Balanced Body's five decades as an agent of healthy change

Among the world’s leading providers of Pilates equipment and education, Balanced Body® was the first Pilates company to substantially update Joseph Pilates’ equipment by combining state-of-the-art engineering, materials and technology with a modern understanding of human biomechanics.

Back in 1976, company founder and Chief Executive, Ken Endelman, began his career in the US state of California as a designer and craftsman of fine custom furniture in Hollywood’s fashionable Melrose Avenue district. When a potential customer – who taught an exercise called Pilates – approached Edelman to build her a better version of something called a Reformer, he set about learning the exercise method and item of Pilates equipment that he had never heard of.

Intrigued, he studied the equipment and Joseph Pilates’ original designs, then consulted with other instructors to design new features with new materials that would facilitate execution of the movements. The result was a modern Reformer that was smoother, quieter, safer and more user-friendly that also steered Endelman along a new career path. Throughout the 1980s, Endelman (pictured below) continued to refine Pilates equipment, consulting with the most influential people in the industry including some of the original students of Joseph Pilates himself: Ron Fletcher, Eve Gentry, Carola Trier and Kathy Grant.

That refinement continues today and keeps Balanced Body at the forefront of Pilates equipment design with Endelman a globally respected advocate for the Pilates community.

A statement on the Balanced Body website explains “the more Ken continued his work the more fascinated he was by the Pilates method and what he saw it doing in people’s lives. He became deeply connected with the Pilates community and his vision for Balanced Body was to become not just a manufacturer of equipment, but an advocate of this special community. This commitment became dramatically evident when Ken took the lead in the Pilates trademark dispute, winning the lawsuit that made the Pilates name freely available to everyone.”

Now in his fiftth decade as an agent of healthy change, Endelman has designed hundreds of improvements to Pilates’ original equipment, many of which have since become industry standards while his background as craftsman remains evident in every piece of hand-finished equipment that the company makes in their Sacramento, California factory.

Foreign export of Balanced Body equipment started in Australia with HF Industries over 20 years ago, and today Australia is the company’s largest single export market.

Balanced Body has been awarded 28 US patents, and numerous foreign patents for Ken’s inventions, with more patents pending.

As covered in the article When Pilates ceased being a trademark and became a generic term, Endelman also led the way in a four-year legal battle in the US Courts that, in October 2000, resulted in the US District Court ruling that Pilates is a generic term for public use. This meant that Pilates teachers could now say they taught Pilates. and Pilates students could now say they practiced Pilates.

Throughout the years Balanced Body has forged strong partnerships with the world’s leading Pilates educators, both classical and contemporary and actively promotes and nurtures relationships that bring high-quality education to the fitness industry and the medical community, the athletic community and to Pilates enthusiasts. In 2004, Balanced Body Education was created to provide continuing Pilates education for movement professionals that is deeply rooted in the art and science of movement. In addition to Pilates teacher training, Balanced Body Education offers CoreAlign®, MOTR and Bodhi Suspension System instructor training.

From experienced instructors to first-timers, Balanced Body believes everybody benefits from Pilates exercise and complementary mind-body training methods. From equipment to education to videos, the company aims to make sure it provides what users need to make a healthy change in their lives.

Training information is available at www.balancedbody.com.au/education-partners

Click here to contact HF Industries via their entry in the Australasian Leisure Management Supplier Directory.