“Since I’ve done Pilates, I’m much better looking and 4 feet taller,” says Rich Beem, winner of the 2002 PGA Championship. “Seriously, I’m now so stretched out and have such great posture that I look and feel like a different person.”

Developed in the early 1900s, Pilates consists of 500 exercises, all initiating from the muscles in the abdomen, lower back, hips or buttocks. The cost of a private Pilates session with a properly licensed instructor is comparable to or slightly more expensive than a personal training session.

For athletes, the benefits include more efficient movement as well as better endurance, speed and quickness.

No longer just for women

As mainstream as the Pilates method of developing core muscle groups has become, male professional athletes interested in adding it to their training programs still must get past the stigma that this is largely a women’s exercise.

Kidd, the Nets superstar point guard, gave his wife, Joumana, a longtime Pilates devotee, a hard time when she told him it might help in his rehabilitation of a broken ankle a few years ago. After weeks of making fun of Pilates, Kidd finally tried it.

“I immediately discovered how tight I was,” Kidd recalls. “After one session I was energized. From that point on I was convinced it was a great workout.”

For Kidd, Pilates is all about finding the edge. He estimates 30% of his strength and flexibility training comes from Pilates. “Pilates has made me quicker, more explosive,” he says.

Rich Dalatri, the Nets strength coach, has been instrumental in introducing the exercise method to the entire team.

“Pilates is rejuvenating, restorative, invigorating,” he says, “maybe because it gets the blood flowing through every inch of the muscles. It’s so internal. It puts you in tune with your body. It puts you in a different state.”

The Nets have invested in Pilates equipment for their weight room. The players are so dependent that throughout the NBA playoffs in 2002, a leading Pilates company shipped special equipment to the team’s hotel on road trips.

Patience pays off

Pilates’ founding father always proclaimed, “In 10 sessions, you will feel the difference. In 20, you will see the difference. And in 30, you’ll have a whole new body.”

Schilling, the Arizona Diamondbacks star pitcher, agrees. “The first three weeks, I was really disappointed,” says Schilling, who incorporated Pilates into his offseason training program last winter. “I wasn’t sweating. I wasn’t winded, which is what I associate with true exercise.

“Then in the fourth week I started to understand the Pilates terminology, the idea of working from your center. By the third month I was more powerful and flexible than ever before. And I’d lost 15 pounds.”

Hannah Gallagher, Schilling’s Pilates instructor, says, “He’s a man. He’s used to hard-core workouts, where you throw up afterward. Pilates is not that. It is an equal balance of stretch and strength.”

After years of the no-pain, no-gain school of thought, male professional athletes say they appreciate the kinder, gentler, holistic aspect of Pilates.

For Buffalo Bills Pro Bowl offensive guard Ruben Brown, Pilates is all about preventing injury.

“I’m a big guy with a gut,” the 6-0, 300-pound Brown says. “I was always battling back strain. Plus, I’m 30 years old now. I’m tired of lifting weights, taking the pounding.”

The last two offseasons Brown has done Pilates three times a week.

“My first session, it shook me up,” Brown says. “It shook everything up. It still does.

“And man, those Pilates women are competitive. They want to see if they can get the big, strong football player to wimp out. I told myself, ‘Hey, ladies, I can do that, too.’ ”

How has his body responded to Pilates?

“I came out of the season injury-free,” he says. “I used to feel like crap after practice and games but not since Pilates.

“I learned how to breathe through my muscles. My posture is better. I can run more fluidly. And I increased my bench workouts.”

‘Profound impact’ on Mediate

For PGA Tour pro Rocco Mediate, Pilates is all about strengthening his back — and prolonging his career. After major back surgery in 1994, Mediate says he wasn’t the same. He couldn’t bend over for long periods of time to practice his putting, and his back always went out after lengthy plane trips.

Enter Pilates in November 2001.

“After a week I was turned around,” he says. “After two I felt like I’d never felt before.”

Mediate has since sold his weights and has completely outfitted the workout room in his Ponte Vedra, Fla., home with several pieces of Pilates equipment. “Pilates never compromises your back,” he says. “I’ve got more motion in my shoulders, midsection and legs. I can repeat my basic swing more often. Pilates is going to add five, six, seven … years to my career.”

Caroline Schmid, Mediate’s Pilates instructor, says, “The golf swing is a little one-sided, which can create imbalance in the body. Pilates helps to balance out the body against the forces of the swing. It helps to create less torque in the spine because you learn to swing from your center and not from your limbs.”

Mediate’s wife, Linda, also has had success with Pilates. She has overcome injuries suffered in three car accidents as well as giving birth to three children: “I couldn’t walk unless I put my hand on my back.”

She gives Pilates credit for major improvements in her husband’s game.

“He used to avoid putting, and now he’s a putting machine,” she says. “I want to hug Caroline because she has had such a profound impact on Rocco.”

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Adam Levine gets thrown from a fire escape and flipped over by cars, has his head slammed repeatedly against a door, and generally gets a solid ass-kicking—all at the hands of a beautiful, manic temptress. But what really catches the eye in the video for Maroon 5′s  “Misery” is Levine’s muscular yet catlike physique.

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So when I put together my initial list of celebrity yogis, the number quickly approached 100, which is way too long a post. So I condensed the list to those who’ve had the most impact on yoga in 2011. (If it were 2010, Gisele would have been the clear winner, but this year she’s been quiet on the yoga front). Here you go:

11. Lady Gaga - Whether it’s her tweets about power yoga or life lessons from her yoga teacher, simply put, when Gaga says something, people listen. And the fact that she’s been saying a lot about yoga this year is a good thing.

10. Russell Simmons - What’s great about Russell Simmons is that he’s a celeb that doesn’t opt for privates but actually goes to class – a lot. Odds are if you go to Jivamukti in NYC enough, you’ll run into Russell and witness him holding a headstand for a minute, or two, or three…

9. Jennifer Aniston - Jen swears by her instructor, Mandy Ingber, as she did the introduction to her DVD. To start off 2011, Jen gave Oprah a yoga mat on national TV. She’s also an example of a celebri-yogi who practices on set, and she’s ‘yoga buddies’ with Nicole Kidman.

8. Sting & Trudie Styler - Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, are the ultimate celebri-yogi couple, as they’ve been practicing yoga for over 20 years! Sting hits the mat on tour and recently said, “Like music, yoga is a journey — one that is long enough so you keep developing, and keep learning. I don’t see an end to it.”

7. K$sha – Last month K$sha received a lot of flack from the press because she practiced on the beach in an unflattering high-waisted swimsuit. But it’s yoga, and your practice is your own — so who cares what you wear?! Go K$sha!

6. Miranda Kerr - Last year Gisele gave birth to her son and credited yoga with losing her baby weight. This year it’s Miranda Kerr who takes the reins as yoga-mom-supermodel who sings the praises of yoga. She also went through 27 hours of labor with no drugs! Eat that plank pose!

5. Jon Bon Jovi - Make that Jon Bon Jovi – Yogi! Like most guys, the 48-year-old rocker was a gym rat, until he found yoga in 2011 — and yoga is his new exercise of choice. So when rockers like Jon make the gym-to-yoga conversion, I think it’s kind of a big deal!

4. Alessandra Ambrosio - Just like fellow supermodel-mom, Miranda Kerr, Alessandra credits yoga with her post-baby weight loss. She tweetsfrequently about hitting yoga class — and it’s not for show, she can actually do a headstand!

3. Adam Levine - A picture is worth a 1,000 words — or in this case, a 1,000 sun salutations. The Maroon 5 frontman bared his yoga body for cancer awareness in January and says of yoga “When I started practicing I instantly felt more sculpted. Yoga carves you into a different person—and that is satisfying physically…” Don’t you agree?!

2. Heather Graham - Heather has been hitting the mat for over 11 years and it’s definitely paying off as she looks stunning at 40. In addition to loving our friend and all-star yogi, Vinnie Marino, Heather takes her practice seriously enough to have just gone on a yoga retreat at one of my favorite destinations, Xinalani!

1. Michelle Williams - Yoga is about giving back, and Michelle gave back big-time in 2011 with her Yoga for Single Moms Project. Michelle says,”Yoga gave me relief like nothing else; it made me a better person and a better mother…  And then I started to think about how expensive it is to get a babysitter to take a yoga class. The idea behind the program is that if you can clear the time, we do the rest. It provides childcare while the mum is in the yoga class, and it’s all free.” Namaste to that!

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She’s done so with the help of a new machine called the Pilates Reformer and friends say that she absolutely loves the new machine since she no longer has time to keep up with the 40 minutes of yoga that followed 40 minutes of cardio on a daily basis.

Jen says the Mega Former is an easy way to do Pilates without stress on the joints,” says one of her friends. “Even if she’s tired she can do just over half an hour on it. Now her body’s banging!”

Jennifer is also on a special diet that consists of only four small meals a day that are high in protein.

She’s also switched her evening glass of wine for vodka with freshly squeezed lemon. And she sips lots of water throughout the day, which is why her skin looks so amazing,” says her friend.

Her friends seem genuinely impressed that every morning after breakfast she hops on her Pilates machine as she watches the morning news and that, if she wants a chocolate cake for dessert, she only eats one or two bites of it.

The agree with her fans that she is looking positively stunning lately.

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Adam says he was ‘aware of the yoga scene but initially kept his distance, turned off by what he calls “the cheesy clichés.”‘

But then after experiencing lower-back pain and tight hips, Adam decided to give yoga a try.

It’s been five years since he began practicing, and he hasn’t lifted a weight since!

Adam on why he ditched the gym and took up yoga:
“Weights made my neck thick, and I would be like, ‘I’m turning into a monster! Yoga takes what you have and molds and sculpts it, which is a much more natural way to look and feel.”
If you don’t think yoga has physical benefits, Adam disagrees:
“I don’t like how people bullshit about how yoga is not about vanity.”
He also sees the spiritual benefits of his daily yoga practice:
“Playing a show before thousands of people is a highly unnatural state.. and when I get on the mat to do an hour of yoga before the show, I come out physically relaxed. For me, that’s a form of meditation.”
Adam calls his yoga practice “an investment in happiness for the rest of my life.”

Namaste to that! Go dudes yoga!

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Sure we all want to know all about the celebrities that do pilates. Did you know that When Madonna had horse accident, she was exercising Pilates to speed up recovery process, and then she said “I used to be a freak about doing yoga, but I had to do a lot of Pilates to rehabilitate my shoulder joint and get the use of my arm back”. When she was in Chicago she rented high-tech Pilates equipment from Body Endevors. Body Endevors have Pilates equipment such as Reformer and are Power Pilates affiliate, so Madonna did probably exercise Power Pilates!

Kate Winslet

As a star at age 36 she looks gorgeous, by a little help of Pilates. According to TimesOnline in UK, she owes her beautiful figure to “daily home workout DVDs and 10-minute Pilates sessions” and good diet program. That well-formed sexy shoulders certainly are benefit of Pilates.

Hugh Grant

When he turned 50 he started to take care about his health, and started to do Pilates. “I’ve actually started to do Pilates to try to keep me young. I go to a place where there are all these attractive young girls and just the one sad, hung-over old man, who is me.” He definitely looks younger than he actually is. Pilates actually kept him from aging. Oh, yes he also said “Now I have muscles of steel and could easily deal with giving birth.”

Jennifer Aniston

A star of popular “Friends” and today well known movie actor once said about pilates. “I’m a Pilates person. It’s great. I had a hip problem. I had a chronic back, a pinched nerve and a hip problem and it’s completely solved all of it. I love it. It makes me feel like I’m taller.”

Jamie Lee Curtis

She is known as “The Body.” Lee Curtis has every so often says that she got into great shape thankfully to Pilates, a low impact workout that shapes the body as it strengthens and tones muscles.

And there is no end to this list Mari Winsor clientele included people like: Vanessa Williams, Daisy Fuentes, Melanie Griffith, Elizabeth Berkeley, Samuel L. Jackson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Courtney Thorne-Smith.

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