JillFlorio

This 40 minute DVD yoga class is a blast to play along to, whether you are with your family members or not. The energy is playful, fun and infectious.

The DVD takes place on a sunny rectangular stage right in front of the crashing waves of Maui. The stage has enough room for their five yoga mats and is surrounded with lush tropical foliage. There is soft new age music and you can hear the sounds of the waves and birds during the presentation.

This practice starts with sun salutes, moves into standing poses, handstands, backbends, crow/crane and a variety of sitting stretches using straps. A savasana and sitting meditation complete the routine.

Rodney Yee, with his wife and three children, take turns demonstrating poses and leading sun salute sequences. They are a very cute family and giggle together a lot.

I can see where children from young ages to preteens can associate themselves with the kids on-screen as “yoga teachers.” Kids at home would probably enjoy leading their own families in sequences - what a great confidence builder! Altogether, doing yoga as a family in this way should create fantastic bonding time as well as promoting strength and flexibility from a young age.

Couples without children can also enjoy this DVD. Lots of poses are shown using a partner to assist into arm balances, backbends and inversions. I showed the handstand section to my husband to help him get a feel for how to help me, and we did the relaxing coupled backbend together as well.

My main caveat is a big one - this is no DVD for beginners. Novices will be hopelessly lost during the fast-moving sun salutations. There’s no instruction on basics like downward dog, upward dog and side plank pose. The sun salutes include a lot of jump backs and tougher transitions that Rodney and his flexible family take for granted.

Advanced beginners will be caught short by the inclusion of intermediate poses like handstand, upward cow and crow/crane.

Nowhere on the DVD package does it mention that this might not be appropriate for beginners. This oversight might get some people hurt!

For beginners who buy this program I recommend they go right to the standing poses, which have actual pose instruction and take things slowly. Skip the fast-moving sun salutes sequence. Try not to worry about getting up into handstand unless your kids are already athletic.

As the DVD does not have a section menu (just hit PLAY and off it goes), you’d have to manually fast-forward to the parts you want to use.

I wouldn’t blame Rodney for the inappropriate marketing - this is a delightful practice and I appreciate that there’s a family routine out there that isn’t all just easy beginner’s work. So there is certainly room in the market for a disc like this - for families already familiar with yoga, who want to get in some playful family time and help each other with challenging poses.

Ultimately, I found this DVD really quite enjoyable and will be adding it to my rotation as a short, “fun” choice.

Rodney Yee - Yoga Journal’s Family Yoga

I started up the DVD to watch first, just to see what I was getting into with an intermediate level of Rodney Yee. I was pleased to see that none of the poses are unexpected or out of reach for intermediates - we should be able to do half moons, upward bows, bridges and shoulderstands, and be working on our headstands, elbowstands and handstands.

Then I tried it out for myself:

• Vinyasa

This first section starts with sun salutes and then keeps up a very steady vinyasa clip, with jump backs from standing forward bend into plank and some harder variations on the basic yoga poses. Upward dog is featured a lot. There are some tough transitions like half moon pose to triangle. This section is both exhausting and invigorating. Even Rodney looks tired at the end - he’s shaking by warrior 3 and the vein on his glistening forehead is throbbing. If he is sweating and shaking, I feel okay about taking child’s pose when I need it.

This is the longest section on the program and it’s a real kick in the pants that it’s the first one.

• Inversions

Handstand, elbow stand, headstand - all against a wall, in what looks like the outdoor lobby of a Maui resort hotel. Rodney offers some useful preps to the poses and makes coming out of them look easy. Hand, head and elbow stands are the only inversions offered - no serious strength-related arm balances, no crows, no scorpions.

This is the shortest segment on the DVD, and I think the most fun. His lead-in to elbow stand uses a brick and a strap, and the headstand uses a brick.

• Integration

This is focused pose work - full supported bridge (leg up), camel, upward bow. Various sitting stretches and then plow to shoulderstand. Followed by some nice twisty stretches and restorative work.

This ends with a seated meditation to a gorgeous Hawaiian sunset.

The DVD plays one hour and five minutes, and it’s really all about the yoga. Rodney’s introduction is a few minutes and then he wastes no time hopping (literally) into the sections. The Maui setting is nice - Rodney does his work directly on the green grass of a garden setting overlooking an ocean cliff.

My advice to beginning intermediates is to start with the Integration section, then do Inversions, and lastly do the “power” section that leads off the DVD. If you enjoy yoga for the sweat, then by all means perform your practice in the order the DVD suggests.

Rodney Yee Intermediate Yoga

This 63 page book of stretches is nicely done for what it is. You get 200 big color photos of a man and a woman showing simple stretches to carry you through your day.

The slim volume is divided into sections to help relieve many tension-based and stress-related ailments through holding mostly gentle poses.

Chapters are:

Introduction
Preparation
Warm ups
Flexibility
Headache/tension
Posture enhancers
Tension/backache
Breathing/blood flow
Tired and aching legs
Tension and poor circulation
Revitalizing passive stretches
Instant fatigue revitalizers
Anxiety and tension
Abdominal tension
Office tension/stiff muscles
Wake up stretches
Traveler’s stretches
Hip/pelvic tension
Winding down stretches
Index

It’s unusual that a book advised for all levels of flexibility would show harder poses like plow, shoulder stand, and the beginning part of upward bow/wheel. To be fair, the author does provide lots of cautionary notes about how you should stop if you perceive any discomfort or have certain physical ailments.

Most of the stretches in the book are extremely gentle, however, including easy pose work like cat/cow, sideways bends, squats, cobra, simple twist, triangle and down dog.

The winding-down section takes but a few moments and I found the suggestions certainly helped me get the kinks out to relax in bed. The hip and pelvic tension pages are great for easing menstrual cramps. I like how the traveler’s stretches are all things one can do in public and still look normal: sideways bends, hamstrings stretch, thigh stretch, forward/backward bend and backwards bends.

The best section are the nine stretches you can do seated in an office chair. I just did them again right now! They take two minutes to complete and do give me a refreshing break while I sit here writing. There is nothing here that says “alert - this person is doing yoga!” - so you can do all these stretches right in front of co-workers without feeling self-conscious.

This book won’t satisfy actual yoga practitioners. You are not actually learning yoga with this small book and anyone beyond the realm of novice won’t see anything new. The beauty here is that complete non-yogis can enjoy these stretches and get some nice yoga benefits.

The book would make a good gift for just about anyone with even a tiny bit of flexibility. My main caveat is that non-yogis should be warned not to attempt poses like plow and shoulder stand right off the bat. It makes it hard to decide who the author is catering to when they suggest inversions to newbies!

Overall, recommended to newbies who want learn mostly simples stretches, and also for yogis wanting a quick reference for the best stretches to deal with headaches, PMS, fatigue and anxiety. These are real quick fixes! And thus, the book does belong on my home “health and wellness” bookcase.

Easy Yoga Stretches

This fitness tool was somewhat disappointing. I was looking forward to using it for a rowing workout but the resistance is very slight. I am 5′4, so maybe this piece of gear is intended for taller people. If that’s the case, perhaps a choice of sizes should be offered, or at least an indication in the product description of who the target audience is.

After messing around with the rowing exerciser, I was able to figure out a few core moves that work, and was able to do some arm extensions as well. Nothing extremely satisfying.

Basically, this isn’t as intuitive a product as one expects. Eventually I gave up trying to wrangle how to use this on my own, and read the included fitness chart suggestions. There are six photographed exercises, all for the abs and core:

1. Rowing (lats)
2. Scooping (abs)
3. Double Leg (obliques)
4. Legs Side to Side (rectus abdominus)
5. Curl Up/Roll Up (rectus abdominus)
6. Boat/Teaser (lower abs)

Each exercise description shows a small black and white photo of each start and end position, with descriptions of how to safely perform the move.

I have the sense this product could be quite nice if the resistance was tight enough to use for actual *rowing*. Some of it’s well-thought out: the handles are a thick black comfortable neoprene. The foot straps are a soft, comfortable black and gray. My feet fit nicely in them (I have a woman’s size 9 foot) and they feel secure. I don’t have the sense the band part will fly back and smack me. However, there is a warning on the chart page about placing your sneakers completely in the stirrups and not just partly. I think this is so your feet don’t fall out, rather than a worry about the resistance band flipping back.

Overall, this product fails as a rowing exerciser, but can be used for a general, non-impact ab workout tool. This is fine if one is prepared for that and not expecting the cheap, portable equivalent of a real rowing machine.

Everlast for Her Pilates Rowing Action Exerciser

This is a great jumprope - the handles rotate easily on a ball-and-hip joint. The handles have a thick black neoprene foam for comfort.

The ‘rope’ part is smooth and weighted. I have the 4 pound version, which is the orange, heaviest one. It’s bright and chipper-looking to make up for the extra kick of a workout you get. You really do get a killer upper body workout from a short amount of jumping activity.

Since it’s so heavy, you can’t really do a long cardio routine here - you have to treat the rope as a “weight” and do sets, gradually adding more revolutions over time.

I also like to fold the rope in half and use it as a resistance band of sorts for stretches.

The downside to this jumprope is the price. 35 dollars is a lot for a grownup version of a child’s toy. However, the key to fitness is actually *using* your gear - you have to like your fitness tools and enjoy using them. This jumprope is nice in the hand, rotates smoothly and is a pleasure to use. I was a little wary of the price but actually glad I bought it.

The rope also comes in red for one pound, blue for two pounds and green for 3 pounds.

4 lb Orange Heavy Power Jump Rope / Weighted Jump Rope

According to the Omron Fat Analyzer, today I have 23.7% fat and a BMI of 21.4. A card that is included with the monitor says this is on the low side of the “normal” range for a woman around 40 years old (which would be me).

This is my result from the first thing in the morning, after peeing and before drinking coffee. I held my arms at the recommended 90 degree angle, covered the electrodes correctly and didn’t wiggle around. This is almost the same as my result yesterday (fat of 23.4%), so I will assume this is near enough to my average body fat percent, and that readings might fluctuate slightly from morning to morning.

Note: the BMI doesn’t change unless your weight and age do. It makes sense to see fat percentage rise up and down depending on water volume in the body, the moment you do your test.

*The Manual Suggests:*
- Monitor yourself at the same time each day (after waking up and peeing is good)
- Don’t bother if you’ve been drinking fluids or eaten in two hours - it will really throw the test out of whack
- Hold your arms out straight, at an exact 90 angle from your body
- stand up with your feet apart - no sitting
- don’t move when you are getting the reading
- Cover the metal plates as they show you in the manual. Holding it incorrectly will give a false reading
- Don’t use after a shower, bath or a work out - again, the water weight will throw things off

*Other Use Notes:*
- You do need to program your appropriate fitness level when you set your profile. If you work out frequently, you need to set the machine for ‘athlete’ and not ‘normal’…there is a chart for you to see where you fall, based on three things:

1. how many times a week you work out,
2. how long you work out for, and
3. how intense are your workouts.

So I fall right into the Athlete category (I hike, use the treadmill or do yoga just about every day). Whether you enter Normal or Athlete makes a big difference how it reads your fat levels from my experimentations. Fortunately, the math to figure out which category you are in is super easy.

- The Omron readout area lets you know if you are Low in fat, Normal, High or Very High when it pulls your results. This could really help be a wakeup call for some people, or a good way to reinforce healthy behaviors for others.

*The Upshot:*
Okay, given that you have to obey ALL those set conditions, the Omron Fat Analyzer is easy to use and a very good buy for someone looking to keep track of their fat levels. It’s far easier to get fat measure properly with this tool as opposed to clunky calipers and you don’t have to mess around with displaced volume math formulas in the bathtub.

I plan to bring this tool as a fun party favor for my family to play with at my big 4th of July bash this year. It’s good for people to know how close to normal their amount of body fat is.

Omron HBF-306 Body Fat Analyzer