This law had dramatic effects, the most important of which for Pilates was the internment of German males of military age. Joesph Pilates, founder of the Pilates exercise method, demonstrates his techniques in his New York City eighth avenue studio on October 4, 1961. The first Pilates gym in New York CityAfter the war, Pilates briefly returned to Germany. With his partner Clara, he founded the first Pilates studio dubbed the Joseph H. Pilates Universal Gymnasium, which remained open for decades. “The gold standard nowadays is that you need to compare a physical exercise of that type with another physical exercise, and a lot of times when that happens they come out almost equivalent,” she tells PopSci.