Flexibility Books

Apparently Pavel wants you to believe that: 1/The technology of stretching is constantly evolving...2/ That he is the source for the latest info...,and 3/ That he will continue to make his -own- books obsolete with his future products. He's already put out at least four more items since this, the latest being the 'Loaded Stretching' DVD. Well. Pavel , there's another form of 'loaded stretching'..called -yoga-. Has it come to that after all of the expensive books and tapes you've sold?

I got this book for $5 from a bookstore. This book has several core tips on training flexibility that differ greatly from mainstream flexibility training.

For instance, he notes that stretching the legs by just pure relaxation will only produce weak kicks. This surprised me since I had always thought that stretching would be to relax as much as possible to achieve the greatest range of motion.

Apparently, pure relaxation stretching does not allow the leg to develop the muscles that have this range of motion. Therefore, the leg won't be able to kick nearly as much as the stretching distance made.

There were also a few other great tips that allowed me to achieve my full side split, but I thought that contrast contraction was the most important. I would pay $40 any day just for a invigorating, radical tip that I might miss for a lifetime.

PS: This book introduced me to the "Iron Game"(a.k.a strength training). With extensive research, I then corrected my principles of training to be different than that of a modern bodybuilder's; for too long I was accustomed to a modern bodybuilder's principles that had and never will work for hard gainers - people who have trouble even gaining a pound of muscle over the course of a year while eating well structured diets.

I'll automatically give this book 5 stars because I think the information contained in it is very valuable. When I first read this book a few years ago, I was 6 inches from doing a full side split and couldn't get any further. This book provides powerful contradictory methods that worked very well for me. Within 6 weeks I achieved my first side split. However, it is very tough. Getting down into the splits is inevitably painful and uncomfortable. However, this book teaches you to distinguish between the pain of progress and the pain of injuring yourself. Lots of the former will result in all the flexibility a person could possibly need. I know it sounds like a masochistic pursuit but I've tried lots of flexibilty programs and this is the only one that I would recommend for guaranteed results. He also teaches people how to be flexible all the time which is great for martial artists. Being able to do high kicks is useless unless a person can do them all the time. Real situations don't allow the luxury of a warm up.

Heres what Bob Anderson Author of the bestseller stretching had to say about the book.
"Are you ready for pavel? This is a tough, strenous, take no prisoners approach to flexibility and strength. He describes some pretty radical russian techniques for flexibility,strength, circilation and healthy joints. Not for wimps; expensive for a paperback."

As I stated in the headline... Pavel's books, are way too expensive... When I ordered this book I was expecting a tome of several hundred pages... color photos, well described excersises. I got none of those things. I will say that Pavel's writing is humorous and never boring... but this book is certainly not worth the money. Especially since you can find most, if not all the excersises and techniques from the book online and free.

The title was the best part for this book and the free dvd was lame.

I like the concept of the book and thought the exercises were very worthwhile but the poor writing quality made it very difficult to follow and the DVD was certainly not of the quality I would expect. I have read several books on golf specific fitness and this one is at the bottom of the list.

Easy to understand and follow. When I use the stretches in this book I actually play a little better, do not tire as much, and am not as stiff the day after. I am 60 so I need to keep limber. Of course the key is to stretch regularly, not just the day you play.

I am a 24 year former collegiate golfer, and I thought this book does a decent job of describing good stretches to help loosen you up, but I think there are better resources out there. Don't get me wrong if you were to follow this routine you would probably see results, but I would take a look at Core Performance Golf before this one.

I would recommend flipping through this book before purchasing, because I only found a couple pieces of information / exercises that I thought were beneficial that I didn't already know. Plus, it kind of looks like it was published / written about 10 years ago.

This is a very good fitness book. Now that I've read a couple of others on Golf Fitness, I think this one has good strengthening & stretching exercises for golfers. My chief criticism is that its applicability to different aspects of the game of golf is too sketchy for golfers who don't understand how fitness will benefit their game and their overall health and well-being. The best golf fitness book I've read is Cindy Reid's book, GET YOURSELF IN GOLF SHAPE, which I HIGHLY recommend over this one.

Actually, I'd give it 3.5 stars. Excellent exposition and developement of material. However, there are quite a few typo's that would throw the reader with less math off the trail (and possibly some with good math). Good coverage of different types of cases, underlying math, real world appications and properties of solutions. Personally, I would have preferred all the rigorous material (including math proofs) in the one book rather than making statements and referring to seminal real options papers very often. Some credit is due here, however, as there are some proofs in appendices at the end of each chapter - I think these could have gone into a little more detail and depth - (I say this only because there isn't the vast library of books on this subject that exists for more mature disciplines - guess I was looking for a more comprehensive reference.) I have read Trigeorgis' other books so this was not an introduction. Liked the book, learnt a lot and am applying it to real life projects, however had to learn a fair bit on my own too.

OK, I admit the year has not ended yet, but that doesn't mean you mus not read this: now! This book is co-edited by Trigeorgis, one of the most proeminent author in the area. It deals with all the new developements on real options. It's objective is to give the researcher or student a key to enter the world of real options. Contributions are worldwide, mainly by people with a strong mathematical background. This makes it sometime difficult to understand for more management focused readers. However the book by the quality of the writting and the new ideas it brings, keeps you awake like a thriller. To be own by any person who want's to know about the future (nearly present) of corporate finance.

This book gives you the latest update on what's going on in real options theory. Brilliant throughout, but its really too hard mathematically to be of much value for someone who's not a math-person. I found the chapter on the Antamina mine to be immensely interesting. It was originally used as a case study on options theory at Harvard and shows you how these academics went about valuing a peruvian mine. It's a very valuable chapter because it is focused on the practical side of real options theory. The chapter on "Rules of thumb for capital budgeting" didn't make much sense at all to me. The rest of the chapters are no easy read, but if you feel up to it mathematically, you're going to find this a very interesting book. If your not that much into mathematics, I think it's going to leave you rather frustrated. This book cannot have been meant as a guide for practitioners, it's more of a field day for academics, that's my impression at least.

As the author of Behavioral Flexibility in Primates: Causes and Consequences (BFP), I have decided to comment on my own book. I have been a scholar of social evolution in heterogeneous regimes since the early 1970s. Major early influences concerning the effects of environmental heterogeneity upon animals (including humans) were Bradbury, Emlen, Dilger, Loftus-Hills, Stearns, and, later, Lewontin. The book under consideration resulted primarily from reading, writing, and thinking initiated during my postdoctoral year in Lewontin's laboratory (1981-1982). Lewontin was the first biologist I had encountered who described events in the world as a physicist would. His conceptual skills reinforced my own primitively developed facility for spatial problem-solving. The conceptual frameworks informing BFP derive primarily from theoretical treatments--some elegant, some less so. What these treatments (e.g., Maynard Smith & Price, 1973; Parker, 1974; Lewontin, 1974; West-Eberhard, 1979) have in common is an appreciation for phenotypes encountering environmental challenges--"hard" challenges and "soft" ones. BFP is not a perfect book. There is at least one statement in it (pg. 104, paragraph 2, sentence 3) that is potentially so confusing that one would have needed to be within my brain at the moment of writing to see it clearly. Many other statements should be supported by mathematical models. Nonetheless, if you are interested in the evolution of behavior from the perspective of mainstream evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology, this book will not fail, at minimum, to provide many stimulating ideas that you can employ for your own benefit. Some of the statements are controvertial; however, all derive from basic research. You will, I think, complete this slim volume with a better understanding of "why there are so many kinds of behaviors" and of the importance of "phenogroups", not only for population and community processes but, also, for potential population differentiation. Also stressed, is the relationship between flexibility and sociality, within and/or between individuals. A simple mathematical treatment of dispersal is attempted based upon the work of Stu West. BFP was fun for me to write and will be, I hope, fun for you to read. Enjoy.

I'm not sure what to make of this book. It is difficult to read and packed with jargon that is currently fashionable. After finishing this book I had real trouble figuring out if I was more or less illuminated about primate research. Throughout the book, Jones takes a lot of her own research on howling monkeys and tries to anchor it deep into the latest theoretical studies published in Am. Nat., TREE, Evolution, TPB, etc. There are a lot of references to some theoretically sophisticated studies, but Jones fails to flesh-out these references in the text in order to explain her arguments. As a result, there is the poor articulation between the primate examples and the complex theoretical studies that she cites. For example, Jones cites Moran's 1992 article on the "Evolutionary maintenance of alternative phenotypes" stating that "The work of Moran...strongly suggests that, in heterogenous regimes, selection on sensory, perceptual, memory, learning, and other cognitive mechanisms may have been strong since the potential (fitness) benefits yielded appear to be high." My reading of Moran is quite different since Moran was talking about simple models concerning two phenotypes in two different environments in which the switch to the "appropriate" phenotype is irreversible; if anything, Moran's results show that generalism is more appropriate for primates than polyphenism.

Such misreadings of the primary literature are occasionally found throughout the book and thus some of the references in the text seem out of place. This left me with the feeling that Jones doesn't really understand the content of the theoretical studies she cites in her book. Often, the reader is left to divine the main point Jones is trying to make between some small aspect of howling monkey behavior/ecology and some broader (and in my mind, mostly oblique) theoretical topic. From her study of branch break displays in male howling monkeys, we learn that the displays represent "an extreme case of a signal of endurance (Payne and Pagel, 1996a), in which the signal is a cumulative sum of the elements, accounting for any variation in intensity. The findings are also consistent with the "best-so-far" model (Payne and Pagel, 1996b), in which the signal is the intensity of the most recent element only." And on it goes. Apparently, the main point here is that there is some variation in branch break displays among males based on reproductive competition, but Jones buries this point in a mish-mash of jargon and circumlocution. It really doesn't need to be this complicated, really.

Jones should pick a better model system (i.e., one that can be manipulated) if she wants to study behavioral flexibility in the theoretically rigorous context that has seemingly wooed her. To be fair, this book is not bad, just convoluted.

I really enjoyed the foreword of this book; great information I didn't know. I've done the 2nd trimester exercises and got a good workout. I wish this were available on DVD, as turning the pages while doing a workout isn't so convenient.

I just bought this book a couple of weeks ago and have really been enjoying it. I feel like my posture is great after a single workout and feel very strong in my core. I always look forward to my Pilates workout.
I felt it was a little repetitive in the intro. and the beginning chapters, when the principles of Pilates, etc. are explained, but they do get their points across effectively.
I also felt they do a disservice to pregnant women by insinuating that Pilates is the only good or effective help for preventing low back pain. (p. 11) For example, they write, 'what chiropractor will work on a pregnant woman?' Any chiropractor I know has had a lot of training to work on pregnant women and their newborns later on. There are also other helpful resources a pregnant woman has, such as massage therapy. I realize they are trying to promote Pilates primarily, as that's what the book is teaching, yet I think it'd be great if they would have been more open to giving a little more info. on things that would work well hand-in-hand with the Pilates exercises.

I am long-time Pilates practitioner and bought the book out of curiousity when I became pregnant to see if there were any different ways of doing the traditional exercises. Windsor keeps the method "traditional" to a fault. There are not enough modifications shown. Also, too many of the exercises are done lying on one's back. This is just not realistic after a certain point in pregnancy. I felt lightheaded and dizzy from lack of oxygen lying down! I would have liked to see more sidelying exercises, magic circle routines or standing exercises. The forward of the book if well written and there is no doubt that Pilates can relieve many of the discomforts associated with pregnancy. It really can keep you in shape and help you regain your body after a baby. However, this book is only suitable for an experienced practitioner who knows how to safely modify the exercises. I would never recommend it to a novice. Rather I would steer them in the direction of a good yoga for pregnancy book or video.

this book is an ok book but it takes an hour or more to do all the excrecizes. also it is seperated in to each trimester that's a good feature. but in both the second and third trimester it still has you doing excrcizes while lieing on your back. no way through each of my pregnancys my doctor has said don't lay on your back after the 1st trimester. other than that the book is good it get's you in shape and it dose help alot postpartum

I really like this book. I had been doing Pilates matwork for about 18 months when I became pregnant. I didn't start using the book's routines until I was about 16 weeks pregnant, because before that time my regular Stott Intermediate Matwork video routine seemed fine. I really like the second trimester routine Mari has outlined -- although I don't do the entire routine because of time -- I skip some of the side-lying work and the rowing moves. I'm now 33 weeks pregnant and still doing the second trimester routine because it still feels good (although last week I dropped a couple of the moves that were beginning to get uncomfortable). I have no problems exercising while on my back -- and I have been told that as long as I don't feel dizzy or nauseated, that exercising on my back is fine. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to try Pilates during pregnancy, especially those women who already have at least a basic understanding of the moves.

There's nothing special about this book, and the spiritual stuff just really makes no sense. Of course, some people really like that kind of wackiness.

I came upon this priceless little volume during one of my many forays in the local bookstore. In my ongoing quest to build a total exercise regime, I have found this book to be invaluable. The crisp, clear writing combined with sharp black and white pictures of average yet attractive individuals make this book very accessible to all readers. One is not inundated with bronzed, oiled hardbodies beaming at the reader while performing canned exercises which ultimately leads to feelings of inferiority and self-loathing for we the muscularly challenged as is the case with other texts on fitness and health.

This book gives the reader more than just pictures of people stretching. It also gives ample servings of insight and philosophy into health and fitness. This book goes beyond the simple how-to of stretching and shows the reader why stretching is important. Each portion of the book builds on those that precede it, giving the reader warm-up exercises, tips on developing individualized breathing patterns, back building exercises, and energy building exercises.

Using this book has allowed me to get past the grogginess and fog that accompanies waking up in the morning. After spending twenty minutes performing the exercises outlined in the book and focusing on my breathing, I can now go into the day fully energized. Before reading this book and applying its valuable lessons, I often went through the day feeling drained of energy and 'waking up' was literally a four hour process, as opposed to the twenty minutes it now takes with stretching and breathing. After spending close to four months applying the lessons in this book, I tackle almost every day with energy and renewed vigor and sense of purpose. Perhaps the best endorsement I can give to this book is that unlike most working people, after reading this book, I no longer dread waking up in the morning- getting up is no longer the psychological burden and physical chore that it once was.

This book helps and succeeds on many levels. I now incorporate its lessons into my total workout regime comprising of diet, exercise, reflection, and stretching. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to lose weight, truly wake up in the morning, and feel good about themselves.

My main complaint is that the first hundred pages came unglued from the binding the third time I used it. The other pages are barely hanging on. In a way that might be the way to use the book--line up the loose pages in the recommended order for your capability. Otherwise you will have to do a lot of page turning back & forth. I started out with sticky notes on each page to tell me to what page to turn for the next exercise.
The introduction has some good information about the importance exercise can play in rebuilding bone. It says to begin at a level commensurate with, or even below your current strength and progress to the harder ones. Many of the exercises fall way below my current strength, so I don't see how they would build my bones. But a few like the regular pushup is impossible for me. Even though I didn't feel like I had a hard workout, my muscles were sore the next day, so any exercise is more beneficial than my normal routine of sitting at the computer most of the day.
The book explains that technique is important--who wants to take the time and effort to exercise with no benefit. It has two pictures of a person (not a stick figure) to illustrate the exercise movement. The text tells you the starting position, the action to perform, then some details or pointers to do it correctly. For example it will say, "engage your transverse abdominals" and refers you to another page that is supposed to explain how to do that (about 150 words.) I still didn't get it, so I searched the Internet and found out the details I needed to know: an anatomy picture of that muscle group and 356 words about the correct technique to exercise them. Granted twice the words should have twice the information, but compared to the book I'm reviewing here, it seemed more like five times the information. Of course that book cost about five times the price of this one, but it was a hard back and I doubt the pages would fall out.

This book is essentially a workbook for speed reading and improved understanding. It makes use of mini-excercises that will remind you of the reading comprehension section of the good ol' SAT's. The whole point is to show you how to read books while minimizing time spent and maximizing your comprehension of the material. By the time I finished this book, I must admit that I was finding college textbooks to not be nearly as intimidating. I would recommend this book to anyone, especially students. The only downside to this book (and the reason I only gave it 3 stars) was that the book is a little rough around the edges. The style is dated and rather mundane, making it rough going for anyone who has anything less than a superb attention span. Overall this book was great considering it was published in 1988. It would be a winner if they updated it and published a sequel of sorts.

I got this book used from a friend : he said it was no use to him.
I read it and even with a broad background in acoustics,
systems dynamics, physics and mathematics, I could barely make head or tails of it.
Stuff like curvature and matrices are universal, but what this lacks is
explanation that to comprehensible to a new comer.
Since I used the physics Schaum's outline to get me through college physics when
the Feynman text was the "new" physics
and my professors were just jolly bad,
I say this to help not harm.
If Schaum's company wants to help:
assign a new guy to write a better outline!
If your text is bad and your teacher is bad
and the teaching assistants are clueless,
this book won't help you.

Brookfield has some excellent books on grip training with many good techniques.

This, however, is full of really, really basic techniques for using cables, things that you would think of yourself in about 30 minutes if you pick up some cables and have a go.

There are so many other things you can do with them that are not even touched upon. There are other books on cables / bands work that are far more comprehensive / useful. "Therapeutic Exercises using the Resistive Bands" by Caroline Corning Creager comes to mind.

John what are you doing! I was hoping this book would be chock-full of innovative techniques. It looks mostly empty, full of white space, a few bad photos of some really basic techniques.

About the only innovative thing was to use a towel through the handle to extend the range / give the grip a bit of work.

So sadly I have to give this book one star. A waste of time and effort.

His other books on hand strength are good though.