T-Tapp System

Teresa Tapp

Categories: Total Body Workouts


(two instructional tapes, one beginner tape, two audio cassettes and bonus p.o.p. tape - Organs In Place)

Teresa claims she can take inches off your body because her system puts your internal organs in place and exercises the deepest muscles. She further claims she can transform cellulite into smooth skin.

Teresa also wishes to sell you supplements and other products as part of her exercise package. Due to the Video Fitness ban on discussion of supplements I will not comment on those products, except to suggest that each person should conduct their own research into those products and make their own informed decision in this matter.

I broke down and purchased the introductory kit (4 videos, 2 audios) for $80. I did each tape once. I placed that kit on ebay and got my buy-it-now price within an hour.

T-Tapp is red hot.

It left me cold.

The production on her videos is low-rent. It's her, an occasional acolyte or two, in her livingroom or patio doing the moves. There's no music, you can hear sirens and airplane noises from the street. They're packaged in plain white or blue sleeves.

The four tapes I got were one 8 minute "points of perfection", or POP tape, two 20-30 minute instructionals, one 55 minute beginner tape, one infomercial cassette touting her supplements, and an audio cassette version of one of the tapes. Eighty bucks - and that's just the starter set. If you're going to really do it there are many many more purchases upcoming in your t-tapp future.

She has some notions about posture and some theories about glands and heredity that she's parlayed into a "system". Lots of talk about lymph nodes and slouching organs and body types . (long torso short knee v. short torso long knee). She gives posture tips (put your weight on the little toe portion of your foot so you hold your saddle bags in).

Teresa literally has you physically manipulate your internal organs with your hand in her "organs in place" p.o.p. video in an effort to counteract the effects of age and gravity. If that trick works I'm going to spend the next month holding my breasts up with my hands in hopes of a return to youthful perkiness.

The exercises themselves are a series of quick, low rep, often jerky moves. They're typically done with full range of motion, often with the joints held locked. There's attention to posture, balance and form (a good thing) and one gets the impression that she has put some thought into the routines.

I found the pilates, yoga, and strength training I practice made the t-tapp instructional/ beginner movements pretty doable. I *don't* think I was doing them wrong. Teresa has not cornered the market on core work and posture. In my opinion core work and posture are the "kernals of truth" she's wrapped her hype around. What's conspicuously absent is a nanosecond's attention to grace and rhythm. What's omnipresent is the resounding insistence that her way is the only way to get "results".

Supporters argue that the exercises work and you have to look past the marketing hype. Teresa has many believers including VF'ers who's posts I admire. They say its worked for them.

I'll never know if it would have worked for me.

I went running for my Moira Stott pilates tapes. I literally popped Power Mat into the VCR after my initial plunge with Teresa. It was like I'd returned home to my nice sensible mom after spending a weekend with my girlfriend's psycho family.

I don't know enough about physiology etc. to dispute Teresa's claims, but I have to wonder why, if she's the reason all these fashion models have stayed thin and cellulite free, she appears free of celebrity/model endorsements, and why she's the only one who's managed to unearth these deep secrets about glands, nodes and organs. I note that while she talks about having fashion and medical industry jobs on her resume and diploma's on her wall, they're never specified. Her website has no personal biography or "story of T-Tapp". She seems pretty isolated from the medical, fitness and fashion communities she emerged from.

Teresa is not particularly articulate. Her sentences (and logic) are rambling and confused.

Her students show incredibly poor form doing the exercises. Ordinarily, I like videos that show a range of body types and fitness levels, but you have to wonder, given Teresa's perchant for talking about appearance ad nauseum, why no fashion model types were available to assist her with these productions.

Apparently she couldn't dig up a foleyman either. Or a set designer. Or a dynamix tape.

Teresa Tapp has taken the natural assets that the universe gave her (a slender build) and parlayed them into a marketing tool to extract money from women who are concerned about their looks and the aging process. She's not the first or the last.

And I sent her 80 bucks, didn't I?

I think what ultimately offends me is her world view, which is all about thin and young as the final arbiter of success. I've got nothing against those things, but 1) I don't think she has the key to their attainment and 2) the world she's living in is pretty small.

I got my 80 bucks back, but those four nights with Teresa that are gone for good.

Jane C.

08/15/2001