Pilates Won’t Give You a ‘Pilates Body’
Reading Time: 4 minutesAs an instructor, I can tell you that it will make you stronger and improve your posture—not make you ‘long and lean.’, Pilates won’t make you long and lean.
This is an installment of Good Fit, a column about exercise.
I had an eating disorder relapse in 2017. My 20s were drawing to a close, and I regressed, spending time on proAna forums, crying in grocery-store parking lots, and isolating myself from anyone who might tempt me with a caloric good time.
My life was falling apart, but in the studio where I taught Pilates, my increasing thinness became a selling point. Prospective clients wanted to know if I got my physique from Pilates, and I would say yes, omitting the teeny, tiny detail that I thought Diet Coke was a meal.
Pilates is a method of low-impact training developed by Joseph Pilates, a stocky, barrel-chested guy, that uses bodyweight and resistance to build both strength and flexibility. In Pilates, all movement comes from the core, which Pilates people often call the ‘powerhouse.’ Building up your core strength and flexibility is an antidote to so many of the physical ills of modern society; I like to call Pilates the best ‘anti-desk’ exercise. Joseph Pilates wasn’t so self-centered as to name the training method after himself—he called it ‘contrology.’ But his goals were lofty. In his 1945 book Return to Life Through Contrology, he described it as ‘the complete coordination of the body, mind and spirit.’ He wrote that contrology ‘develops the body uniformly, corrects wrong postures, restores physical vitality, invigorates the mind, and elevates the spirit.’
The name didn’t catch on, but the method did. And the modern rebrand of contrology included another shift: Marketing a slightly esoteric training method developed by a long-dead German guy can be tough, especially when most people go to the gym to lose weight. We—the fitness industry, the Pilates community—pitch Pilates, both subtly and not, as the ticket to a ‘long and lean’ body. Gwyneth Paltrow does Pilates! Kendall Jenner does Pilates! If you’re not drawn in by celebrity endorsements, how about the idea of a ‘dancer’s body‘? An article on a fitness website sums up the alleged connection: ‘Pilates develops long, lean muscles in the arms, legs, and glutes. Doing Pilates on a regular basis will help you get the kind of shape and strength you’re after. It will also increase your flexibility, so that you can move as fluidly as someone who dances, as well.’
Do you hear that? It’s me, screaming. I have practiced Pilates for 12 years, and been an instructor for almost seven years. What truly made my body, for a time, ‘long and lean’ was not doing Pilates—it was a combination of genetics and being very unwell.
Breaking down why the entire ‘Pilates can make you look like a skinny ballerina’ premise is bullshit starts with the phrase ‘lean muscles.’ All muscle is lean tissue. You also cannot make your muscles longer, despite the fact that a lot of Pilates instructors will tell their clients to ‘lengthen’ to help them visualize stretching. Then, there is so much wrong with the phrase ‘dancer’s body.’ Taking the term literally, the secrets to a ‘dancer’s body’ are beginning dance training at a young age, rigorous dance training, and for many, sadly, dieting. Many Pilates instructors look the part because they are former or current dancers, not because they’ve recently done a hundred pullups on the Wunda Chair.
Looking critically at the term, though, takes us back to the American choreographer and ballet visionary George Balanchine, who founded the New York City Ballet in 1948, essentially inventing neoclassical ballet and anorexic ballerinas. He had a very particular idea of how ballerinas should look. The ideal Balanchine dancer has a long and graceful neck, long limbs, and the lowest possible amount of body fat. Seeing Gelsey Kirkland, a New York City Ballet dancer, Balanchine tapped her sternum, saying, ‘Must see the bones.’ Balanchine’s body standard lives on—last fall, a dancer with the New York City Ballet alleged that she was body shamed out of a role after gaining 10 pounds.
Joseph Pilates was not a dancer. He was a boxer and a gymnast. But his regimen became associated with dancers because his studio in New York became a haven for them; he developed a reputation for being able to ‘fix’ dancers’ aches and pains. By the 1960s, Pilates became an accepted part of a dancer’s training regimen. Joseph Pilates’ protégé, Romana Kryzanowska, was a dancer, and a lot of the dance-y flourishes in Pilates exercises are Romana-isms.
In short: A lot of dancers do Pilates, a lot of Pilates instructors are dancers, and the woman who more or less codified classical Pilates was a dancer, as well. There is a correlation here between ‘dancers’ bodies’ and Pilates, but correlation does not equal causation.
Thanks to body dysmorphia, I don’t know if I look like I have a ‘Pilates body’ anymore, but I haven’t purged in years and I’m no longer afraid of eating dinner. But I do know that I am much better at Pilates now that I eat regularly, and weigh more.
When I was going to group therapy for my eating disorder, another participant was also a Pilates instructor. We both vented about how teaching in front of mirrors all day and focusing on our clients’ bodies made it hard to recover. I hope she’s doing all right. I still hate the mirrors, but it’s easier for me now.
I want to make it extremely clear that I love Pilates. Practicing Pilates has improved my life in so many ways. I’m strong and flexible, and I have great posture. That’s what I want for my clients, and what a Pilates body should be: A body that feels good to exist in.
Read more installments of Good Fit.
Reference: https://slate.com/technology/2023/07/pilates-wont-make-you-long-and-lean.html
Ref: slate
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