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."
~ Written on 2003-07-08

"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."
~ Written on 2003-06-19

"I highly recommend this book as a standard guide to home training on the Pilates method. All exercises are written out very plainly for everyone to understand with the accompanied pictures on each individual exercise.
Don't think twice about purchasing this book; get it and enjoy the new world of exercise with Joe Pilates."
~ Written on 2001-10-08

"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."
~ Written on 2001-06-20

"The focus of this book is mainly on the "core" abdominal Pilates exercises. A prior knowledge and experience of Pilates is also assumed. There are a wide range of exercises demonstrated throughout the book with step by step instructions for each. However,for each exercise there is only a start and end position photo with no visual image for what the main movement of the exercise is supposed to look like! I found this somewhat disappointing, as though the exercise looked good, I was at a loss to know whether I was actually performing it correctly or not. There are hints as to what it should feel like, but without a decent visual interpretation of the exercise, I found that this did not help much. I expected this book to have clear sections for beginners through to advanced. The first section "Modified Beginners Exercises" gave that impression, but after that- beginner, intermediate and advanced exercises were all mixed up together. Based on my prior experience of Pilates,I thought that this book had great potential, but it was somewhat spoilt by the fact that it was so confused. I also thought that the "Advanced" exercises would have more detailed instructions to follow to enable you to get it right, but from the instructions given, even as a young and fairly supple person, I found these exercises almost impossible to perform. It is a shame that a good book like this has been spoilt by the lack of careful thought that needs to be put into the instructions and pictures in order to make it an enjoyable and worthwhile read."
~ Written on 2001-06-16