Alignment Snacks: Twistin' The Night Away

Katy Bowman
Year Released: 2013

Categories: Athletic Stretch , Instructional / How To Videos



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Katy Bowman is a biomechanist. She writes an informative blog about body alignment and movement issues, which can be found at katysays.com. In 2013, she also filmed a series of alignment classes which she calls “Alignment Snacks.” There are 22 snacks in the series, each focusing on a particular area of the body. The snacks are downloads and currently cost $5 each. You can find them on her website under the “Move” tab.

This review is for Twistin’ The Night Away. It runs 31:25 and the file size is 380.4 MB. I really liked this one! So far, I’ve done 10 of the snacks and they can be hit or miss. This one was a winner for me. It doesn’t use any equipment other than a pillow or block for your head, plus a block for sitting on towards the end. Katy is filming in front of a live class, but you don’t see the participants and you only hear them once.

The first 21 minutes of the workout are lying down and the last 10 minutes are sitting. It starts in the knees up position, with gentle rocks side to side, then progresses into rolls and twists. Most of the lying portion is the same twist, but with progressively deeper variations. The first one is both legs bent and twisted to one side, then one leg straight and the other leg bent and stretched across the body, and so on until the last stretch with one leg straight down and the other leg straight across. It’s hard to describe but easy to see how to do. The last ten minute section has the following: gentle/slow rhomboid and triceps pushups (2 minutes), hip openers with the soles of the feet together (1.5 minutes), seated twists (5.5 minutes), V sit stretch (1 minute).

The things I liked about this workout are: the legs across the body twist is one of my favorite twists ever — it feels great for the lower back; the twists were held for long enough to feel useful; and the alignment tips were informative and interesting.

There wasn’t much that I didn’t like. The rhomboid pushups and tricep pushups were random and seemed a little out of place, but that’s only a minor quibble. It’s not really even a negative, just something I noticed.

A final note: this is more of a stretch session punctuated with alignment information / tips, rather than a workout, per se, so if you’re looking for a workout, this likely won’t be satisfying. But if you’re looking for a good stretch, I recommend this one. Very nice!

Instructor Comments:
I really like Katy. She seems genuine and down to earth. Some of the things she says can be a little quirky (at one point, she tells you to should stretch your leg out “like a pig on a rotisserie” — ha ha, I wasn’t expecting that!). But I rather like the fact that these aren’t scripted.

shawnt

01/03/2015