WHAT IS CLASSICAL PILATES ?

Pilates is a full-body, core-centered method of movement — precise, efficient, and built to meet you at any fitness level. What Joseph Pilates began nearly a century ago is still taught today as the classical Pilates method, blending resistance, body weight, and balance with a steady emphasis on breath, alignment, and control.​​

THE PRINCIPLES BEHIND THE PRACTICE

Practiced well, Pilates becomes more than exercise — it's a balanced, centered way of moving that carries into ordinary life as much as the studio, sharpening ease and grace while lowering the risk of injury.
​The Pilates system draws on more than 500 exercises across a full range of classical apparatus, balancing strength with flexibility for every body, at every level. Most students feel the shift quickly — often within their first few sessions. For the fastest, most lasting results, we recommend starting with private instruction and practicing several times a week.​ 

THE HISTORY OF PILATES + THE METHOD

Many don't know that the Pilates method is named after a man... Joseph H. Pilates who emigrated to New York City from Germany in the 1920s and opened the first Pilates studio/gym with his partner Clara. 

At the time, the work was called Contrology — a system of exercises across apparatus that built around breath, posture, and correcting the body's imbalances — and later published two books on the method: Your Health (1934) and Return to Life Through Contrology (1945).
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Nearly a century later, his legacy lives on in every body it has touched, and in the teachers who keep the original method alive. At Temple Pilates, our teaching stays close to that lineage — classical dimensions, springs, and sequencing, taught the way Joseph Pilates designed them, right here in midtown Ventura.

Curious to learn more? Come join us for a class or session. 
​Pilates can be described as 3 words, stretch with strength and control, and the control part is the most important, because that’s what makes you use your mind! 
​        - Romana Kryzanowska
​A few well-designed movements, properly performed in a balanced sequence, are worth hours of doing sloppy calisthenics or forced contortion.           - Joseph Pilates