before he took up Pilates. He’s quite an enthusiast too, apparently.
Of course, the likes of Amis can afford personal instructors, whereas the rest of us have to go to communal classes. In my experience, this involves sharing a small room with several other people, who tend not only to be women, but women built like ballet dancers. This can be quite pleasant, in its own way. But it can be challenging too. Luckily for me the teacher is also male, a fact that at least one of us finds deeply reassuring. We discuss football a lot.
There are many claims made for the benefits of Pilates, some of them mad. I saw a well-known singer reported somewhere recently as saying that she had grown two inches taller since taking up the exercises. Which must either have been a misquote, or else there was a natural explanation for the phenomenon: such as that she had taken to wearing high-heels and hadn’t noticed.
But Pilates does undoubtedly improve your posture, as I can attest. I did a medical check-up there a while back and, after measuring me, the nurse declared I was six feet tall. This was dramatic news if it was true. Since all the previous check-ups of my adult life had given me to believe that I was precisely five-eleven-and-a-half, I asked for a recount.
So the nurse looked again, flattened my hair, ensured I had both soles on the ground, and said: “Yes, six feet exactly.” I knew there was a simple explanation for the breakthrough: that I had finally learned to stand up straight, the way my parents always told me to. But even so: six feet tall! It’s an exciting thing to find out in your mid-40s.