Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I am fairly fit and a new convert to Pilates. I bought this book largely on the quality of the reviews and on its do-it-anywhere marketing. Ah, good, I thought. Maybe ways to apply some of the Pilates strengthening principles to standing at the photocopier or in line, or doing the dishes.
The book offers only limited thoughts along these lines at the end, where much last third or so of the book is devoted primarily to lists of practitioners (either out of date or soon to be).
The exercises in this book, especially the recommendations for intermediate and more advanced variations, are about as "do it anywhere" as that of an intermediate vinyasa yoga class, and as a whole constitute a workout that any serious practioner would want to perform in a gym-like setting. In fact, the author suggests you should try to do these exercises around mirrors (don't have a lot of those in my office); she also suggests you can do these things anywhere but helpfully adds that you should to try to avoid knocking into others as you do.
Even accepting that, the book's production is disappointing as well. It is virtually impossible to read and teach yourself the complex inhalation/exhalation and movement patterns while actually performing them. (I don't know why producers of these books don't bother to put a spiral binding on them so that at least it stays flat.) To teach yourself many of the positions while reading requires that the book be just far enough away from your body--especially with something holding the pages flat--as to be barely legible, creating a lot of interruption and frustration. There are simply not enough photographs, which are themselves often hard to "read," and many of the instructions and certain parts of the pre-exercise text seem to have certain logical gaps that make the text harder to follow than it could be.
All of the principles are for me incredibly compelling and worthwhile, and overlap beautifully with yoga. But this should be a well-produced DVD, and not a book. And other than the heightened awareness of posture that mat Pilates naturally creates, I found little other than a short discussion about seated posture that actually merits the "Wherever You Are" slant.
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