Here you’ll find many, many short instructional videos some short, others up to eight minutes long. The occasional English accent, instructions written on screen so you can mute the sound if it becomes tedious, this is a nice feature.
Nice close-up picture of the movements and it discusses how to breathe, providing simple cues and suggested number of reps. To its credit it advises viewing the ‘Essentials of Pilates’ video before you move onto the more involved workouts. Specialty clips included such as ‘Pilates for women with larger breasts’ and ‘How to prevent and relieve neck ache’ are clever additions that go beyond the scope of most other sites. http://www.videojug.com/tag/pilates
An excellent instructional site, gets 8/10. Clear, concise and a refreshing change from the American accent of the “Hi I’m Kimberlee, Hi I’m Katherine” Corp mirror image sisters! More on them later.
A very comprehensive, high profile US based website containing Pilates principles, products, exercises with step by step instructions, and an offer to receive a weekly newsletter. It has a very large amount of exercise content, you do need to scrawl through a few screens to get through some of them, and they are not videos, just pics. A weekly e-newsletter alerts you to the exercise of the week and other interesting information that has been added. Forums where issues can be discussed, commentary on issues such as ‘Men and Pilates’ and many sponsored links can all be found here. The screens are very busy, with different font content filling three columns, so can be a little overwhelming. The site is managed by Marguerite Ogle who plays an active role on the forums too. http://pilates.about.com
I give this one 7/10 for thoroughness and depth of information.
Again, a thorough site including merchandise, product reviews, newsletter, community forum, videos and links to all sorts of interesting stuff too. Short and sharp instructional videos, not cheesy, very thorough and large onscreen picture. Current examples of exercises demonstrated are serratus, single leg stretch and lateral flexion side leg. The most interesting finds have been by clicking on the ‘Popular’ section on the right hand side of the page. http://www.Pilatesdigest.com
For me this one is the clearest site on which to locate and identify things of interest, a solid 9/10.
Nine podcasts produced by Master trainers is the unique feature of this site. (By the way, what is a ‘Master’ trainer and who decides such a thing?) The Community section of the site is worth a look through. Other features are products, education, events etc all promoting the Peak Pilates brand. Archives on the site date back to November 2007, so plenty of content to look through if you have some time to play. http://www.peakpilates.com
8/10 for this one, the community focus is great.
