Through purposeful control of the body, Contrology, later renamed Pilates focuses on four primary principles, stability, strength, stretch, and stamina, to ultimately create a more agile and balanced body with longer leaner muscles.

Joseph Pilates was born near Dusseldorf, a city in western Germany, in 1883. He was a sickly child, suffering from rickets (a condition in which bones do not develop properly), asthma, and rheumatic fever.

Pilates was convinced that our modern lifestyle was anathema to that balance and to the attainment of physical and mental well being. So, he designed a series of vigorous physical exercises to correct muscular imbalances which would improve posture, co-ordination, balance, strength and flexibility.

In 1932 Pilates published a booklet called 'Your Health' and followed this with another called 'Return to Life Through Contrology' in 1945. Through these writings and his students, his method was passed on after his death in 1967 at the age of 83. During his lifetime this method of exercise was called Contrology.