Title: Reach Your GoalAuthor: Anna Wonsley and Richard Bejtlich
Publisher: Blurb
Publish Date: January 2019
Format: Paperback
Pages: 180
Cover Price: $14.95
What do professional dancers, amateur martial artists, and “Professional Couch Potatoes” who help keep Netflix and Hulu in business all by themselves have in common? (HINT: It’s not that they all have the same favorite show!)
Every person, no matter their lifestyle, benefits greatly from a healthy body. “Healthy” can be defined in a number of ways, however. Strength, stamina, agility, and much more constitute a healthy person. Let’s not forget one of the most important attributes of health: flexibility.
Enter Reach Your Goal! This brief book by Anna Wonsley and Richard Bejtlich gets you on the path of improving your health and range of motion!
Content
With fewer than two hundred pages, images included, Reach Your Goal doesn’t take long to read. With that being said, it doesn’t need to be longer. As you likely deduced, the goal of the authors is to simply help you reach your health goals. Beyond that, however, the book also helps you set your health goals.
In its opening chapter, the authors mention three common problem areas for the modern man: tight shoulders/back, hips, and hamstring. Reach Your Goal divides itself into segments focused on alleviating these problem areas individually. Each chapter starts with an assessment, exercises you can do to gauge where you are with your flexibility when you start and as you progress.
After this, you are presented with a routine to improve your flexibility in the focus area of the chapter. The routine is broken down into a fundamental version and an advanced version. Each chapter is finished with a section entitled “Performance Enhancers”, a collection of extra exercises you can do to further your flexibility progress. These auxiliary movements introduce you to the use of equipment (kettlebells, chairs, Indian clubs, and more), yoga, and kinesthetic tape.
By the end of this book, you will know more than how to simply touch your toes!
Pro
As mentioned earlier, this isn’t a long book. For many, this a great benefit. It doesn’t take much commitment or time to delve into. Reach Your Goal is jam-packed with exactly what you need to… well, reach your flexibility goal. If what you are looking for is a book to simply tell you what you need to do to improve your movement, health, and flexibility, this is your book.
Some people know they want to improve their flexibility yet have a hard time figuring out exactly how to define that goal. This is where Reach Your Goal really shines. The assessments helps you measure where you stand, flexibility-wise, and how far you have come along. In addition to that, Reach Your Goal gives you postures as ideal flexibility goals, measures of how successful you have been in improving your range of motion.
There are also many unique ideas presented in furthering the stretch if you need something extra. Indian clubs and kettlebells aren’t what I typically think of when I imagine furthering flexibility and yet they work. After trying the movements in the book, I can attest that the routines will greatly improve your health and mobility. Though they are often simple movements, any martial artist familiar with basics (kihon or jibengong, depending on your style) should know that the foundational, simple skills are often the most powerful.
Cons
As helpful as the color images depicting the movements are, illustrations for the lesser known muscle groups would be helpful. It is nice to know the negative effects of a tight psoas or piriformis however, it would be better to also elaborate on where said muscles are. If you have a general grasp of human anatomy and access to the internet, this is hardly a major problem but it is something to take note of if you are a beginner who is new to the science of stretching.
Conclusion
Reach Your Goal is a good book on stretching and how it relates to good health, especially for beginners. It guides you towards setting and achieving measurable goals in a realistic manner. The color images are a wonderful aid in understanding how to
properly execute each movement. Though largely filled with basic stretches, perhaps that is what makes it more powerful of a tool.
properly execute each movement. Though largely filled with basic stretches, perhaps that is what makes it more powerful of a tool.It is no stretch to say that this is a book I would recommend!
Overall Score: 4 out of 5 Ninja Stars!
Have you read Reach Your Goal? Let me know your opinion in the comment section below.
(Editor’s Note: Anna Wonsley and Richard Bejtlich are both Martial Journal contributors. Click their names to see and read their contributions)
Justin Lee Ford is infatuated with enjoying as many experiences as possible within the world of martial arts. A few of his current experiences include building a career in martial arts writing, actively competing in tournaments, traveling and training around the world, and running a successful martial arts school. He can be contacted via email at justin@martialjournal.com. Be sure to also check out his martial art website, cupofkick.com!
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Thank you for your review, Justin! Keep stretching!
Incidentally, the color photo edition reviewed by Justin is available from the publisher:
https://www.blurb.com/b/9204875-reach-your-goal-collector-s-edition
The black-and-white photo edition is available from Amazon.com:
https://amzn.to/2LpNhpL
Read more about how we wrote the book:
https://rejoiningthetao.blogspot.com/2018/12/notes-on-self-publishing-book.html
It was entirely my pleasure, Richard!