The definitive guide to mat-based Pilates from a renowned, celebrity trainer with more than three decades of experience--now with a new chapter of matwork-enhancing strategies and sixteen variations on classic exercises Since its publication in 2000, In In this revised and expanded edition, you will find more progressions, variations, and updated cues throughout the exercises. You will also learn how to deepen your Pilates practice in an exciting-new chapter that explores the strengthening and lengthening benefits of incorporating pandiculation--the contraction and relaxation of muscles to discharge muscular tension and foster mobility. Siler explains pandiculation’s essential role in your neuromuscular health and how it unlocks more of Pilates’s benefits, while offering instructions for pandiculated versions of sixteen matwork exercises to revitalize your body and your practice. Through its warm, concise approach and creative, detailed visuals, <The Pilates Body< will help you master a movement system that enhances your physical and emotional well-being, no matter your skill level, age, or fitness level....

Autorentext
Brooke Siler began her Pilates training in 1994 under Joseph Pilates’ protégée, Romana Kryzanowska, where she spent a decade studying under Romana’s masterful tutelage before opening her award-winning Manhattan studio, re:AB Pilates, in 1997. Brooke was quickly embraced by Hollywood’s A-list, from Madonna to Dustin Hoffman, and her reputation as one of the leading voices in Pilates was firmly established.

However, Brooke is probably best known for penning the New York Times best-seller The Pilates Body, which has become the top-selling Pilates book of all time. In 2025, the revised and expanded second edition of The Pilates Body was released, reaffirming her influence and expertise. Brooke’s other titles include Your Ultimate Pilates Body Challenge and The Women’s Health Big Book of Pilates. In 2021, she also launched her passion-product, The Tensatoner™, a fitness teaching tool inspired by two of Joe Pilates’ lost apparatus.

Since moving to the UK in 2015, Brooke has continued to teach classes, courses, and conferences worldwide. She has remained at the forefront of the Pilates community for over 30 years because she continues to be fiercely passionate, purposeful, and authentic in both her person and her work.

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

What Is Pilates?

The Pilates method of body conditioning—originally known by the name “Contrology”—is a unique system of strength and mobility exercises developed by Joseph H. Pilates in the early 1900s to promote “a healthy mind housed in a healthy body.” It strengthens and tones muscles, improves posture and balance, fosters resilience, unites body and mind, and revitalizes you through improved circulation and mental clarity. Pilates, with more than a century of success, stands out as a tried-and-true formula of wisdom and unwavering results.

Over the years we have come to understand the vital role movement plays in our well-being and are learning to embrace the idea of exercise being an enjoyable endeavor rather than a plodding pursuit. We have moved away from the concept of gyms as being the only path to physical fitness, and with Pilates, specifically the matwork, we can maximize the results achieved from a functional, full-body workout without needing machines or external equipment. The matwork teaches us that our minds and bodies are the finest and only tools necessary for achieving physical fitness and a sense of well-being.

Old exercise regimes, based on isolating areas of the body rather than working the body as the integrated whole it is, have proved ineffectual. If our goal in exercising is to balance our muscles, improve circulation, reduce stress, improve endurance, stand taller, and feel great, wouldn’t it then stand to reason we would utilize the method that for a century has proven its ability to achieve all these things?

The Pilates philosophy focuses on training the mind and body to work together toward the goal of overall fitness. Although he was born in a completely different era, Joseph Pilates understood the physical and mental pressures of life today. He sought to reeducate us to work our bodies with the efficiency of performing our daily tasks in mind. Pilates believed that his method would propel people to become more productive both mentally and physically. For this reason the Pilates matwork is designed to fit into the physical and time constraints of the individual without diminishing its comprehensive benefits.

Pilates began developing his movement system in Germany in the early 1900s from the tender age of eighteen. Bullied as a young child, Pilates created a method that sprang from his determination to strengthen his own body. He called it “Contrology,” and defined it as “the science and art of coordinated mind-body-spirit development through natural movement under strict control of the will.” The word Contrology is meant to highlight his approach of using our minds to master—or control—our muscles. Interned during the First World War, he taught his exercises to fellow internees and claimed to successfully maintain their health throughout their four-and-a-half-year relegation there.

Pilates set up the first official studio for his work in New York City after immigrating to the United States in 1926. Perhaps adopting an informal American style appealed to Pilates as he requested to be called only “Joe” by clients and friends, and not Joseph. Since its introduction to American culture, Pilates has maintained a steady and devout following. It has been the secret of every type of performer from actors to opera singers since the late 1920s. In more recent years it has been discovered by athletes, models, and movie stars who credit their strong, agile bodies to Pilates.

In his lifetime Joe Pilates authored two books. Your Health, published in 1934, served as a clarion call for “the betterment of mankind,” and Return to Life through Contrology, published in 1945, detailed the fundamentals of “Natural Physical Education” through the use of his Contrology mat exercises. The title Return to Life epitomizes the very nature of the Pilates method. Through concentrated and creative effort, you will reawaken your body through movement and your mind through conscious action. The combination results in a multitude of benefits that this unique methodology of movement has to offer, including the revitalization of your spirit!

“Ideally, our muscles should obey our will. Reasonably, our will should not be dominated by the reflex actions of our muscles,” wrote Joe. He believed in the power of our minds to control our bodies. He proved his theory time and again through years of research and training, and his legacy has been passed down through his students and now to you.

My path to joining this legacy started when I joined my first health club with my father at the age of fifteen and for decades afterward I enjoyed all that they had to offer. I spent years training clients using weights and machines and sincerely believed that I had put all the strength into my body that it might need. I was wrong. What I had done was create a bulky, stiff set of muscles in a young, active body. I spent hours in the gym daily trying to create a feeling of well-being that was eluding me at every turn. I continued to have aches and pains that no amount of training would alleviate, and worst of all . . . ​I was bored!

And then in 1994 I discovered Pilates. It was mentally and physically challenging from the get-go and altogether humbling for someone who was as strong as I thought I was, but as it is said, “A bad day…