Cutting a Fine Figure

I met an acquaintance the other day whom I hadn't seen for two years—almost passed her by because she'd grown, not so much older, but so much younger. Face-lifting, some funny gland treatment, falling in love? None of these. It wasn't the face that was younger—but it isn't the face that grows old first. It's the body—the poor old body which slumps and sags and develops the middle-aged spread of the office slouch and the housekeepers' droop. . . . I remembered this friend as being definitely of the office type—stooping shoulders, head forward, scrawny, strangely hollowed. But not now!

"It sounds just too awful," she admitted, "and at first it was awful," but what I've been doing, since you're so flattering about my appearance, is going to a gym. I happened to glance in a full-length mirror when I had less on than a bathing suit—and I was revolted. I saw what fifteen years of sitting at a desk had done to me—and I shuddered. I'd always gone in for sports in a moderate way but while the exercise made me feel fine, it certainly didn't stay the march of time. There was that settled, solid, inelastic look about me that is definitely middle-aged—that you'll never-climb-a-fence-nor-leap-a-brook again look, besides all the little humps and lumps and hollows that come with forty. I resolved to take steps. I did—and behold me—the complete dryad."

Only the day before, I had talked with a doctor on this same subject, and he, Dr. Kristian Hansson, Director of Physical Therapy at the Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled and several other hospitals in New York, speaking of the deformities such as sway-back, round shoulders, protruding abdomen, etc., which creep upon us in middle age, had made a similar statement.

Nature's Corset

"In youth," he said, "the body is wide at the chest and narrow at the abdomen, but with advancing age it becomes narrow at the chest and wide at the abdomen. If we can manage to prevent this, and we can, our bodies retain their youthful lines into old age. Sports won't do this but remedial exercises will. The abdomen has muscles, four layers of them, running horizontally, perpendicularly, and obliquely. What a corset! Women who keep this one strong and supple as in youth need no other. But when these muscles become flabby the whole body sags, and though we may have no hump on our backs, we are nevertheless deformed. At almost any age we can correct these abnormalities, but the longer we wait the harder it is. If all our lives we practice certain remedial exercises, we can retain a youthful physique."

I glanced now at the man I had come to see, Joseph Pilates, the living proof of the truth of these statements. Standing there in his trunks, he appeared to be in his twenties. He assured me he was fifty-four— I tried and tried and couldn't believe it. Pilates originated a system of exercise still used by the Hamburg police; has been painted and sculptured by innumerable famous artists, and can do more with one hand than many a champion can do with his whole body, but, best of all, he is a humanitarian. He wants the whole human race to be beautiful and healthy—and, barring acts of God, he can tell them how.

It Can't Be Done by Games

"Sports are wonderful for the constitution generally," he said, "but they are of little value for correcting what's wrong with you—and there's something wrong with almost everyone. 'Corrective exercise' is a nasty pill to most people, but it's the only way to build a beautiful, strong, youthful and one hundred per cent healthy body. It would be swell if it could be done by games—but it can't. The doctors back us up in this. Practically all sports, like all labor, are one-sided. The man who swings a tennis racket all day is forging himself a lopsided body as surely as the man who wields a pick. The athlete, as much as the man or woman who sits all day at a desk, needs remedial exercises to counterbalance the effects of his daily physical habits."

Women particularly accuse their figures of all sorts of crimes. One complains of sway-back, incurable, she says, since she's had it from childhood. Another bemoans her prominent stomach; a third is having a masseuse in twice weekly to rub away a dowager's hump; a fourth makes faces over olive oil, taken to fill out the hollows in her neck; a fifth suffers agonies because of a flat bosom, and still others do all sorts of strange and futile things to correct wing shoulders, hollow chests, double chins, bowlegs—or do nothing, just complain, because they think nothing can be done.

There are not a multitude of causes and an equal number of cures for this array of deformities. There are, according to the doctors, usually one cause and one cure. Our bodies usually become misshapen through bad posture—we can usually restore them to normal through remedial exercise. Sounds old and trite, doesn't it? Reminds us of those terrible fifteen minutes in the classroom when the teacher said, "Now monitor, open the windows. Ready for physical culture. Class stand! Position! Heads up—chests out. Breathing in—one, two—"

How wrong she was—how wrong she still is, for that matter. Twenty, thirty directions are given to obtain correct posture—and only one (we have the authority of Pilates for this) is necessary, the good, old army order—it wouldn't get printed, so I'll translate—"Pull the abdomen in."

Here is a portrait of the average man or woman—you can look in the mirror and decide whether you're a mild or an exaggerated case. (You're a case, all right.) Head forward—two or three inches out of alignment with the spine; shoulders rounded, chest hollowed, spine curving noticeably forward at the waistline, abdomen protruding. So universal is a noticeable forward curve of the spine that doctors—and sculptors, who have an even surer eye in these matters—have accepted it as the natural and normal thing. It isn't. How do we know? The most beautiful bodies don't have it. Normal children don't have it. And those who have a normally straight spine have far better control of their bodies than those who don't. Practically every fault of the figure comes down in the last analysis to this matter of a normally straight spine. (There are slight natural curves, not noticeable in the naked body but which an X-ray picture reveals.) The straighter the spine the better the figure. And to straighten the spine what we chiefly have to do is to "pull in the abdomen."

Sounds simple, doesn't it? But of course it has to be done in a special way. The hips must be thrown forward, without bending or locking the knees, and tensed; the lower abdomen held it, thus forcing the chest high and the head up, without lifting the shoulders—and that position must be held as long as possible. And because it's such a little thing to do, you have to do it constantly. "Pull your abdomen in," you must say to yourself dozens, hundreds of times a day, till pulling it in becomes a habit and sinks down into the subconscious where your breathing is taken care of. But you can encourage yourself with the assurance that every single time you do it, you're a little farther ahead.

Ask Your Doctor

You can't get away from it, a few remedial exercises must be gone through daily, that is if you care two pins about having a twenty-year-old figure at the age of fifty. Of course, they must be exactly the right exercises; so here are a few, hand-picked by Pilates from the several hundred in his repertoire, the ones he has found sure fire for achieving the twenty-year-old silhouette. But he warns that they must be properly executed, that is, correctly and with great energy not the mere airy imitation of a series of motions which can be performed for years and get you nowhere. And another thing—no exercises should be taken except on the advice of a physician, particularly intensive abdominal exercises, which, if the individual is not in good condition, may even do harm. Heart trouble, hernia, etc. might make certain exercises inadvisable. So it's well to make sure before going ahead. It also helps to have an authority point out your defects.

Here is the best exercise there is for straightening the spine.

Lie down and try to make the whole length of the spine touch the floor, likewise the shoulders and arms, stretched above the head. Of course you can't do it, but trying is what counts—one day you may unexpectedly succeed. Mark that day with a gold star. With the arms stretched above the head, raise the torso slowly, but s-l-o-w-l-y, from the floor, keeping the legs on the floor and the knees unbending. As you raise, the arms come slowly at right angles to the torso, the toes are pointed forward, the chin comes down on the chest. The exercise loses all value if the legs are bent, so just at first you might get someone to hold them down for you.

Now, sitting up, still with the legs stiff, try to touch the toes with the fingers. Keep on trying. Eventually you should be able to touch the wrists to the toes and the forehead to the knees, the arms always at right angles to the body. Now go slowly backward, chin down, arms rising. The whole thing is a slow rolling movement—and it will not only correct sway-back but will reduce the abdomen and poise the head correctly.

The Kitten Coil

But much as these corrective exercises will do for you, your little daily habits of breathing, sitting, standing, walking and sleeping can do even more. Yes, the right sleeping posture can in itself be corrective.

"Most people twist and turn in their beds all night—from forty to sixty times, by actual test, in eight hours," Pilates told me. "Why? Because they're sleeping in the wrong position and are not relaxed. You've seen a cat turn and turn about till it got itself into a perfect curl of deliciousness—the 'kitten coil'? That's how we should sleep—at perfect rest within a circle, the knees drawn up, the back curved forward. That is the position which requires the least expenditure of effort, and least use of muscle.

"Sitting properly can be a remedial exercise," continued Pilates. "Say you're at the movies, all you have to do is to sit as far back as possible, spine upright, feet flat on the floor, knees bent at right angles, and every so often say to yourself, 'Pull your abdomen in,' and do it, and hold it as long as you can. Or say you're sitting at your desk—or your typewriter or the dining-table—no need to bend the head and aquire a dowager's hump. Bend at the hip joint as they do in the German army, using the biggest joint and muscle in the body, and this will prevent you acquiring a big abdomen.

"You're walking along the street. Glance in the shop windows, not to lower your sales resistance, but to observe your posture. Most women use shop windows as mirrors anyway—but merely to see if their hats are on straight rather than if their heads are on straight. In most cases the posture won't be right from one window to the next. But correct it every time—by pulling in the abdomen and holding it in as long as you can. Time yourself. It will be only a few seconds to begin with but hold it a few counts longer each time until you work up to a hundred. With each effort the muscles will become stronger and 'standing up tall' will become a habit.

Cross-Legged Exercises

"You're waiting for a trolley. This need not be time wasted. You can do your exercises without attracting the attention of the police. Most women stand with the weight on one leg and hip thrown out—someone has told them it's cute. Most men stand with the legs apart, hands in pockets, stomach thrust forward—looking jaunty, they think, in reality just tiring themselves out. But try this: rest the weight on both feet equally, heels together, toes apart, neither allowing the knees to sag nor pressing them backward. Then sway like a flagpole, shifting the weight slowly from one foot to the other, without thrusting the hip out. Occasionally raise the released foot from the ground and swing it about a bit, but always, always pulling the abdomen in.

"How much can be accomplished by daily habit is shown by those peoples of the East who habitually sit cross-legged on the ground (the best of all sitting postures), who bear burdens on their heads or carry weighted poles, who sleep on the ground. They have straight backs and beautiful carriages. At the beach is an excellent place to practice corrective postures. Sit cross-legged in the sand, back straight, and try raising from this position dozens of times without touching the ground with the hands but holding them out straight in front of you. Sit upright on the beach, legs crossed, with a sandbag on your head as you read or sew, pulling in the abdomen.

"Your swimming can be made a corrective exercise if you'll swim all strokes, breast and back as well as the crawl. One stoke only, like tennis, makes the figure lopsided. In the free-and-easy environment of the beach, even more eccentric behavior passes without comment, and you can even try this exercise if you like; or do it in the privacy of your room. It's one of the best for straightening the spine—which is to say, acquiring the perfect figure.

For a Queenly Carriage

"Get a broomstick, suspend a sandbag holding about three pounds of sand by a cord from each end, and tie it across a deck tennis ring. Wearing this contraption as a hat, balanced on the head by the rubber right, learn to walk about the beach or room. The cords should hang just where the arms, with with elbows pressed tightly against the sides, can reach them to help balance the pole at first.

"Slowly, slowly stretch the left foot forward as far as you can; when the toe touches, shift the weight slowly to the left foot, the leg bearing the weight always stiff but never locked. Cultivate a slow, stately progress. If you keep the hips forward and tense and the abdomen well pulled in, everything else, external and internal, will fall into place, and the exercise done ten minutes daily will produce such a consciousness of queenly carriage that soon you'll walk beautifully without your pole. It helps, to get the correct posture, to stand against the wall, trying to make the whole length of the spine touch.

"A second exercise with this weighted pole will correct bowlegs, knock knees and flat feet due to faulty muscles. Heels together, toes apart, rise on the toes, up and down, but each time a little farther down till finally you are squatting on your heels, the backbone trying to be straight (each day a little straighter), the abdomen pulled in, the hands raised to the pole in the beginning. Ten minutes.

"The average person uses only 25 per cent of the mechanical motions of the body; the champion in any sport uses 50 per cent; the acrobat on the high wire or the trapeze uses 75 per cent—but when a man or woman can use all the apparatus in this gym as easily as he can write his name, he uses 100 per cent—and then I call him 'normal.' The apparatus isn't necessary—you can do almost as well at home without it—it just makes exercise easier and more fun. Up to eighty years, everyone should be able to touch the floor with both palms without bending the knees. And in order that they may be able to do that, I advise them to start in right now, whether they're six months or sixty years, running around the room on all fours, like an animal, palms flat on the floor, knees unbending."