Customer Rating: 
Summary: excellent stretching exercise
Comment: Gentle and powerful stretching routine. Well designed to make your body feel and move better, increase its energy and core strength. Sound and visuals in the recording are very pleasant. I am extremely happy to have this cd and plan to grow old practicing it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Six years Later
Comment: I started using this CD six years ago (see earlier review) and it got me into shape gradually. I gradually started walking up to 2 miles, then added bicyling. Eventually, I did the MS 150 (75 miles one way!). I lost 40 pounds and went from size 22 to size 10! This occurred over a period of three years.
Then, I had a hysterectomy with complications. During the months of recuperation, I lost all my momentum. Over the next three years, I gained all my weight back plus 10 pounds and got so out of shape that I could not walk upstairs without effort. At my last visit to the doctor, my doctor informed me that I was border line diabetic and losing bone mass. I had to get back on an exercise program and lose weight.
So, I pulled out this DVD last week and started again. I already feel better! This program provides a very gentle way of getting back into shape. I've lost a few pounds and I feel better in the joints every day that I do it. I can't recommend this program enough.
Customer Rating:
Summary: a.m.-p.m. stretch is great
Comment: The dvd a.m.-p.m. stretch is excellent. It is easily followed by people of all fitness levels. The directions are clear, the music pleasant and calming. It has helped me improve my flexibility.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: NICE
Comment: The production values in this video are great -- good color, nice scenery, volume quite audible and crisp.
The instructor is demure, calm and personable. There's no overt chipperness or cutesy cheerfulness of personality. The feel of the video is just like having a genuine one-on-one stretching session with your own competent personal trainer.
The stretches are quite do-able for the average couch-potato and are thorough in hitting every limb and muscle of the body.
While the stretches seem standard, integrated and progressive, for the most part, the Downward-Facing Dog, a Yoga pose, introduced toward the end of the session, is really fairly challenging for those who have little Yoga experience or don't work out regularly. I don't know that this is necessarily a good thing; it depends, I believe, on the viewer and her or his prior experience.
Some of the smaller standard stretches are held too long; there's a boring quality that sets in after repeated playbacks.
The verbal instructions, while audible and given with an appealing timbre in the voice, are sometimes wholly, wildly inaccurate. You have to watch the instructor on screen to know what body part you're being asked to move and avoid relying upon the instructor's words. That's a miss.
It's a peaceful session you'll experience. No loud voices, no static, no annoying music, and I like the session's completeness, though I found the whole session, after repeated use, too slow for daily playbacks. I think I will alternate this video with other stretching videos I've purchased so as not to feel too disengaged with my stretching practice.
I wasn't wowed by the vitality and energy that is renewed when you reach the end of the session. It is adequate, constructive, and useful; but it isn't exactly what you might call an invigorating experience either.
There is one caveat that clearly should come with this video experience of stretching exercises. While there is a general medical warning at the start of the video, it should be noted specifically that if any part of your body is injured or in pain, particularly, the shoulders and back, but arms as well if they have carpal tunnel (or sore knees from torn meniscus or lost cartilage) -- or if you're pregnant --, avoid doing the Downward-Facing Dog.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Love the setting
Comment: It is actually refreshing to stretch with this video, the music and setting is very relaxing.
|
