Customer Reviews

Pilates for Fragile Backs: Recovering Strength and Flexibility After Surgery, Injury, or Other Back Problems

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I can't thank you enough for writing this book. As a 58 year old woman with chronic back issues from scoliosis, degenerative spine disease and three herniated disks, I was going crazy from the pain and 3 seconds away from calling a surgeon when I found your book. The book encouraged me to take it slow and gave me great ideas for not hurting myself. After awhile I decided to get a trainer. When I showed it to her she was grateful to have such a wonderful resource to recommend to her clients. I highly recommend this book if you are at all afraid of hurting yourself. I am pain free for the first time in 20 years! Pamela D. Blair, Author The Next Fifty Years: A Guide for Women at Mid-Life And Beyond

Pilates is a wonderful program for strengthening support muscles in the abdomen and back, improving alignment, achieving better balance and posture, reducing muscle tension, and increasing flexibility. Unfortunately, for those with back problems such as scoliosis, standard Pilates exercises may be too painful or physically challenging to follow. Pilates for Fragile Backs provides an excellent, step-by-step, comprehensive introduction to Pilates exercises that are particularly well-suited for those with spinal disorders, including those who have had spinal surgery. The book also includes valuable supplementary material, such as an overview of spinal anatomy, common back pain triggers and conservative pain remedies.

I had spinal fusion surgery in July 2005. Although it was highly successful, there are always issues to deal with, that most people dont understand. Some are actually unexplainable, until I read this book.For the first time, someone was actually explaining all the feelings and emotions that I have gone thru. They also offered great alternatives and tips for everyday living to improve your situation!!Another plus for me, was that it was co-written by a top surgeon in the country.For anyone that has had spinal surgery, I would HIGHLY recommend this book from start to finish!!

I bought this book after sugery on my back and was disappointed. Yes, it did have some exercises for the lower back but a good portion of the books was devoted to exercises that you can do IF you own or are willing to go out and buy many more pilates equipment or go to classes.

This book may help some people but I had hopes to find a book for people looking to stregthen and exercise their back after surgery. I hope that someday there will be a book of safe and simple exercises targeted to low back that people can do at home without having to spend even more money to do them.

Take a look at this book before you buy it to make sure that it has the information that will help so that you don't end up with another book gathering dust.

This remarkable book has already generated major "buzz" in the "bad-back" community. Better yet, it is being used by some of us with truly terrible backs -- complex disk problems, severe scoliosis, major iatrogenic deformities resulting from previous scoliosis corrections. If you are in any of these categories, please check out this singular new approach to physical conditioning and emotional well-being. Unlike any of the previous "bad-back" books I have surveyed -- in the process of moderating a large online group for people with flatback syndrome and trying to find some kind of exercise I could do after eight fusions and revisions -- the program outlined here is safe and reasonable. For that reason, it has garnered endorsements from leading spinal surgeons who would never recommend most generic bad-back programs to their fragile-backed patients. (The "fragile backs" descriptor is inspired -- those of us with complex spinal problems know in the bone just how fragile we are, and just how cautious and patient we must be in initiating any exercise program.)

One reviewer criticized the book for spelling out special Pilates equipment which is necessary to do the core-strengthening exercises in the book. This is a legitimate concern for those of us on fixed disability incomes or in other limiting circumstances, but I doubt that it could stop any of the motivated people I know through my own 560-member website for people with flatback syndrome. I regard it as just another challenge, along with the many others we face every day -- to name just two, locating a qualified surgeon and getting our insurance carriers to pay for the surgery s/he prescribes to make our lives livable! Having had some personal email correspondence with author Andrea Stanton -- a personable and empathic human being, a psychiatric social worker by profession, and a woman whose own back-saga has some major similarities with my own -- I have learned that there are all kinds of ways to minimize the expense for someone who is motivated and determined.

Moreover, the book offers more than just the equipment-requiring program. Among other things, it includes one of the clearest "lay" explanations of spinal anatomy and back mechanics I have ever read -- anywhere.

Members of my own support group have been posting ever more frequently about this book, approximately one year after its publication. They report that they are sharing its thoughtfully adapated Pilates exercises--a program initially worked out by Andrea's Pilates instructor, whose own hair-raising spinal saga is detailed in the book, along with Andrea's -- with their own exercise instructors, taking the book along with them to their "workouts," and otherwise using it in practical ways which have brought them to new levels of personal mastery and pain relief.

A couple aspects of the book could use some work or expansion, through no fault of the authors. It is my understanding that someone at the publishing company decided at the last minute to require these "extras," such as a list of outside resources. Given the publication schedule, there was simply not adequate time to produce any kind of comprehensive or thoroughly annotated list. The book does not suffer at all from this problem, which is hardly central to its main content: logically laid out, well-written, impeccably edited text, supplemented by equally clear photographs. The book provides a wonderful explanation of where Pilates came from and what it is all about, then goes on to explain how people with the most extreme and debilitating back problems can actually use and adapt the most crucial Pilates exercises to their own situations.

In my estimation, no other exercise, yoga, or related book on the market comes close to accomplishing what this volume accomplishes, and most contain prominent disclaimers warning scoliosis-surgery patients, for instance, to see their doctors and try something else! -- either that, or they indicate clearly that they are aimed at people with mild, unoperated scoliosis, or perhaps an occasional reader who has undergone a laminectomy for some isolated disk problem, while failing to address the rest of us at all.

In short, *Pilates for Fragile Backs* is a uniquely encouraging and helpful resource for anyone with severe and complex spinal problems seeking some attainable level of physical conditioning and strengthening. There is simply nothing else like it on the market. Even if you are not prepared to embark on the prescribed program, you may well find it worthwhile to read the book simply for its excellent medical explanations and the authors' inspiring personal stories. If you are like me, it will give you -- at the very least -- something that is often in short supply for people with terrible spines and incredible chronic pain: a whopping dose of hope.

This book is really a pamphlet. Only 1 or 2 chapters are devoted to pilates exercises. The bulk of the book is a discussion of back problems which are better addressed by other books too numerous to mention. Most people including myself are well versed in everything that is discussed and are bored by it and are looking to pilates as a treatment option. The great majority of the exercises require equipment costing over $4,000. Out of my price range. Don't waste your money on this book.

I went out last week-end and picked up this book. I started to go through it. It has alot of helpful information. I can see that I will make alot of use from it. Having a Foreword from one of the leading spinal fusion surgeons from New York City is also quite an endorsement of the book.

I guess I wasn't careful enough in selecting this book. It emphasizes that you need to meet with an instructor to do the exercises. I bought the book because that is what I didn't want to do. I don't have the time or money to meet with an instructor. I can't comment on anything else.

This is a good book for those of us with no pilates experience. I was able to follow the exercises easily and feel like the exercises really help my back. By the time I finish the cool down exercise my spine is relaxed and my whole body feels good. I would recommend this book to people who can independently follow an exercise regime. If you need someone to prod you to start and keep going the book will likely be read once and then collect dust on your bookshelf.

I thought this book was excellent as it made me feel much more comfortable about trying the exercises on my own without expert supervision. And I appreciated the vignettes of people with different problems who benefited from the practice of Pilates. However, I like "The Pilates Back Book" by Tia Stanmore even better as it gives a more complete explanation of the anatomy involved in trying to build a better musculature to support a fragile spine, and I think the information is somewhat better organized. I guess I would suggest you buy both books if, indeed, you have a fragile back. I'm 71 years old and mine is compromised with arthritis, osteoporosis, spondylosis and sciatica and my chiropractor said today that he doesn't care if I do Pilates, Yoga, or rolling around on that big ball, just DO something. So I stopped by the book store and bought a book on Yoga as well, but I thought I'd just wait on that ball thing. But buying books and reading them is just simply NOT sufficient, he says! However, plenty of people who are older than I and who's spines are in worse condition are doing just fine with strong "trunk" musculatures, he says. So I guess I'm going to ACTUALLY have to start DOING this stuff. And both these books do make me feel less paranoid about trying it. So good luck to you, AND to me!