Title: Prenatal Workouts: Prenatal Fitness Fix With Erin O’Brien and Prenatal Yoga With Desi Bartlett (Acacia)
Who’s it for: Expectant mothers who are intermediate to advanced exercisers, although the yoga workout is gentle enough for beginners.
What’s the goal? To increase energy, reduce stress and establish a “loving connection” with your baby through yoga, and to increase strength and conditioning through the intense aerobic “fitness fix.”
Format: The 45 minutes of Bartlett’s yoga DVD are broken into mix-and-match or play-all segments including meditation, a floor workout, a standing sequence, floor restoratives and a closing meditation. O’Brien’s DVD is broken into 40 minutes of sweaty aerobics plus a 20-minute circuit-training partner workout (more on that below).
What’s to like: Bartlett’s gentle series of postures, narrated in serene voice over, hits the prenatal yoga highlights andwould double nicely as a beginner practice. She avoids stretching too deeply or twisting too exotically. O’Brien’s moves, which incorporate ballet, yoga and Pilates, are intense enough to challenge fit mamas, and her combinations would help retrain a post-baby body. She also keeps a pregnant woman’s special needs in mind, telling exercisers that if potty breaks are in order, “I need you to pause me”; advising water breaks; and warning not to work to the point of “panting.”
What’s not to like: Bartlett’s disembodied-voiceover descriptions of each posture lack the thorough explanation and breath cues necessary for a beginner, and she vacillates between English and Sanskrit terms in no discernible pattern.
She also frequently guides viewers into downward-facing dog, an inversion some pregnant women avoid, and neglects to address potential concerns with the move (such as dislodging a once-breech baby from the correct head-down position).
O’Brien’s video features cheesy special effects (sometimes throwing her into silhouette,creating double vision, or filtering the film to produce an 8 mm home-movie effect) and strange camera angles (closeups on a gravid belly or plie-ing pelvis). In the partner workout, O’Brien’s husband, actor James Denton, offers such up-close-and-personal leg-lift resistance that someone wandering in partway through may think the moves look very untoward indeed.
Distractions: Bartlett’s video contains occasional exposed pregnant midriff, plus a loud, mystical and sometimes overpowering Chilean folk-music-inspired soundtrack (with no “off” option). O’Brien’s DVD contains even more exposed pregnant midriff, a soundtrack reminiscent of Casio keyboard noise, and narration that sounds distant, as if filtered through a long tunnel, making it difficult to make out her instruction at times.
Necessary gear: For Bartlett’s, a mat and optional yoga blocks and blanket. For O’Brien’s, chairs, a coffee table, the side of a couch, a wall and a mat, plus a friend for the ill-advised partner workout (there’s no advance warning that the workout might require rearranging the living room).
Floor space required: Minimal for yoga; an entire furnished room for aerobics.
Credentials: Bartlett is a certified personal trainer who holds a master’s degree in corporate fitness and advanced certifications in yoga, personal training and group fitness. O’Brien is certified in group exercise and prenatal and postnatal fitness through the Aerobics and Fitness Association of America and as a personal trainer through the Fitness Institute of Training.
Price: $24.99, or $14.99 apiece.
ActiveStyle, Pages 23 on 08/19/2013