My favorite stretch video. I am, however, pretty easy to please. As long as it's not yoga or anything resembing it, I'm happy, and as an athletic-type stretch, this definitely fits the bill.

The set is great: a beach with a few colorful things in the background, but nothing distracting.

The music is soothing but not sopoforic. (I seem to remember that word from a vocabulary list many years ago. Is it a word? I'm trying to say "not sleep-inducing.") That's major plus of this video, in contrast to some other stretch videos: it relaxes you without putting you to sleep.

My favorite 10-minute segment (there are three) is the last one, the one on the floor. This one spends more time than the others on the trapezius and neck, my favorite muscles to stretch.

Each segment has the expected, normal repetoire of stretches. There are also a few streches that I would not have thought of myself, some interesting positions that are, thankfully, not difficult to get into!

This is a video you can grow with. People with very little flexibility will not have difficulty getting into the positions (no V stradles! Yay!), and flexible people can just increase their range of motion.

Instructor Comments:
Tamilee Webb is pleasant. She has a nice throaty voice, with an interesting accent - midwest? (I love instructors with accents that aren't my Mideast accent.) She is aimiable and neither intimidating nor condescending.

She does, however, seem to be reading off of cue cards most of the time, and not very well written cue cards at that. The times when she's not reading, she looks a little confused. She seemed very at ease in front of the camara physically, but she seemed nervous with her speaking. She stutters and stumbles over her words a couple of times.

She pronounces "difficult" as "diffeecult," which is the only part of the tape that drives me absolutely crazy. Some of her comments are a little strange (how many sumo wrestlers are going to be doing this tape?) or ridiculously basic ("the back of the arm, which we call the triceps") or not well thought out ("just put your hand around your little thigh") but mostly her talk is interesting and welcome. A couple of times she makes me laugh out loud. For example, during one stretch she says, "And I KNOW some of you right now are doing this" - and she demonstrates EXACTLY what I was doing.

Natalie