The PilatesStick Home Workout Equipment Review

The PilatesStick is a piece of resistance equipment for the home workout. It simulates many Pilates tower exercises and adds interesting resistance potential to Pilates mat and other exercises.

PilatesStick Set Up

The PilatesStick package includes:

• A bar
• A stretchy band made of slastix
• Foot loops
• A long mat
• A carrying bag

Each end of the slastix clips to each end of the bar, and the middle gets closed in a door jamb, held in place by a foam anchor. It's a neat package, and it seems well made—for home use, not heavy-duty studio use.

Finally, so that you can actually exercise, there are two DVDs, beginner and intermediate, and a reminder poster with 12 exercises.

Do You Have a Place for the PilatesStick?

You are going to be putting serious pressure on a door in your house. The PilatesStick did not cause any damage to a hollow-core, freshly painted door. The selection of which door to use is important. You need a big enough area to work out in for exercises performed lying down, at least 8 feet. You will also need at least 3 feet on either side of you. Look for a minimum 8-feet by 3-feet spot next to a door, with no walls or furniture in the way.

In one video, the model does her workout attached to glass-paned french doors, but that brings up a concern of breaking glass with the stick or metal pieces. You also need to be able to lock the door so nobody opens it while you are using the PilatesStick.

So take a realistic assessment of your home and see if you have an appropriate door to attach the PilatesStick to. Yes? Good. The actual set up is not hard, and there are instructions on the DVDs and online.

Extras

There is a center door assembly that can be purchased. It lets you center the stick with a strap that wraps around the door from top to bottom. It can be difficult to get tight enough and may slip a few inches during the workout. The center assembly has the benefit of having a gizmo you clip the slastix into that slides along the door strap and lets you adjust the height of the stick easily.

Working Out With the PilatesStick

As traditional Pilates equipment goes, the PilatesStick is closest to the tower. Many mat and tower exercises can be done with the PilatesStick. It offers lots of possibilities and works very smoothly. It doesn't feel cheap. The slastix does not have strong tension, but a light resistance workout is fine.

If you're a beginner and not familiar with what the Pilates tower is or what Pilates exercises are like, the PilatesStick isn't for you, yet. The beginner DVD does not provide sufficient Pilates instruction for a beginner.

The PilatesStick Beginner Exercise DVD

Susannah Cotrone, who worked a lot with Winsor Pilates (The late Mari Winsor endorsed PilatesStick.), is the model in both beginner and advanced PilatesStick DVDs. She demonstrates everything with fabulous form. However, I found the DVDs to be a little uneven in their presentation of the workouts.

The beginner PilatesStick DVD has beginner-appropriate exercises, but there are almost no cues about how to do Pilates. The cues for changing exercises were also not very clear. You need to have the fundamentals already under your belt, a basic familiarity with Pilates terms, and at least some experience with Pilates mat exercise.

The PilatesStick Advanced Exercise DVD

The advanced PilatesStick workout is really good. The workout has great flow, it gets every part of the body, it's challenging, and unlike many Pilates DVDs, the workout is long enough.

But the way the workout is filmed, you can't see where Susannah is relative to the door. I had some trouble following the positioning and adjusting my distance from the door. That is something you can figure out for yourself over time, but it would be nice not to have to fumble through. Overall, a few more instructions in terms of mechanics and exercise cues would have been good, but I can definitely recommend the workout.

Bottom Line

If you have enough experience with Pilates to do the workouts properly and cue yourself, and you have the right place in your home to attach the equipment, and you can afford it, PilatesStick is pretty cool.

You might want to compare PilatesStick to Tower on the Go from Balanced Body. If you can't purchase the PilatesStick, tower equipment is your most similar option.