it's also said that a lot of his stretches were inspired by the manx cats that were living on the island he was imprisoned at and he had noted that the cats all seemed bright eyed and lively while the humans were not that, and when he was in New York he would visit the zoo and study the large cats there the same way
Turns out that this information is mostly untrue. John Steel makes an excellent argument that Pilates was not in an internment camp, he was in a prison camp for captured German soldiers. There is no evidence he built exercises machines in his prison camp; the beds did not have springs in those camps. Pilates probably made these stories up to explain what he was doing for five years during world war I. Read Johns Steels book. Also, is joe pilates supposed to be in the pictures at 0.56 and 1.04? If so, which is he? Pretty amateurish little video?
