Is That Yogilates in Your Pocket, or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

It seems like August is the month of vaguely inappropriate workouts, between the see-through pants of YogaBoxing, and last week’s suggestively named Yoga Booty Ballet.

This week we continue the trend with Yogilates: Level 1. I didn’t think I could top the semi-transparent pants of YogaBoxing’s Joshua Isaac Smith … but in Yogilates, instructor Jonathan Urla is sporting super-tight white pants, which leave nothing to the imagination.

It’s possible that the pants were intended to distract you from the fact that he looks more like an orthodontist than a fitness guru, but don’t let his mild-mannered appearance (pants notwithstanding) fool you. Urla is the creator of Yogilates, his own catchily-named fusion of yoga and Pilates.

Before I could even start the Yogilates workout, I had to work up a sweat opening the DVD case; in addition to the standard security labels, the manufacturers had somehow managed to adhere the actual plastic wrap directly to the case. The box is still covered with sticky tape residue, so it adheres to any DVDs that have the misfortune to be stored next to it.

Once I’d rested up from unwrapping the DVD, I tried out the workout itself.

There’s only one workout on the DVD, although it is split into three sections that can apparently each be done independently. There are three roughly 12-minute segments (one focusing on floor poses, the next on seated poses, and the last on standing poses), followed by a 5-minute relaxation segment.

This workout truly felt like a fusion of yoga and Pilates to me – not just some yoga poses followed by some Pilates poses, but interesting variations that really combined the two disciplines. That having been said, I believe it is overall more yoga than Pilates. This is fine with me. If I’ve got to do Pilates, I want it to be minimal and well-disguised like this.

The fusion with yoga, and the fact that it was clearly a beginner workout, helped make the Pilates more accessible to me. The only part of the workout that I really struggled with was actually more yoga-focused – the modified sun salutation at the beginning of the third segment.

Don’t get me wrong … I struggle with all sun salutations, because there is so much getting down to the floor and back up again, and you’re rarely facing the TV so you can see what’s coming next. Luckily, this one was pretty short; Urla only went through the sequence twice.

None of the exercisers really did any modifications at any point in the workout, but Urla does pepper his instruction with comments about only going as far in the stretches as you’re comfortable with, or about it being okay to bend your knees slightly if that makes the poses easier for you to do. His instruction was quietly encouraging and non-judgmental.

The only real beef I had with this workout is that the background music would sometimes overpower Urla’s voice. I don’t usually take issue with the production values of workout DVDs, but when it affects my ability to do the workout, I think it needs to be mentioned.

The instruction that I could hear was clear and well-timed, but the sections where I couldn’t hear him could be pretty tough to follow. I found myself propping up on my elbows to watch the TV and see what they were doing before I attempted the pose … and then it was hard to tell when to move on to the next pose, so I’d keep stopping and propping on my elbows to peek at the TV again.

I’d like to keep this DVD in my regular rotation, but first I need to see if there’s a way to reduce the volume on just the background music, so it doesn’t drown out Urla’s voice. His verbal cues in this workout are extra important, because any visual cues are totally drowned out by those preposterous pants.