Fitness Videos
December 30th 2009 08:12
Anyone who watches television will no the dreadful feeling of being hounded - yet again - by someone promoting the best diet supplement or the latest in gym equipment (in your own home!) or the latest and greatest and most celebrity-filled exercise video. It seems as if everyone and his pet monkey now has a celebrity fitness video available, so I was amused to read Tanya Gold's piece in the Guardian on four she'd reviewed - and found wanting.
I think I've mentioned the Oxycise videos we used to use back in the days when we'd get up in the morning and stretch, sit, kneel and roll around on the floor in order to make ourselves as skinny as the presenter. She wisely surrounded herself with half a dozen unfit people of various shapes and sizes who plainly struggled with her fitness regime. They were there, no doubt to make you feel good about the fact that you'd never look like her. She could lie on the floor with her arms stretched out straight above her head - not up in the air, but flat on the floor. Impossible.
What she didn't tell you was that all that stretching and rolling wouldn't lose you one inch of fat. But it would make it more flexible (though not flexible to lie your arms out straight along the floor - only people who'd been doing that since they were six could actually achieve such a feat), and that was it's great value. I still do some of the exercises today, when I'm feeling stiff and they work. But then of course they do. They stretch your muscles out.
Back to Tanya Gold's review. It has to be read in full to savour the total delight of it.
'And so to the yoga. What can I say? If I wanted to stand on one leg I would sell my other one.'
'My next treat is a box set by David Carradine, the actor and Kung Fu star who played Bill in the movie Kill Bill. He died in June, so I am doing a dead man's workout.'
'I follow him as he describes the moves, while people dressed in Star Trek costumes do them behind him, as if preparing for battle against The Borg by twisting their bodies into the shape of a herring.'
And much more. It puts exercise (and exercise videos) in perspective.
Tanya Gold photo courtesy of The Guardian.
I think I've mentioned the Oxycise videos we used to use back in the days when we'd get up in the morning and stretch, sit, kneel and roll around on the floor in order to make ourselves as skinny as the presenter. She wisely surrounded herself with half a dozen unfit people of various shapes and sizes who plainly struggled with her fitness regime. They were there, no doubt to make you feel good about the fact that you'd never look like her. She could lie on the floor with her arms stretched out straight above her head - not up in the air, but flat on the floor. Impossible.
What she didn't tell you was that all that stretching and rolling wouldn't lose you one inch of fat. But it would make it more flexible (though not flexible to lie your arms out straight along the floor - only people who'd been doing that since they were six could actually achieve such a feat), and that was it's great value. I still do some of the exercises today, when I'm feeling stiff and they work. But then of course they do. They stretch your muscles out.
'And so to the yoga. What can I say? If I wanted to stand on one leg I would sell my other one.'
'My next treat is a box set by David Carradine, the actor and Kung Fu star who played Bill in the movie Kill Bill. He died in June, so I am doing a dead man's workout.'
'I follow him as he describes the moves, while people dressed in Star Trek costumes do them behind him, as if preparing for battle against The Borg by twisting their bodies into the shape of a herring.'
And much more. It puts exercise (and exercise videos) in perspective.
Tanya Gold photo courtesy of The Guardian.
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