THE TORONTO STAR --MARCH 6, 2000-By Geoff Baker

The Indians secret weapon: Exercise program keeps Cleveland Indians in tip-top shape
Toronto has played its part in helping the Cleveland Indians stay on top. A fitness program developed by a company here helped Indians regulars Jim Thome, Sandy Alomar and Travis Fryman come off the disabled list last year and win a fifth straight division title.
"Any time you can do something new to help yourself, you're going to try it,'' first baseman Thome said before yesterday's game against the Blue Jays. Thome used equipment and techniques developed by STOTT PILATES on Yonge Street in Toronto to rebound from painful back spasms that sidelined him last May.
It was Indians conditioning coach Fernando Montes who first became interested in the company's STOTT PILATES program, which concentrates on stretching and developing the abdominal area. Montes had met representatives the company trained in Cleveland. He later travelled to the company's offices here and bought equipment the team now uses at Jacobs Field.
The Pilates form of exercise was created by fitness guru Joseph Pilates in the 1920s in New York City. He developed more than 500 exercises that built strong flexible muscles without adding bulk. STOTT's version of pilates exercise incorporates machines into its no-impact, stretch and strength workouts. A fair degree of concentration is involved. "It's more mind-body, more focus,'' said Moira Merrithew, a former ballet dancer who designed the program. "You have to focus on the movements as you do the exercise. It's not 'How many reps are going to get me there? It's `How am I going to bend my knee to get the most out of this exercise?''
Many of the exercises, tailored for different needs, are done on a simple mat. Others involve the machines, which use spring-coil resistance rather than weights. "For a long time, there wasn't emphasis on core development,'' said Merrithew. "But if your trunk isn't strong, your peripheral limbs like your arms and legs are going to get hurt.''
Merrithew's husband, Lindsay Merrithew, serves as president and CEO of the company and said worldwide sales have skyrocketed the past three years as all types of Pilates exercise gained in popularity. Professional athletes, he said, have been slower than ballet dancers and Hollywood actors in accepting pilates exercise because "it isn't as macho'' as other conditioning programs. Thome wasn't worried about that. "You've got to throw all that out the door,'' said Thome. "When it comes to taking care of myself, I don't care how it looks to other people.''back to top

VOGUE MAGAZINE- OCTOBER 1998

Pilates body - The latest get-fit-quick fad has actually been around for decades. Pilates devotees insist it really works - especially on the Bermuda triangle of thighs, stomach, and rear. Gully Wells gets hooked.

I've always been deeply suspicious of exercise. I haven't owned a pair of sneakers since I left school, and Lycra, sports bras, and sweatpants have never been part of my dress code. I did once, many years ago, allow myself to be led to a gym by a proselytizing friend who swore it would transform my life. It didn't. I spent a very long hour in an airless, overcrowded room being harangued by an instructor who had to practically scream to make herself heard over the relentless beat of the Bee Gees' greatest hits. I emerged bored, sweaty, exhausted, and half deaf, and distinctly remember thinking, For this people are willing to shell out serious money? Which isn't to say that vanity has not forced me to devise my very own fitness-and-weight-control system. I'm more than happy to walk a few blocks as long as I can distract myself by gazing in store windows, and I love swimming, or more accurately, lolling, in the limpid gin-clear water of the Bahamas or the Caribbean. And if the numbers on the bathroom scales start to look too frightening, I just switch to my special Sashimi and Espresso and Nicotine Diet for a few days. (Believe me, it works.) But even I have to admit that this scarcely constitutes a sensible diet-and-exercise program.

The moment of truth came a few months ago when I was struggling with the zipper of my jeans. It was such tough going that the top of the zipper actually gouged the side of my finger, but worse, when I finally exhaled, I could clearly see a roll of flesh about the size of a medium-size snake, curled around my waist. How could this possibly be? But the not-so-sudden appearance of the snake raised a few other interesting questions. Like how come I hadn't worn a bikini since the birth of my first child fourteen years ago? And what about those sleeveless shifts that hung neglected in my closet? Clearly, after two pregnancies and 40-something years of almost total inactivity, something had to be done.

Around the same time as my snake epiphany, I began to hear the word Pilates. It started with a friend's mother who must have been well into her 70s but had the energy of somebody half her age. She wasn't necessarily reed thin, it was much more to do with the way she carried herself. Plus her skin positively shone. No, it wasn't a facelift, and it certainly wasn't jumping up and down to the Bee Gees. It turned out to be something far more subtle and interesting. "Pilates," she said. "What?" I said. And so she explained.

This system of stretching and strengthening exercises was invented by Joseph Pilates, who was born in Germany in 1880. A sickly, frail child who was determined to overcome his physical weakness, he had, by the time he was a teenager, succeeded in transforming himself into a diver, gymnast, and skier. In 1912 he left for England to train as a boxer, but he also worked as a physical therapist for circus performers and taught self-defense to Scotland Yard detectives. I already liked the sound of him. During the First World War he was interned as an "enemy alien" by the British and sent to work as a nurse on the Isle of Man, where he adapted his knowledge of body-building to help rehabilitate injured soldiers.

Experimenting with springs attached to hospital beds, he enabled his patients to start applying movement and resistance to their muscles. And so was born the idea behind the "Universal Reformer," the "bed" plus pulleys and springs that exercises the entire body and is fundamental to the Pilates system. My

friend's mother also described the "Cadillac," the "Wunda Chair," the "Barrel," and the "Tower." I was fascinated. How could I resist something with such delightfully eccentric-sounding machines? I had to try it.

The first Pilates instructor I went to see was Romana Kryzanowska, who works in New York out of Drago's Gym on West Fifty-seventh Street. If Pilates is a religion (and to some people it truly is), then Kryzanowska is the keeper of the Holy Flame. Fiercely loyal to Joseph, whom she met in 1941 when she was a young dancer with an ankle problem, she is also the first to excoriate (and sometimes sue) anybody who dares to tamper with the original and, to her mind, absolutely inviolable Pilates system. "I never deviate. I just teach what Joseph taught me. It is as simple as that" she said, smiling. Except that Pilates is anything but simple, as I was to discover over the next few weeks. The essence of these exercises is proper breathing and control over your body and its muscles, with particular emphasis on the abdomen. You build strength in that central "core" of your torso, and with stronger abdominals you also strengthen your spine, which devotees of Pilates believe is the key to a healthy body - and, incidentally, to great posture too. But that isn't to say that the rest of you takes it easy. Far from it. You might be holding barbells while you stretch to firm up underarm flab, but your legs are constantly working, too. Instead of mindless repetition, Pilates involves a series of more than 500 different movements that you do for a very short time before switching to the next one. Which means that you really have to concentrate. And you never get bored, because not only are you often doing two different exercises at once but you're already on to the next exercise long before the previous one becomes tedious. "For instance," Kryzanowska explained, "We do five roll-ups, then switch to another part of the body, and then another five roll-ups later. Never, ever 25 at once."

Kryzanowska's area of the gym contains many of Joseph Pilates' original machines, some of which were actually constructed by the maestro himself. Kryzanowska, who had just turned 75 and had the same lithe vitality as my friend's mother, was also a walking ad for what Pilates can do for your rear end. "Touch," she said, and touch I did. It was rock hard, and a triumphant smile spread across her face as she led me over to a somewhat grim-looking bed, surrounded by a metal frame that had springs, a trapeze, and leg straps suspended from its galvanized iron pipes. "This is the actual Cadillac that Joseph made himself," Kryzanowska said before next introducing me to the Universal Reformer, which definitely had something of the appeal of a World War I hospital bed. I lay down on my back, braced my feet on the end of the bed, and pushed the carriage back and forth five times. Then, my hands attached to two industrial-strength springs, my legs balancing (shakily)in midair, I was told to pump those hands up and down. Fast. Before I collapsed I was onto the next thing, which happened to be a big box that I had to lift (who, me?) onto the bed and then sit on while I tried to extend my leg straight out and then "walk" up and down it with my hands. Not so easy for somebody who has never succeeded m touching her toes. The time flew by, and when I finally emerged onto Fifty-seventh Street several things amazed me. I wasn't exhausted, I wasn't sweating, I wasn't bored, my hair wasn't a mess, and -- this was the best part of all -- I wasn't carrying a bag full of festering clothes and dank sneakers. I'd slipped some black leggings into my handbag that morning and that was it. I went straight from the gym to my lunch date wearing the same white T-shirt and feeling unexpectedly light-headed and exhilarated. It certainly wasn't the man I was lunching with, so I was forced to conclude that it must have been another man, Joseph Pilates.

Although Pilates has been around almost since the turn of the century, it is also, paradoxically, hot right now among the professionally beautiful. (Dancers and physical therapists have long been zealous about Pilates; George Balanchine and Martha Graham were early enthusiasts.) Current-day devotees include Uma Thurman and Sharon Stone, not to mention models like Shalom Harlow and Stella Tennant. I suspect that the reason these icons of glamour are rushing to Pilates probably has something to do with the fact that they are bored with heavy-duty exercise programs, but I also think that it is because nobody wants to end up with a body that makes you look like Sylvester Stallone's separated-at-birth twin sister. Pilates is about firming and toning muscles; it isn't about body-building. Which may be why it seems to attract mainly women. I have to confess as I was stretching bits of my body in ways I'd never thought of before, I was wondering just how many calories were being burned up. One Pilates aficionado admitted to me that for absolutely optimal results, she combined it with something else -- in her case, swimming. Pilates is not a weight-loss system, and unless you do the exercises at a fairly advanced level and do them fast chances are you won't be getting a cardiovascular workout.

The number of Pilates studios has grown from just five worldwide in 1976 to 500 in the United States alone today, but even with this enormous expansion, at some of the chicest studios, it is still almost impossible to get an appointment. Having started out with the Grande Dame of the movement uptown, I decided that next I'd go downtown to Bleecker Street and visit Brooke Siler, co-owner of re:AB, where many of Manhattan's models go. As I waited for Siler at the studio, I looked at the framed photographs on the wall: There was Shalom looking impossibly slim (no bulky muscles on those arms); there was Stella with her endless legs (and no overdeveloped meaty thighs on her, either); and then there was a series of much smaller shots of a stocky man in what looked like white underpants who was doing a series of perfectly executed exercises in the snow. He may have been on the short side, but you could see that his body was in superb shape, his legs extended straight up as he balanced his torso on the Barrel. In his own way he was every bit as wonderful-looking as the supermodels. Siler arrived and, reading my mind, said, "That's Mr. Pilates; pretty good for 57, no? His mantra was 'In ten sessions you will feel the difference, in 20 you will see the difference, and in 30 you will have a new body.' " We started out on the mat on the floor, which Siler believes is a lot tougher than the machines. "You can cheat on a machine, but doing it on the mat is ten million times harder," she explained. And I had to agree. With this kind of one-on-one training, there is absolutely no way you can get away with less than total concentration. Which, Siler says, is just how it should be: "What makes Pilates different from other exercise systems is that it involves your mind. You have to concentrate and learn. You're not just coming in to train, you come to study."
Soon I settled into a schedule; I found a studio called Power Pilates that was close to my office and tried to go three times a week. My instructor, Susan Moran, who was also a dancer, managed to be both patient (Had she ever met anybody less agile than me? "Oh, sure, I've seen worse. Much worse," she laughed) and inspiring (after ten sessions she swore she could actually see some muscles on my stomach). My classmates weren't super-models, thank God, they were mostly just ordinary women, like me, who were trying to do their best to fight middle-age gravity. Moran introduced me to the wonders of the Wunda Chair, and after a few sessions I began to see why Pilates had called it that. Imagine sitting, with your spine absolutely straight on a backless chair that has a step about halfway down that you have to push up and down. Sounds easy? Not so easy, believe me, when the step is attached to two enormous steel springs. Next you stand up and try and lift the step with your feet, except that it's actually your abdominal muscles that are doing the work. The first time, I couldn't move the step an inch. But over the next couple of months, slowly, exercises that had seemed impossible became almost routine.

Some weeks I skipped a lesson and would then try and make it up by doing four the next week, only to be told by Moran that Mr. Pilates had always maintained that there was no reason to do more than three sessions a week. What moderation in this age of fanaticism and excess! I liked this funny, barrel-chested man in his old-fashioned white underpants even more than I had before. After about ten weeks the snake around my waist had slithered back into the jungle. I haven't lost any weight, but I am firmer. I can close the zipper on my jeans without drawing blood, and I haven't had to switch to my Sashimi and Espresso and Nicotine Diet. Most astonishing of all, my daughter and I went shopping together for serious, grown-up, minimal bikinis the other day. A first for her. And something I haven't done since the day she was born, fourteen years ago this July.
But I still don't own a pair of sneakers.
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TIME MAGAZINE - HEALTH November 30, 1998
Life Stretchers
By TEMILY MITCHELL and MEGAN RUTHERFORD

Danny Glover only seems invincible. Best known for all those lethal Weapon movies with Mel Gibson, he is as vulnerable to physical ailments as any other 51-year-old. Three years ago, he could no longer ignore a misalignment in his left hip he has had since a childhood accident. 'I had a muscle dysfunction," he says. 'My right leg was weak, and my left leg was strong." Thanks to a rigorous fitness regimen that includes Pilates workouts five times a week, the condition has been corrected.

For years, dancers have benefited from the Pilates program, toning their muscles and building strength while at the same time increasing flexibility. After seven decades, it emerged from the ballet studio and has been hailed as the exercise of the light-and-lean '90s. Younger people kicked off the trend, but middle-aged and older men and women are discovering its distinct advantages. Connecting breathing to movement, stretching the spine and lengthening ligaments and muscles improve balance and correct posture, giving a better sense of well-being and reducing the risk of falls and future injury. "You feel more energized, but your body is more relaxed," says Mari Winsor, who has just opened her second Pilates studio in Los Angeles.

Glover is among Winsor's many celebrity clients, as is Arnold Rifkin, 50, president of the William Morris Agency in Beverly Hills. The flare-up of an old back injury nearly incapacitated the Hollywood powerbroker two years ago, and he started doing Pilates. "I felt energy moving through my body in a way I'd never experienced before," he says. Now free of pain, he signs up for twice-weekly sessions and has Pilates equipment at home. Says Rifkin: "I'm probably in the best physical shape I've ever been. My stamina is so much greater because my body is rested and toned."

Since the Pilates program is low impact and does not put undue strain on weight-bearing joints, it is a boon for people over 50. As developed by Joseph Pilates, a German physical therapist and athlete who immigrated to the U.S., the exercises were done on a spring contraption he designed. Modern studios use machines with spring mechanisms adapted from his original apparatus. The classes can be expensive; one-on-one sessions are in the $50-to-$60-an-hour range. A less costly technique based on Pilates' methods can be done on the floor using a mat. The multitude of exercise variations focuses on controlling breathing, joining it to movement and developing the power center: the abdomen and lower torso.

Gentle exercises that reprogram muscles are essential as people grow older and lose elasticity. Brent Anderson, who teaches the technique in the Miami studio he co-owns, is working on his doctorate in physical therapy and plans to write his thesis on the effects of Pilates on the spine. His aging boomer clients who grunted their way through the no-pain-no-gain work-outs of the '8Os are turning to the regimen as welcome therapy. Anderson has observed, for example, that knee muscles out of whack because of a trauma experienced years earlier "can be retrained and the process of degeneration significantly decreased."

Most experts agree that it is never too late to start exercising. Advises Dr. Edward Schneider, dean of the University of Southern California's School of Gerontology: "Not only can exercise add at least two years to your life, it will enrich the quality of those later decades by lowering the risk of heart disease, stroke, osteoporosis, hip fractures and arthritis." For older people who have done little exercise, Pilates is an excellent way to begin. More than 500 centers have opened around the country, and health clubs and gyms are adding classes in the technique for people who are eager to slow the clock -- or even turn it back.back to top