Product Description

Trainer to the stars, brooke siler, offers an at-home guide to the pilates method, giving a whole new body within 30 sessions. Pilates is the new fitness phenomenon with hundreds of studios now opening up across Britain. The devotees include Madonna, Uma Thurman, Sharon Stone, Julia Roberts and Jennifer Anniston. For the first time, fitness guru and certified Pilates instructor, Brooke Siler, will reveal the techniques she uses to train the stars from her renowned New York studio re:AB. Brooke's celebrity clients include supermodels Kate Moss, Stella Tennant and Amber Valetta, actress Liv Tyler and the fashion and media glitterati of New York.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #177121 in Books
• Published on: 2000-03-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Excerpted from The Pilates Body by Brooke Siler. Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
"The Pilates method of body conditioning is not an arduous technique that leaves you tired and sore. In fact, quite the opposite is true. By allowing the movements to stretch your body as you simultaneously work on the strengthening elements of the method, you are creating a habit of relaxed effort for your body to follow." (8)

Customer Reviews

The Pilates Body
Fantastic, if you wish to learn about Pilates, who created it and how it came about this is your book. It is full of clear photographs for every single exercise from beginning to end with a clear step by step guide, it not only guides you through each exercise but also show's you how you can move forward and challenge your body as you perfect the Pilates exercise. This book was recommended to me by Pilates instructor as I wanted to learn more about Pilates and practice at home, by far the most in-depth book I have seen takes you right through from beginners level to advanced.

A novice veiw point - the best Pilates Book!
As a complete novice on Pilates and its background I started looking at all the books I could on the subject a few months ago. I had read about Pilates in the Daily Telegraph - the first time I had ever heard of the programme.

There are two points I have to make as a novice - 1 -I'd never heard of Pilates before - and so I wanted to read as much as I could and try things out before I bought and - 2 - there are some very very good books out there on the subject . So I am definitely not an expert opinion here but just an enthusiastic amateur. And I am enthusiastic about it.

First off - if you haven't tried Pilates before - like I hadn't - I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by just how easy and fun the exercises are. Every book I read emphasised the need to move up the level of difficulty slowly - which means I have made very noticeable improvements, but I really enjoy the exercises each day. Its a bit like yoga and certainly uses some parts of yoga in the exercises - only I find I domy Pilates exercises where I never really liked yoga that much.

Why do I like this book better than the others I used? Well I found the programme and the explanations which Siler used the best. Each Pilates book I read seemed to have slightly different combinations of exercises and different orders - but all the exercises are essentially the same so I don't know if there is really that much basic difference in them. In the end I just preferred the order and the presentation of Siler's book. She has all the philosophy of and explanations of Pilates in the first few pages. What I liked best though was the is a two page 'order' of exercises - where each exercise is a small picture to remind you of where you are up to.

Following that each exercise is given a double page spread with one page devoted to what to do put in simple bullet points, and the facing page a bullet point list of things to concentrate on while doing the exercise.

So while I did like many of the other Pilates books I found this one the best.

A Good Companion!
As a complete novice I opted to try Pilates using a DVD, Pilates for Dummies. However, there were a few exercises that I wanted a little more detail about. I wouldn't want to learn Pilates from scratch just with this book but as a companion to a Pilates Instructor or DVD/Video its invaluable.