Welcome to the February edition of Pilates Central News.

In this edition:

• Driven to Pilates
• Not so Dynamic
• Camp Pilates
• Pole Position

Driven to Pilates

“I’m doing everything I can not to die, even Pilates” is the unlikely headline of Jeremy Clarkson’s Sunday Times column. The former presenter of Top Gear and latterly owner of Diddly Squat Farm in Clarkson’s Farm recently had stents fitted in his heart. But now he’s a grandfather he is determined to keep healthy, even though, “I dislike discomfort, loath bicycling and I find gyms and everyone in them weird.”

But all that changed when a friend bought him a Reformer, “which is a sort of sex orgy dungeon table, with handcuffs and a top that slides backwards and forwards. Naturally, I had no idea what to do with it, so I employed the services of a local girl who explained it had something to do with an activity called Pilates.”

Jeremy started with breathing exercises: “I had to do the breathing again, but this time when I exhaled I had to pull my tummy button towards my spine. And clench my buttocks. Which she called abs. Or was it glutes? I don’t know anything about muscles, as mine all turned to fat in about 1993.”

He has persevered with Pilates and writes that, “I’m not unenjoying it.” He continues: “What we’ve learnt so far is that my pelvis is so cockeyed I look like a broken shotgun, my legs are very “heavy” and that my fat can be made to hurt… I’m surprised when I wake the morning after a session to find my legs are stiff, because it doesn’t really feel like I’ve done very much at all. My instructor assures me, though, that I really have.”

Presumably Jeremy is now wearing top gear to exercise in and doing lots of diddly squats. The unlikely convert concludes that although he is now “living in sniper’s alley”, Pilates is helping him dodge the bullets

Not so dynamic

There seem to be endless varieties of Pilates these days, hot, HIIT, wall, infra-red and more. The Daily Mail’s Sarah Vine writes amusingly about attending a “dynamic Pilates” class, after her normal class was fully booked and makes an unusual link with the new Bridget Jones film. She soon realises “I was the oldest person there by a quarter of a century. The teacher, bless her, was barely more than a child herself. Or at least she was dressed as one: her clothes were all several sizes too small.”

After being asked to “set our intention” Vine is guided through “a set of manoeuvres that would have had even Peaky Blinders’ Tommy Shelby crying for his mummy. After ten minutes my only ‘intention’ was to get out of there in one piece.”

She muses that “it doesn’t matter how much kombucha I drink, or how much turmeric I sprinkle on my granola, how much oestrogen I rub onto my inner though – being 57 is not the same as being 27.”

Interestingly her not-so-dynamic Pilates class sees Vine turn her thoughts to the new film Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, where 55-year-old Bridget dates 28-year old Roxster, played by Leo Woodall: “I’m slightly unsure…” writes Vine. “It’s just that rather like dynamic Pilates, that kind of age gap presents quite a challenge, physical and mental.” Perhaps both Bridget and Sarah should stick to classic Pilates in order to keep up with the Jones’s.

Camp Pilates

Pilates tourism is now a thing. “I spent 48 hours retracing Pilates’ dark past in a WW1 prison camp near the UK,” is the headline in the Daily Mirror. Writer Melanie Kaidan visited the Isle of Man, where German-born Joseph Pilates was interned as an “enemy alien” at the Knockaloe camp during the First World War. It was here that Pilates developed his ‘contrology’ exercises to help keep fit the camp’s 23,000 detainees.

Kaidan writes, “Despite being just a 20-minute flight from Liverpool, the Isle of Man is often overlooked by Brits, unaware of its stunning landscapes and its significant role in the development of Pilates.”

While there she took a four hour hike from the village of Peel followed by a Pilates class: “My tour of this enchanting isle filled with mythological lore and tradition ended on a high note with my first mat Pilates class, a slowed down, guided version of the more intense exercises I often see on social media.”

The Isle of Man is justifiably proud of its links with Pilates and in 2016 held an 800-strong Pilates class in honour of a famous photo of detainees exercising at Knockaloe. There’s a museum dedicated to the camp. The Knockaloe visitor centre at Patrick re-opens to the public in May. Check out the www.knockaloe.im site for lots of interesting anecdotes about Joseph Pilates’ time there.

Pole position

Mikey Madison has just won a best actress Bafta for her role in Sean Baker’s film Anora. She plays exotic dancer Ani who marries the son of a Russian oligarch in Las Vegas, after which chaos ensues in this “screwball Cinderella tale.” A clip of Madison pole dancing wowed the Internet and she revealed to Rolling Stone that it took five months of training to pole dance so effortlessly. Her training included Pilates, barre and cycling  — and she even had her dad install a pole in her living room as, “I wanted her to be a seasoned, very impressive dancer.”  

But that’s not where the Pilates connection ends. Madison, who also learned Russian for her role, told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show: “My grandmother who is 90 and a very modest woman loves the film and has seen the film many times and she’s always texting me and saying that she and her Pilates girlfriends are talking about it.” We’ll have what Mikey’s grandmother is having.

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The Pilates Central Team