Yoga for Inflexible People/Hip Opener Series 2/Ab Ripper 200

[Guest guest]

This morning I did Extended Hip Opener Series 2 (45 min's) from Yoga for Inflexible People. The instructor teaches against a plain greyish blue background and with a sticky mat of the same color. For this workout a chair, yoga strap, blankets and yoga blocks are needed.From a professional standpoint, this is a lousy dvd. The cues are given via voiceovers, which I totally don't mind, except that there would be a weird "rewind" sound when you switched to the other side, and at times the verbal cues have nothing to do with what you see on the screen. For example, during the Warrior 2 segment the verbal cues were for Warrior 2, but the instructor performed Warrior 1 from the previous series. Another critique I have is that the right side, which is most people's dominant side, is held longer than for the left side. Really it should be the opposite. Next time I do a workout from the dvd I'll start with the

left side, which for me needs more attention.Most of the time several modifications are shown, but for Tree Pose I was astounded that the instructor had you go straight into putting the heel of your foot up by the groin! I'm pretty flexible but this is advanced for me! She should have said that the foot could be placed anywhere on the standing leg save for the knee.IF YOU CAN GET PAST THIS, which I did, this really was a great workout, especially if you are inflexible. I consider myself to be fairly flexible, but found that using the chair for some of the poses really helped me "dig in" and improve my form. The verbal cues are OUTSTANDING! If I were to ever teach yoga I would study the cues in this dvd. She (can't remember her name) tells you precisely how to place all parts of the body and where you should be feeling the stretches.For bodakanasa (sp?) or cobblers'/butterfly pose, one of my

favorites, she did something I had never done before and I loved it! After holding bodakanasa for awhile, she had you take the block and place it in between your feet to open up the stretch even more. It felt fantastic. After that you use your yoga strap and loop it around your waist and around your feet in bodakanasana and lay back on to a blanket. Another great stretch I had never done before! Lastly, there was a lovely partly guided meditation for savasana at the end. All in all, a great stretch video if you can get past how poorly it's put together tech wise.Next I did Ab Ripper 200 with Tony Horton. What a fabulous 6 minute ab routine! I'm feeling it already! You do around 8 different sets of standard ab exercises, 20 reps each (one set of obliques is done on one side, then the other counting for 2 sets). His personality is "softer" than in P90X and I found these exercises to be

superior to those in P90X, quite frankly. I would like to do this tape every day this week. I really need it, and it takes almost no time!Off to work I go!