The Pilates Body: The Ultimate At-Home Guide to Strengthening, Lengthening and Toning Your Body-

Simple, straightforward, and extremely helpful.
As someone who had always weight-trained using large, expensive gym equipment, I was skeptical about Pilates. After trying it out using YouTube videos as guides, I was hooked. This exercise program does not require you to buy any equipment or spend excessive amounts of time forcing your body through painful and monotonous repetitions. It keeps your mind and body engaged simultaneously, and despite the deceptively simple exercises you will find yourself sweating and pleasantly sore by the end. Also, it’s really fun! The moves are graceful and fluid and the emphasis on breathing adds a meditative aspect.After doing some research online I found that this book kept turning up. I read through some of the hundreds of positive reviews here on Amazon and decided to buy it. When I first opened it, I was a little disappointed at the thinness of the book. Once I started reading though, I discovered that each page is dense with valuable content. Siler’s introduction is educational and genuinely warm and each exercise gets two pages dedicated to it with helpful visualizations, beginner and advanced modifications, and useful tips.Some reviewers complained about a lack of exercise routines in the book but you only need one: the original matwork routine laid out by Joseph Pilates, which Siler has reproduced faithfully and in great (but not excessive) detail. Just the one routine, with 34 distinct exercises ranging from Beginner to Advanced level. You start at Beginner and add on exercises as you become more proficient, leaving out anything that causes you pain or doesn’t feel comfortable for your body. How simple is that?

A worth-while addition to your Pilates references.
When I was trying to decide which ONE book to buy for learning the Pilates matwork, it was quite overwhelming. There are scads of books out there on the subject – I think I read the Amazon reviews on over 100 books with ‘Pilates’ in the title. Some were explanations of how to do the original matwork, like this book, and some were spin-offs on Pilates – same name, different program. It seemed that the top two contenders in popularity were this book and the one by Alycea Ungaro, called ‘Pilates: Body in Motion’. I bought that one first, and then decided to buy this one to compare. This is my take on it: Ungaro’s book ‘Pilates: Body in Motion’ has much more detailed photographs of the exercises, complete explanations to go with each step-by-step photo, a very full explanation of how-to, what to watch out for, tips, pointers, etc. In contrast, The Pilates Body by Brooke Siler has fewer pictures to guide you through the exercises. There is a full written explanation of how to do each exercise, with basically the same information as the other book, although sometimes she gives instructions that are not found in Ungaro’s book (also, Ungaro sometimes gives tips that are not in Siler’s book). The advantage in this book, and the reason I recommend buying it ALSO, is that it has more thorough coverage of advanced exercises – many are included here that are not in Ungaro’s book. I would recommend that Ungaro’s book be used for initial learning, and this book should be added for more explanation on how to do the exercises, plus for additional exercises in the advanced levels. Another thing I like about this book is that all the exercises are in the sequence of the advanced program, so you can just flip through the book in order, and leave out the exercises that are too advanced for you, where-as in the other book, the beginner exercises go together, then a useful sequential beginner routine is shown. After that, the intermediate exercises are shown grouped together, and then the sequential intermeidate routine is shown, but if you want to refere to any of the the detailed teaching pages of the beginner exercises that are also part of the intermediate routine (which builds on and incorporates the beginner routine), you have to flip back to the beginner section, and the same is true when you get to the advanced exercises. In other words, in Ungaro’s book, the exercises are grouped by level, whereas in Siler’s book, the exercises for the complete advanced routine are sequential, but labeled as beginner, intermediate or advanced, because this is a program that builds on the previous levels. This book can be obtained for a good price ‘used’ in Amazon, which is how I purchased it. I would recommend both of these excellent books for a more complete understanding of how to do with exercises.

I’m a complete noob in pilates, but not to the fitness in general. Only after 5 days after I receives the books and start doing the basic excersices I found that really helpful to increase my global mobility, strengt and flexibility. I lift heavy wight 3 times per week and run, doing some agressive workout, but I like the peace and calm way to build the powerhouse. I feel that a great form to complete my other form of exercise. The instruction are blear and well writien. It’S straight to the point. The only weakness I see is for people that aren’t use to the patern of the human body or are good visualizer, an instructional dvd in the books and you got a great Pilates for dummies parkage. And men don’t be affraid to give it a try because you may be surprise on how your powerhause ( core) is drasticly important in your life in general and even in bed and you take control of your body, Man’S up!

Good