Dr. Lise Stolze, MPT, DSc, PMA®-CPT
What is Pilates?
Pilates lacks the research quality required to advance the support for the Pilates Method in the medical community and consequently the public. Maybe some will say Pilates doesn’t need research – it can stand on its own. From my perspective as a health care professional, Pilates is the ultimate rehabilitation modality for injury, post injury and injury prevention due to its ability to facilitate strength, flexibility and coordination through mindfulness. I want it to be recognized in the medical community. I want to provide confidence for peoples’ decision to trust Pilates as a rehabilitation tool. But we need to truly define Pilates in our research studies. Currently Pilates research studies contain a wide range of exercises, sequences, and instructor/researcher backgrounds. How can Pilates be adequately understood and effectively applied based on these studies?
When I first decided to conduct my research study, my personal goal was to get Pilates known in the medical community and provide information to the public about this wonderful system of movement. I was not as concerned about defining Pilates – I just wanted it to become better known since few to no studies had been published yet in a peer reviewed journal. My research committee was more interested in producing a sound study that could withstand the scrutiny of peer review for publication.
When the editors of the Journal of Orthopedic and Sports Physical Therapy (JOSPT) reviewed my submission, I received one request by an anonymous editor to change the title of my study to replace Pilates with Pilates-based. The reason given was that the name Pilates could only be given to exercises that had been published by Joseph Pilates himself. Of course the only exercises Joseph Pilates actually published were the Mat exercises in Return to Life. I wasn’t sure if that statement was the consensus of the managing editor of JOSPT or if this was a general rule for published studies, but I decided I did not want this name controversy to prevent my research from being published. It was interesting that a research journal had defined Pilates for the Pilates community and not the other way around! So now we have Joseph Pilates’ published work as one (very narrow) definition of Pilates exercise by JOSPT (and possibly other peer reviewed journals).
But whether we call it Pilates or Pilates-based is not as important as how we (the Pilates research community) define “the work” when we research it. How do we make a distinction between all the other manifestations of Pilates’ work: 1) the video archives of apparatus work 2) video archives of standing calisthenics and “combat” drills. 3) exercises that were not published but were handed down from teacher to teacher 4) exercises produced by the memory of those who worked with Joseph Pilates 5) modifications of Pilates exercises to make them more accessible to special populations and the injured? Do we define all of these as Pilates?
Are the exercises, their choreography and sequence the only thing that defines Pilates? What about the skills of the Pilates teacher/researcher? Or is there something inherent in “the work” that transcends the teacher? Are the general principles of movement as important as the choreography of the exercises? Are these principles more important than the exercises? Can we define something universal about Pilates that is shared by all who want to research Pilates? Or should we categorize Pilates into subgroups since it seems to be a heterogeneous treatment/application? What should those subgroups be called and how do we define each one?
These are the questions that should be addressed by the Pilates research community. We should answer these questions with the intention of creating a better understanding of what we are actually investigating when we create a research study on Pilates.
Pilates lacks the research quality required to advance the support for the Pilates Method in the medical community and consequently the public. Maybe some will say Pilates doesn’t need research – it can stand on its own. From my perspective as a health care professional, Pilates is the ultimate rehabilitation modality for injury, post injury and injury prevention due to its ability to facilitate strength, flexibility and coordination through mindfulness. I want it to be recognized in the medical community. I want to provide confidence for peoples’ decision to trust Pilates as a rehabilitation tool. But we need to truly define Pilates in our research studies. Currently Pilates research studies contain a wide range of exercises, sequences, and instructor/researcher backgrounds. How can Pilates be adequately understood and effectively applied based on these studies?
When I first decided to conduct my research study, my personal goal was to get Pilates known in the medical community and provide information to the public about this wonderful system of movement. I was not as concerned about defining Pilates – I just wanted it to become better known since few to no studies had been published yet in a peer reviewed journal. My research committee was more interested in producing a sound study that could withstand the scrutiny of peer review for publication.
When the editors of the Journal of Orthopedic and Sports Physical Therapy (JOSPT) reviewed my submission, I received one request by an anonymous editor to change the title of my study to replace Pilates with Pilates-based. The reason given was that the name Pilates could only be given to exercises that had been published by Joseph Pilates himself. Of course the only exercises Joseph Pilates actually published were the Mat exercises in Return to Life. I wasn’t sure if that statement was the consensus of the managing editor of JOSPT or if this was a general rule for published studies, but I decided I did not want this name controversy to prevent my research from being published. It was interesting that a research journal had defined Pilates for the Pilates community and not the other way around! So now we have Joseph Pilates’ published work as one (very narrow) definition of Pilates exercise by JOSPT (and possibly other peer reviewed journals).
But whether we call it Pilates or Pilates-based is not as important as how we (the Pilates research community) define “the work” when we research it. How do we make a distinction between all the other manifestations of Pilates’ work: 1) the video archives of apparatus work 2) video archives of standing calisthenics and “combat” drills. 3) exercises that were not published but were handed down from teacher to teacher 4) exercises produced by the memory of those who worked with Joseph Pilates 5) modifications of Pilates exercises to make them more accessible to special populations and the injured? Do we define all of these as Pilates?
Are the exercises, their choreography and sequence the only thing that defines Pilates? What about the skills of the Pilates teacher/researcher? Or is there something inherent in “the work” that transcends the teacher? Are the general principles of movement as important as the choreography of the exercises? Are these principles more important than the exercises? Can we define something universal about Pilates that is shared by all who want to research Pilates? Or should we categorize Pilates into subgroups since it seems to be a heterogeneous treatment/application? What should those subgroups be called and how do we define each one?
These are the questions that should be addressed by the Pilates research community. We should answer these questions with the intention of creating a better understanding of what we are actually investigating when we create a research study on Pilates.