Day 4: Pilates vs Yoga

There are three questions I get asked a lot. Here are the FAQs in my life: 

1. "Don’t you think that being too lazy and selfish to cook your non-vegetarian husband a big juicy steak every day is kinda asking to be divorced? I mean, is that even legal under the terms of the Geneva Convention? Is he some kind of SAINT?”. To which the answer is: I would cook a steak terribly, so best not to even go there, and yes, the poor man is absolutely a saint, having to put up with the abhorrent lack of dead things in our fridge. 

2. "Are you Polish?”. Answer: no. I just like gherkins, which is why I’m in your Polski Sklep. 

3. "So what is the difference between Pilates and yoga?”. Ah ha. Make yourself comfortable and let me tell you a story...

Once upon a time, in 1883, a boy called Joseph Pilates was born in Germany. He was a really ill child and had a pretty rough time of it, with asthma, rickets, rheumatic fever and the surname of the killer of Christ. Awkward. But he was no quitter, and devoted time that these days would have been spent on Facebook, on improving his physical strength. He spent his youth doing body building, yoga, martial arts, skiing and gymnastics, and then moved to England in 1912 to work as a professional boxer, circus performer and self-defence trainer for Scotland Yard. In other words: he was one tough fella. 

But then the First World War came, and his German roots meant that he was put in an internment camp. Determined to emerge from the camp fitter and stronger than ever, he developed a series of exercises (based on yoga and the movements of animals) that didn’t require much space or equipment. He called this new exercise regime ‘Contrology’, and further developed it in collaboration with dance and fitness experts on his post-war return to Germany. These became the Pilates exercises we know today.  

Joe’s story doesn’t end there though. Under pressure to train the German army, something he really didn’t want to do, he booked a passage to America, and set sail for New York in 1925. He met his future wife, Clara, on the voyage, and the two of them set up a fitness studio when they arrived, training a devoted following of dancers and performers there until the 1960s. 

Joe died in 1967, but his legacy remained, and grew in popularity, finally exploding onto the UK scene in the early 2000s. There are now numerous ‘contemporary’ schools of Pilates, which have continued to develop and modify Joe Pilate’s original exercises, based on modern research and understandings of biomechanics and sports science.   

So in answer to the question – what is the difference between yoga and Pilates? – well, yoga was there first, and inspired Pilates. But Joe Pilates took the spiritual and ancient ideas of yoga and combined them with a more clinical, technical understanding of movement to create a form of exercises that prioritises control and precision, to target the muscles essential for good posture and efficient movement. So you still stretch, flex and get stronger, like you do in yoga too, but there’s more science in it – and less one-nostril breathing. 

Mmm, time for a gherkin, I think...