Joy Kong, MD, explains that Joseph Pilates designed his method in the 1920s-40s as a rehabilitation system, not a fitness workout. It uses low-load positioning and quality repetitions to heal specific injuries, not build muscle through progressive overload like modern studios do.
When you study Pilates, the original method that Joseph Pilates created back in the 1920s and 30s and 40s, it's a rehab method, it's not a workout. Joseph believed that movement healed. Today when you go to a Pilates studios, most Pilates studios practice fake lagree. They all do my workout. Now. The original method is about, okay, what issues do you have? You have issues in your back, your ankles, your knees, and then you lay on your back on the reformer so that you don't have your weight, stress in the joints. You're basically in a weightless environment because you lay on your back. And then you're working with a system of spraying and you're doing a variety of movements to bring the blood flow to the area that is hurting. And Joseph Pilates believed that circulation promoted healing. So Pilates was never designed, it was never created to create a body like yours, for example. It was never to create this tight, sexy, defined look, right? It was just about circulation. In Pilates, there is no progressive overloading. And what it means that the intensity has to be progressed over time so that you can continue progressing and continue transforming and changing your body. In Pilates, the goal is to do 10 perfect repetitions. Once you do 10 perfect repetitions, you're done. There's never the goal of just doing more. It was never part of the method.
