I've taken group Pilates Reformer classes for about 6 months now. Like Yoga and Barre, I find that I get more out of it when I know the proper alignment/stabilization, muscles to target, and where to shift my mental focus. Some instructors are better at giving tips than others so I wanted a manual to help me advance my knowledge and use my class time as effectively as possible. This book is very thorough and spends a lot of time on getting the important principles down: breathing, pelvic placement, rib cage placement, scapular placement, and head/cervical placement. Then it goes on to describe the reformer features, usual starting positions, 29 exercises - all with variations (same exercise, different starting positions for your feet), modifications (adjusting the exercise such as tiny pulses with the carriage half way in), illustrations, and where to keep your focus. It's also nicely bound with plenty of room for notes. If you have a reformer at home, this will surely help you keep proper alignment. If you have ambitions to be an instructor, this will be valuable. The content is here. One pet peeve is that it's written like a clinical manual - particularly around anatomy - and I found it a bit overkill. For example, "When flexing the upper torso from a supine position, focus on creating thoracic flexion and not overemphasizing cervical flexion. Cranio-vertebral flexion should come from lengthening the back of the neck away from the shoulders and flexing the cranium on the first two vertebrae of the cervical spine. Once cranio-vertebral flexion has been achieved, continue to slightly flex the cervical spine and then develop thoracic flexion. In ideal cervical flexion, avoid jamming the chin into the chest. There should be enough room between the chin and chest to fit a small fist." What they mean is, if you're lying down on the mat/carriage, facing the ceiling, you should be mindful of how you lift your head/shoulders. Prior to lifting your head/shoulders, first lengthen the back of the neck away from the shoulders. Lift/curve your head and shoulders in a cohesive movement - first with the neck and then the upper back. Look at your thighs. From the side view, your head and shoulders should make a continuous curved shape. Extra points if they gave you the tip that your abs start under your lower ribs and the lift should come from engaging the upper abs. In other words, you should not be doing a "crunch" in which you are probably using a combo of pulling your head forward and using momentum to raise your body. Don't get me wrong it's not all that bad . . . That said, this book assumes you know your anatomy well - for example, the difference between all the locations of the spine: cervical (neck), thoratic (chest/ribs), lumbar (lower back), sacral, and cocyx (tailbone). Because it assumes such a high knowledge of anatomy, it oddly leaves other things out. For example, there's a lot of time (rightfully so) spent on the Transverse Abdominis. But there's no mention of the outer Rectus Abdominis. Learning how to distinguish between them, and how to tell which I had engaged, was a big moment in my understanding in Barre and Pilates. I started working harder with smaller movements and seeing bigger results. For some this isn't an issue but I would have preferred a happy medium between all the knowledge provided but more straightforward language. For me the goal wasn't to pass an exam, but to learn to be more effective. Some of the best teachers I've had manage to explain complex, technical movements in plain language. This helps me "get it" more quickly and bring it into muscle memory. Being unnecessarily verbose can be a hindrance to understanding movement. At the very least illustrations a combination of the anatomical points discussed, along with the pictures of the models, would have been helpful. A picture can be worth 1,000 words. This lost 2 stars because the price is really, really high and because another reviewer said that buying the intermediate edition would include these same exercises.
