Product Description

In this remarkable new program, Pilates instructor Brooke Siler once again revolutionizes the world of Pilates, reinventing how and where Pilates is performed, to take your fitness to a whole new level. Elegantly designed and beautifully illustrated, Your Ultimate Pilates Body Challenge takes a fresh approach to Pilates, challenging readers to rethink the way they move and to incorporate Pilates-conscious movements into every aspect of life:

At the Gym: Siler takes you through a fun, rapid-fire circuit of machines that gets and keeps you in your cardio target zone. For the first time ever, you will learn how to use powerful Pilates techniques to maximize your workouts on standard gym equipment (StairMaster, treadmill, stationary bike, etc.).

At Home: Siler steps up the at-home basics by applying Pilates’ principles to work with weights, bands, and non-accoutrement-based exercises.

On the Mat: As so many readers and clients have requested, Siler has created four brand-new mat routines specifically to target abs, lower body, posture, and flexibility, and designed to take experienced practitioners and beginners alike to new levels of body-sculpted accomplishment.

Sports: Siler offers insight into secrets of the world’s best athletes, explaining how to move with Pilates form in individual and team sports. With core strength created in Pilates you can hit better golf shots, ski with less fatigue than ever before, and bring more power to your tennis game.

Everyday Life: Using her trademark “Invisible Workout,” Siler shows you how incorporating Pilates-based awareness and movements into everyday activities—such as restocking the pantry, working at the computer, climbing stairs, or picking up the baby—can tone and strengthen your body.

You will be amazed at how much better you feel when your carriage, breathing, posture, and movements are done Pilates-style. This dynamic book shows how Pilates can actually be the basis for total-body transformation—by simply challenging you to get the absolute most out of everything you already do.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56602 in Books
• Published on: 2005-12-27
• Released on: 2005-12-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780767919821
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

About the Author

BROOKE SILER is the owner of re:AB®, the renowned Manhattan Pilates studio. A true pioneer of this technique and schooled by Joseph Pilates’ original protégé, Siler lives in New York City with her husband and son.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Welcome to Your Ultimate Pilates Body® Challenge!


As many of you know, Pilates is one of those wonderful phenomena that has broken through the surface of the collective consciousness in the last few years to emerge as a "hot new trend." Fewer people realize that Pilates brings almost one hundred years of history with it.

Created by Joseph H. Pilates to strengthen his frail and sickly body, Pilates was then translated to specific apparatus to help those unable to support their own body weight. It debuted in 1920s New York City as the lengthening, strengthening, and rehabilitation secret of stars, starlets, dancers, and acrobats and then all but disappeared for the next few decades, remaining known only to the small population interested in physical fitness. Today that demographic extends to include most everyone looking for strong, long, lean muscles, inspired either by the media culture or touched by an injury.

Dressed up or dressed down, at the core of the Pilates movement today still beats the heart of the Pilates of yesteryear. Designed to use the art and science of muscle control--what Joseph Pilates termed Contrology--to help you achieve the body that looks good, feels good, and sustains you for a lifetime, Pilates is ageless, colorless, and genderless; and once incorporated into your subconscious, it marries the joy of movement with the efficiency of your most challenging workout.


Correctly executed and mastered to the point of subconscious reaction, these exercises will reflect grace and balance in your routine activities. Contrology exercises build a sturdy body and sound mind capable of performing everyday tasks with ease and perfection. They also provide tremendous reserve energy for sports, recreation and emergencies.
(Return to Life through Contrology, Joseph H. Pilates)


Many of you are old friends, readers I know from The Pilates Body. I hope, too, many of you are new friends, readers who have picked up Your Ultimate Pilates Body Challenge because you are intrigued by expanding your awareness and your body's potential. And, finally, welcome to the reader who is not yet in shape--or who was in shape and is somehow, now, mysteriously, feeling as if he or she were living in someone else's body, because I can relate! Halfway through the writing of this book, I had a baby--and suddenly became my own audience. So, as I wrote and rewrote, read and reread this book's philosophy I also relived the work from the ground up.

I began writing Your Ultimate Pilates Body Challenge before I was pregnant. Why? Because I was seeing what I felt was an alarming trend. Every day I had clients coming in and doing amazing work, then abandoning basic posture and alignment before they got to the sidewalk. I began to do some research. What I discovered was a twofold problem: Clients were stagnating within their solo workout sessions, and they weren't applying what they had learned in the studio when they were off the mat. Off the mat? Yes. Because Pilates is more than the exercises performed in a studio. It's about personal responsibility, active self-care, and feeling good as you move through your day and your life. More than a series of movements, it's a philosophy and a mind-set. Because, if your brain is not active and engaged and working, it won't matter how good you look; you won't feel your best. Without your conscious brain, your body is like any piece of equipment without an owner's manual. Usable, but too often a mystery.

And, as I said, I understand that feeling of mystery! After having my beautiful baby, I discovered that even though I had been physically fit, and educated, my body had become a mystery. Although I knew intellectually where I should be lifting from and which muscles I should be engaging, the communication lines between my brain and my body appeared to have been disconnected. I needed to reread the owner's manual. So, Your Ultimate Pilates Body Challenge became that manual. Your Ultimate Pilates Body Challenge asks you to take a real look at your body--beyond the number that appears on the scale. Can you discover why you've hit a plateau within your workout? Why you always end up with knee pain? Why your neck feels strained at the end of the day?

I want you to get moving--and have fun and be efficient while doing what you do. One thing I've learned as a new mom is that time is of the essence; I needed to get more out of less time. Your Ultimate Pilates Body Challenge is full of both new mat routines and ways to take what you've learned in the studio off the mat and into the world with Pilates Interval Training at the Gym, the Invisible Workout™, and Pilates for the Sports Minded.


People need three things out of their fitness programs:

* Strength
* Flexibility
* Cardiovascular conditioning


Pilates has all three! Too often, however, it is thought of as a system that is specific to dancers, rehabilitation, or meditation.

I wrote Your Ultimate Pilates Body Challenge to help Pilates beat this rap, to change the perception that Pilates is limited to an arena outside your daily scope of living or working out. Like many of you, I am busy multitasking the many matters that make up my day-to-day life; and when I am ready, willing, and able to work out, it can't be so complicated as to put me off, so boring as to not challenge me, or so ineffectual as to waste my precious time. With those principles in mind, I put together the building blocks of Your Ultimate Pilates Body Challenge so that they can be stacked and moved around as best suit your needs.

With the principles you'll find in Your Ultimate Pilates Body Challenge, those of you just beginning can create a safe, challenging, and efficient workout, and those of you who have become bored with your routine can infuse an old workout with renewed energy and purpose. Interval challenges are included to enhance your cardiovascular output and help burn more calories and dissolve fat.

When you're in the gym, I'll teach you to use your Pilates principles to turn a stale workout routine into a fat-burning, muscle-producing, efficient use of your time. No more plugging away for hours on the same old course, stomping up the same hills, or hanging over the same handlebars.

As a self-confessed gym junkie, I was compelled to create the Pilates-Conscious Cardio Circuit. Armed with the information in Your Ultimate Pilates Body Challenge, you will be able to complete a Pilates-aware circuit at the gym on a variety of machines that will burn more calories in less time. Once you have completed the circuit, you can hit your mat for a 10- to 20-minute Pilates mat routine while your heart is still pumping in the target zone. Fast, fun, and extremely challenging the Pilates-Conscious Cardio Circuit is a high-powered, superconscious workout that engages you both mentally and physically.

For my fellow die-hard Pilates Matwork fans Your Ultimate Pilates Body Challenge is chock full of new movements, engaging visual and verbal metaphors, tips to progress or modify your matwork, and four fantastic body-specific programs. Adding Abs, Lean Lower Body, Perfecting Posture, and Finding Flexibility contain both the fun and the challenges you need to target your main areas of concern while still giving yourself a total-body workout.

Athletes and sports fans alike will gain insight into their game from the information in the sports section. Here, I took the principles of Pilates and applied them to four of the sports so many of us know and love: tennis, golf, skiing, and snowboarding. As you begin to incorporate this information, you'll add depth and proficiency to your game. Every great athlete must combine artistry with technique, form with function. Pilates is steeped in the art and science of body movement/physiology and a few great visual cues or Pilates form tips can be the difference between good and great when it counts. Whatever your sport of choice is, the guidelines of this section apply.

But what about the days when you can't get to the gym or hit the courts, the course, or the slopes? Unique to Your Ultimate Pilates Body Challenge is my Invisible Workout, which will serve to keep you tuned in and toned up throughout the day by using simple Pilates-conscious moves that you can execute anywhere and everywhere. Whether a handbag or a hand weight, a child or a chest press--the Invisible Workout will teach you to use the world around you as a tool for improving your fitness and physique.

The Invisible Workout helps you incorporate basic Pilates principles into your daily activities, making the world your gym as well as your oyster. Before my son was born, I had the misguided assumption that I would snap back into shape with little to no effort at all. My Pilates practice served me incredibly well throughout the entire pregnancy, and there was no reason to believe anything but a miraculous recovery was in store. What a rude awakening to discover that my body had a different game plan. I am thankful I had Your Ultimate Pilates Body Challenge to work on. Every activity and movement in my daily life became another chance to regain my strength and control over my body. Although they seemed like baby steps at times, they added up to more.

The Invisible Workout asks if you can learn to apply the fundamentals of Pilates to real-life situations. For everything from taking out the garbage to sinking a hole-in-one. What will it mean when you can? It will mean you will be working your body naturally throughout the entire day, instead of working your body inefficiently for 1 or 2 hours every other day at the gym. Becoming observant, training the body from the inside out, beginning to rely on its deepest muscles to sit and stand and walk properly, means not only carrying and lifting but running, skating, swimming . . . all your favorite activities begin to flow with ease and efficiency. One of the ways I know my work with clients is ...

Customer Reviews

Takes Pilates from the mat and into your life
This is the long-awaited follow-up to Brooke Siler's first manual on Pilates, The Pilates Body. Her first book was my own introduction to Pilates about 5 years ago, and I still recommend it as the starting point for those brand-new to Pilates. However, for those familiar with Pilates and looking integrate its principles into their lives as a whole, I highly recommend Your Ultimate Pilates Body Challenge, a perfect sequel.

Siler does not spend as much time delving into the background and basic tenets of Pilates as she did in her previous work. However, she still provides an excellent foundation by reviewing key points about the Pilates powerhouse, posture, and Pilates-style breathing. Furthermore, as it did in her first book, Siler's enthusiasm for the Pilates method shines through on each and every page. She is unfailingly encouraging, with a clear, down-to-eath writing style. Siler is also gifted in her ability to provide metaphors, and the amazing photos and illustrations which accompany her text provide further clarification.

Siler offers several methods for expanding your Pilates practice in this book. The first is by taking it to the gym: she describes a program which utilizes common gym equipment for a cardio workout that integrates Pilates techniques. Next she outlines a similar program using home-based equipment such as free weights and bands. In response to demands from her fans, she has also created several programs based on Pilates matwork. She introduces the "Tantalizing Ten," ten Pilates exercises which provide a foundation for the four other programs, including "Adding Abs," "Lean Lower Body," "Perfecting Posture," and "Finding Flexibility."

The final two chapters address how to integrate Pilates into other activities. The first, called the "Invisible Workout," details the use of Pilates principles in simple, everyday activities, from driving your car to carrying your children to doing housework. In the last chapter, Siler links Pilates to sports activities, choosing a somewhat odd selection of Sports to highlight use of Pilates techniques: golf, tennis, downhill skiing, and snowboarding.

Although I wouldn't suggest this book as someone's first introduction to Pilates, those with some experience with the Pilates method are likely to find this book a valuable addition to their Pilates library.

Excellent resource for "kicking up" Pilates
Siler's latest book on Pilates is an excellent resource for those who have been exposed to Pilates. (Although it could be used by a beginner, there are better books to ground you in the material, particularly Siler's first book and those of Alycea Ungaro's.) If you want ways to bring Pilates to your gym routine, she has quite a few ideas for five popular pieces of equipment. If you want to know how to incorporate mat principles into your at home workout, there are ideas for weights and bands. Trying to improve your sports performance? Plenty of insights and specific exercises for four sports. Do you want to spice up your mat routine, but still in the Pilates-realm? Siler offers four different mat routines with exercises not usually seen in retail manuals. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, a good portion of the book is devoted to bringing Pilates principles into everyday life- whether driving, waiting in line, carrying your child, standing on the subway or a host of other everyday activities almost everyone finds themselves doing- via her trademarked Invisible Workout.

A caveat: Siler is not the first person to have tackled (all of) these subjects. Although not called such, many of the ideas of the Invisible Workout have been used by Denise Austin (somewhere, a Pilates purist is shuddering); Jennifer Kries' lovely book (Pilates Plus Method) also includes sports-specific routines; and Alycea Ungaro's latest book (The Pilates Promise) is based on the concept of "target-toning" using Pilates.

None of the above should detract from this book, because Siler does what she does very well and includes a number of fresh ideas and different exercises. Also, this is the first book I've seen that brings Pilates methods to pieces of gym equipment and that uses "Reformer-on-the-Mat" exercises. While such exercises are starting to pop up on DVD (Sarah Picot, Liz Gillies, the Classical Pilates team), it's great to have these in a book for a reference and with such comprehensive instructions.

I have criticized Siler's writing style for her instructions as being too wordy and heavy on the visuals. However, I feel it works better here first because she is writing (I believe) to a more experienced audience and two because she seems to have ligthened up a bit, including a number of anecdotes from her personal training that makes her text seem less technical. In short, even if you were put off by her first book, you shouldn't be here.

Excellent book- one of the best Pilates purchases I've made.

Take Pilates from your workout to the rest of your life
All Pilates books -- including this one -- invariably show sequences of Pilates exercises. This book also addresses a different question: how would someone aware of the mindful movement patterns of Pilates apply those patterns to other activities: walking on a treadmill, rowing, driving a car, carrying a bag or carrying a child, typing on a computer, etc. How can you have spaciousness in your joints and a relaxed body while performing these stressful activities -- 'tis a very good question to ask!

Photographs of individuals doing Pilates exercises and everyday activities are augmented by drawings showing suggested imagery:

A photo of someone typing at a computer shows marionette strings supporting the shoulder, elbow, and wrist. This points to an interesting thing: we actually can imagine and do this, but we really do not know how to explicitly address groups of muscles to make this happen. Deep muscles are fundamentally different from the superficials.

A mother carrying her child has an imaginary backpack drawn on her back -- with the cue to keep the shoulders and back in proximity to the backpack. Such imagery keeps the small rotator cuff muscles engaged, the upper back straight, and the chest broad and open. It also keeps the back centered over the pelvis -- a balanced position.

The most fascinating imagery is where the author adds springs to the drawings. I teach a course about why such resiliency is vital to our body's working efficiently. While we clearly don't have springs inside of our body, Brooke demonstrates that it is indeed possibly to enhance the spring-like nature of our bodies.

Serious students of Pilates eventually realize how to bring this kind of awareness to the rest of your life. If this book is able to accelerate this process, that is A Very Good Thing. Most instructors don't address these areas unless a student explicitly asks about them; I applaud Brook for introducing these concepts to students.

One last note: the imagery in this book is very good, but it is by no means unique. A good student will use the imagery and inquire why it is effective; a truly wise student will use these images as a starting point to plant and nurture his own garden of imagery. Instructors love it when students start cooking their own images!