Everybody’s Doing the Pilates

Everyone pretty much agrees that if you exercise and eat right and don’t smoke or drink or annoy a cop you’ll never die.

I have been told that by my internist, my cardiologist, my psychiatrist, my dermatologist and all of their nurses, receptionists and building custodians.

Even my wife’s gynecologist called me aside one day and whispered “Exercise or die” in my ear.

It is a mantra of our city to get involved, as we say, in some form of biomechanics. In other towns no one much gives a damn how you look. Strangers do not question your glyceride level or your cholesterol count. No one shouts “Dead Man Walking” as you stroll by. But they do in L.A.

What got me thinking about it was an article written about me by Carolanne Sudderth in the Pacific Palisades Palisadian-Post. It was based on my appearance at the Village Bookstore.

Sudderth, a terrific writer, observed in describing me, “The graceful curve of a well-rounded belly peeks over his belt buckle. . . . “

“Maybe,” my wife, Cinelli, said to me after reading it, “the graceful curve of your well-rounded belly shouldn’t be peeking out over your belt buckle. Maybe it’s time, Roly-Poly, to start exercising.”

That’s when I discovered the Pilates Method.

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Pilates is a kind of stretching exercise which, according to one definition, focuses on the body’s “power center,” i.e. one’s abdomen, lower back and butt. I’ve never considered my behind my power center, but now that I think about it that’s probably the only power center I have.

The exercise system was created 70 years ago by Joseph Pilates, a German physical trainer. It involves both mind and body in a series of movements intended to give its practitioner “the long, lean look of a dancer.”

It may be a little late for me to develop that look, but if Pilates does something about my bad back and well-rounded belly, I am content.

As I sat on my power center one day researching Pilates I became aware of how many celebrities swear by it. Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen is a Pilatian. So are Kristi Yamaguchi, Candice Bergen, Jodie Foster and Patrick Swayze.

That’s good enough for me. I signed up with an ex-dancer and Pilates coach named Erica Jordan at her studio in Woodland Hills. My only problem has been that the exercise requires a coordinated blend of moving and breathing to be effective and I can’t get it all together. I keep forgetting to breathe.

You’ve got to be able to simultaneously spin your feet in the air, lower your shoulders, tighten your stomach and exhale during those moments of high physical stress. Or maybe it’s inhale during those moments. I’m not sure. That’s the trouble.

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“If you hadn’t drunk martinis all those years you’d be able to concentrate,” Cinelli said. “Breathing is not a complicated endeavor. Do this.” She breathed for me twice very slowly, in and out, in and out. I felt like a dog being trained to obey commands. “See how it’s done?”

“I’m willing to concentrate on writing, driving and feeding the fish,” I said, “but I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend time worrying about whether to exhale or inhale while lying on my back waving my feet in the air.”

“Then don’t,” Cinelli said, “and die.”

The most difficult time I had breathing was when a Pilates coach straddled my back. I was sort of on my face and knees in a position too complicated to explain, part of my power center in the air, when Eve, my trainer for the day, suddenly straddled me like a horse.

No one has mounted me that way since my son was 3. I didn’t know what to do. Should I gallop around the room? Rear? Neigh?

“What’re you doing?” I asked, gasping.

I don’t recall her exact answer, but I have a sense of her saying it was a stretching technique. When she dismounted she asked how I felt and since I no longer had her sitting on my back I felt better.

“You’ll get used to it,” Erica assured me after a session in which I had forgotten to inhale and almost blacked out.

Maybe I will get used to it but maybe I don’t want to. Maybe I’ll just say to hell with it and concentrate on mixing myself a dry martini. I’ll enjoy it out on the deck while sitting on my power center and wondering if I’ll live long enough to eat the olive.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Tuesdays and Fridays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com