Personalized Pilates?

Perhaps the reason I haven’t liked Pilates in the past is because I haven’t chosen the right Pilates workout for my personality. Hence this week’s DVD selection, Pilates for Wimps. The DVD is subtitled Total Fitness for the Partially Motivated, and instructor Annika Carlson explains in the intro that it doesn’t matter how fit/enthusiastic/prepared you are, everybody’s a wimp when trying something new. I like Carlson’s attitude, and I’ve long self-described as a wimp, so this workout seemed like it’d be perfect.

There’s not much to the DVD. The runtime on the workout is 35 minutes, but once you subtract the time for the introduction and the end credits, it is at most 30 minutes. The bonus features section lists what appear at first glance to be two additional workouts (floor and standing exercises), but are really just links to the places in the main workout where you do specific floor and standing exercises.

The bonus features are rounded out by a version of the main workout without narration (again, nothing new), the obligatory trailers for other DVDs, plus a series of still photos of the instructor doing various Pilates exercises. The photos are not even labeled with the names of the Pilates moves being depicted, so I’m not sure I see the value in these photos.

So, really this DVD boils down to one 30-minute workout. There are about two minutes of warmup, 18 minutes of floor exercises, 8 minutes of standing exercises, and a couple of minutes of stretching at the end.

Instructor Carlson shows the traditional versions of the exercises, and the other exerciser, Jamie, shows modifications to the moves. Some modifications use a chair, a towel, or a pillow. I appreciated that the props required for modifications were ordinary household items, not specialty fitness equipment.

The explanations of how to modify the poses were invaluable to me. So many Pilates workouts assume a level of fitness that many (myself included) do not have. Exerciser Jamie showed modifications for people with balance issues, flexibility issues, and strength issues. With these modifications, there was only one exercise that I flat out could not do (the roll-up).

The big issue I had with this workout is the verbal instruction. Carlson gives lots of detailed suggestions about specific things you should do during a move (pull in your abs here, position your arms at this height, etc.), but she rarely explains what the move itself is, beyond giving the official Pilates name for the move.

This is fine for the parts of the workout where you can see the screen (to supplement Carlson’s verbal instructions with visual cues). For the rest of the workout, though, I ended up spending a lot of time twisting and straining to try to see the TV so I could figure out what she was doing.

As an example, there are a few exercises where Carlson instructs you to peel your spine away from the wall or floor, but she never says whether to peel from the top or the bottom of the spine. If you can’t see the screen, you’re not sure whether you’re supposed to be moving your butt or your neck. The floor exercises were particularly hard to figure out without looking at the TV; I kept thinking we were doing a crunch when we were actually doing something closer to a yoga bridge.

Since the workout was a little frustrating to follow, I don’t think it will land it my regular rotation, but don’t get the impression that the DVD was without value. Even though I may not use the DVD for a workout, I did get some great tips on how to modify traditional Pilates moves. So, at least I can take that new-found modification knowledge to another Pilates video that is better narrated.