I. What is The T-DiTella?____________________________________

The T- DiTella™ Tangolates™ is a multi-tasking (functional or integrated) fitness apparatus and Tango workouts that adds new dimensions to fitness routines, for dancing is, by definition, versatile and fluid, and involves the whole body in the most integrated manner.

The T-DiTella™ Involves All Muscle Groups
With the T- DiTella™ and its system of routines – Tangolates—you can involve all muscle groups simultaneously.   (this is why it is called integrated or functional).
For example, you can hold a skiing position where the weight of your whole body is sustained by your cuadriceps, while you stand on your methatarsus and at the same time you rotate from side to side.

Look at it this way:  we never isolate muscle groups in real-life activities, right? Well, then, why should we do it while training?
The T-DiTella™ Tangolates™ multi-tasking (functional or integrated) routines is one of the best ways to make you workout more versatile and all encompassing. Remember: the more muscle groups you use at once, the more calories you will be likely to burn.


II. What is it? _____________________________________________________________

The T-DiTella Tangolates Trainer is a square shaped versatile functional apparatus that has two platforms on the bottom, and eight bars, four long ones that permit standing exercises; and four shorter ones, for more sophisticated choreographies. The two platforms slide sideways; if to the center, they unite to allow for a solid “floor” on which lying down exercises can be performed; to the outer sides, they become “steps” on which to perform standing aerobic exercises.

You can use the T-DiTella Tangolates Trainer to challenge lower body balance and stability or use the platforms to target abs, waist and upper body strength. You can use it for just about anything including:

1) Cardio - Use it like a step with hops, jumps, step-ups, leaps, lunges, etc.

2) Strength training - For dynamic squats, lunges, pushups or balance and elongation.

3) Flexibility - Stand while doing traditional stretches, penché , side longer lunges and back leg kick up to add more challenge.

4) Dance Conditioning - Perform Tango steps like “bolea” or “gancjho” moves to increase performance and agility.

5) Core Training - Use it for abdominal exercises to target the core muscles.

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III. What is it? (it's Aerobic) ____________________________________________

The T- Di Tella™ is a cardiovascular equipment to perform new and versatile partner pilates-based movements. 

Is it a modified version of pilates?, a complement or supplement to it?
No. The exercises and routines are different, unique and distinctive. As Paul McLinden, Director of the Ocean Wave Pilates, United Kingdom, points out:

”Performed on the T-DITELLA™ apparatus, Tangolates is Tango choreographed movement sequences and fun partner fitness work. This new and revolutionary apparatus and its method of exercises could change the face of the Pilates industry throughout North and South America”

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Doing exercises on the T-DiTella™ Tangolates Trainer requires you to maintain your center of gravity, .Just standing by it, barely holding to the two poles while swinging from side to side, you do a fantastic balance workout.

it is challenging as your body moves and shifts into and out of balance, because Tango is nothing but balance and good posture.
Using the T-DiTella™ Tangolates Trainer can help improve:
Balance - The ability to maintain a desired position.

Kinesthetic awareness - Awareness of how your body is positioned at any moment.

Proprioception - Sense of body place in space.

What does the T-DiTella™ Tangolates™ add to traditional Pilates?
It adds the aerobic or cardio element that Pilates lacks.
It also adds partner work and the music, a great motivator that allows you to activate all muscle groups simultaneously. However, the great contribution of Pilates, the combination of strength and flexibility, remains intact.

Above all, The T- Di Tella ™ Tangolates workouts are fun!

The T-DiTella™ includes workout instructions to help you get started exercising to the tune of Tango, the most exciting way to exercise imaginable.

Learn the exercises that Tango dancers use to enhance their skills. Make your fitness program more integrated, more challenging, more effective and… more fun!!!

The T-DiTella™ Tangolates includes instructions to help get you started exercising in the most exiting way imaginable.

Learn many of the exercises that professional Tango dancers use to enhance their skills.

Beyond the Reformer ____________________________________________________

As the President of the world’s largest chain of Pilates Studios, argentine Tamara Di Tella is always looking for a way to improve and to offer better services to her clients. Because so many of her instructors were Tango dancers, she was the first one to see what  Tango and pilates had in common, namely, core control, balance, concentration, coordination, and, of course, fluid movement.

Balance is the foundation of Tango dancing, the root upon which other Tango skills are built.  Balance is one concept Tango and pilates have in common.

For a while, the exercises Tamara designed were mostly pilates-based. (Many of the exercises that can be performed on the reformer can be performed on the T-DiTella™.)
But, as her skill progressed, she found that her Tangolates routines acquired an identity in their own (and a very proud one too).

Today, both the T-DiTella™ apparatus and the Tangolates system of exercises that are performed on it are entirely different. As Tamara explains:   “different, unique and distinctive”.

There are some movements that resemble pilates. But there are  others that share with pilates only the basic concepts. But the majority of the exercises and routines are completely different and bare no resemblance to pilates whatsoever.

The T-DiTella and its method, Tangolates, go beyond traditional pilates. “While pilates is a marvelous method based on strength and elongation” says Tamara Di Tella,  “ My T-DiTella™ training apparatus provides one thing that pilates does not have: the aerobic aspect to exercise. See, dancing is always a more cardio- oriented workout.  The T-DiTella, challenges you in ways that pilates does not, because of its aerobic element and because partner work requires more concentration and coordination”,says Tamara

Functional _______________________________________________________________________

T-DiTella™ Tangolates exercise is based on what is currently called “Functional Training.” What does this mean? Functional training means integrated movement patterns that work many muscle groups at the same time. It also means dynamic and unpredictable movement challenges.
To be a functional training it must involve multi-joint movement and take place at different planes of motion; it must initiate movement from the deep core stabilizers, and, above all, it must help increase proprioperception, which is the awareness of the body’s position in space.


Traditional pilates training is excellent in that it focus on integrated chains of deep muscles. But, often, it involves standardized and pre-set moves which were develop at the beginning of last century.
Does the human body move in a pre-set, standardized manner? No, it doesn’t.
Human movement is 3-dimensional, occurring within three planes of motion simultaneously: a) the sagittal plane (involves forward and backward motion); b) the frontal plane (refers to side-to-side motion), and c) the transverse plane (refers to rotational motion).


The T-DiTella™ has been especially designed to work on all three planes of motion. Rotation in a vertical position is made possible thanks to the four poles, one at each angle of the apparatus.

Movement Mechanics: _________________________________________________________

Modern trainers are gradually moving away from pre-set moves. Today, moves are performed in different planes of motion, more dynamic and more aerobic.
Balance devices such as the T-DiTella are often used for these purposes.  On the T-DiTella many of the movements are performed on a vertical manner, and depend entirely on balance and equilibrium. Also the routines incorporate de cardio work, which is such an important part of human motion. 

“ The T-DiTella™ Tangolates is very helpful in integrating the aerobic element while keeping the focus on strength, balance and equilibrium”, explains Tamara. 

The T-DiTella™ & The Reformer_____________________________

Old style training put its major emphasis on brute strength and voluminous muscles. Enter pilates. Now we know that longer muscles are stronger muscles and also that power comes from the core. 
The T-DiTella™ Tangolates routines are perfect for this!

The T-DiTella™ apparatus can also be used in junction with the reformer to create workouts that are similar to pilates equipment and routines.  Does this means that some exercises can be performed on the T-DiTella and the reformer alike? Yes, this is exactly what it means.

Be True to yourself ______________________________________________________

Core concentration is a primary principle of both Tango and Pilates exercise. But while on the reformer you can make “as if”, on the T-DiTella™ you can’t.

The T-DiTella™ detects if you are actually collecting at the core or “faking it” because you simply cannot do some exercises unless you find your equilibrium or balance first.

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Concept of Propioperception: where are we? __________________________

Proprioperception is a concept much used in pilates. It means the ability to know where you are located in space. Some patients who suffer from motor dysfunctions of the nervous system, lose their sense of propioperception. Tamara Di Tella detected this while working with Parkinson  patients at the hospital.

Sometimes, a Parkinson patient gets “glewed to the floor”, or at least this is the impression he has. Some other times, they lose sense of space reality. Often, they have to look at the wall behind them for otherwise they will not be able to “sense” that the wall is there, as a non Parkinson person would.

Parkinson is not the only factor that impedes proprioperception. Many factors might impede it. Did you ever notice that if you are prone to ankle sprains, it usually happens on one side? Every time you sprain an ankle, you lose a bit more proprioperception on that side. There are many exercises that can be done on the T-DiTella™ to retrain proprioperception and working with another person in partner routines of course also helps a lot.

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Inventing the T-DiTella™ Tangolates Trainer
by Tamara Di Tella

“This is going to be a challenge for you, Tamara”, I said to myself after meeting with the Director of the Parkinson Program at the largest public hospital of Buenos Aires. I was about to inaugurate a Rehab Ward for Parkinson patients I had donated to a public hospital and I was scared about this new responsibility.

Parkinson patients alternate between unvoluntary movement (tremors) and not being able to move at all. They may completely freeze on you.
Parkinson patients do not necessarily lose their capacity to move, but rather the capacity to imagine movement.  Do you see the difference?
The absence of Dopamine works in strange ways, and one of them is that the patient knows he has to go from here to there,  say, only that he has “forgotten” how to do it. Actually, it is more complicated than that, but this is, in a nutshell, what I saw while working with them.

Another thing I noticed while working with patients is that they lose their propioperception. Whereas any person entering a room would sense there is a wall behind them only by relating measures and proportions in their mind, a Parkinson patient will not sense or perceive there is a wall unless he actually sees it.
“O.K.”, I said to all my instructors, “ The patients may not be able to start moving, and they may have lost their sense of proprioperception,  but they probably can copy somebody else´s movement and do it rather well”.  I went on: “All we have to do is to put ourselves right next to the patient and move together is if we were one. We are their mirror”

“O.K., Let´s try” I concluded.

So each instructor chose a patient to do the exercise with, and pretended he or she was his “mirror”. It worked!  Next, we tried music. Not any music, mind you, but a strong, and well marked beat, like… Tango!

In sum: we started a program based on the theory that a Parkinson patient can find it easier to copy and that partner work enables Parkinson patients to imitate the instructor’s moves. Another important element of my program is the use of a well-marked music beat to help him get started. The ideal is the 2 x 4 tango beat.
When I saw the patients doing partner exercises to the rythm of Tango, I remembered the saying: “it takes two to Tango!”.

I just knew I had something going...

But that was only the beginning. I had to design an apparatus that made this possible, practical, functional and doable.

Immediately, I started to work on a blueprint.  I knew the apparatus had to be mobile (so instructors can take it from place to place); I also knew it had to be small, light, functional, and easy to handle.
Engineers started to work and I took about two years to test it. First with Parkinson patients and then with my clients. I called it the T-DiTella™.

After much trial, a client of mine from New York said to me: “this is revolutionary, Tamara, I really enjoyed working with the T- Di Tella™ and I think you ought to offer it to the world”.

My dream had come true.

Today, the T-DiTella™  is a new and revolutionary functional apparatus especially designed for Tangolates, a choreographed movement sequences and fun partner fitness work.
And… guess what? clients love it!

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To expand interests, explore new workouts,
start new venues, or simply get more clients
with this new, challenging and fun apparatus
and its method to teach and train!

The T- Di Tella™, is a completely unique apparatus that integrates core training, balance, coordination and fluid single or partner movements with the aerobic element of Tango rhythm.

The T- Di Tella™, apparatus creates fluid moves at various levels, beginners, intermediate an advanced. It can be used by itself or in combination with the Pilates machine, by placing it under it.

The T- Di Tella™, apparatus allows more than a thousand moves, all of which are perfectly choreographed to the music of Tango, in a continuum aerobic sequence, dynamic and fun!

(Extra T- DI Tella apparatuses are sold separately at a preferential price to our Licensees).

Description of the T- Di Tella™ Apparatus

A 29.6” (L) x 26.6” (W) x 1.5” (H) structure made of 100% solid wood. It weighs only 8.9 lbs. in its lighter version (for personal use.
 
It comes in two types:
 
a) for personal use.
b) for professional use.
 

The four solid corners of the T-DiTella™ Tangolates trainer apparatus house four 1.25” holes to place two types of poles of matching diameter, but different lengths, according to the movements and exercises required. 4 poles are 19.6” long; and 4 are twice that length (39.3”). These eight (8) poles may come in:

a) PVC (extra light version)
b) Anodized aluminum (De Luxe, heavier version).
c) Solid “palo blanco” wood (heaviest Extra De Luxe version).

Two additional 12” x 8” pillows for horizontal, lying down exercises are provided.

The T-DiTella™ Tangolates trainer apparatus also comes with two platforms that act as steps 8.26 (W) and  29” ( L) solid  but very light  platforms made of argentine Alamo wood  that can slide sideways to form:

a) a solid mat for horizontal exercises
b)  two separate “steps” for different types of standing Tangolates balance challenge.

The T-DiTella™ Tangolates trainer apparatus comes with an optional cylinder shaped 100% genuine argentine cow leather.
This container bag must be ordered separately, and at a special additional cost).

Summary Description:
29.6"  (L) x 26.6” (W) x 1.5” (H)
Weight: 8.9 Lbs. (personal use) or 17.8 Lbs. (professional use)

Accessories included:
a) 2 pillows (12” x 8”)
b) 8 poles: four 19.6" and four 39.3"
c) 2 platforms or steps 8.26 (W) and  29” ( L)
d) (optional) cylinder shaped 100% genuine argentine 100% cow leather container bag

Maximum User Weight: 187.3 Lbs.
Limited Warranty: 1 year*
Restrictions and limitations apply.

The T-DiTella™ Tangolates trainer apparatus may:

a) be used by itself
b) be used under the pilates reformer machine.
c) be assembled and dissembled after class
d) be put away in: a corner of the gym, a closet, or under the bed (if at home). 

The T-DiTella™ Tangolates trainer apparatus may also be transported in a practical carry-on bag. It is ideal to take away to clubs, studios and other locations where classes are offered.

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For personal trainers, Tango dancers, ballerinas, pilates instructors or group fitness instructors, the T- Di Tella ™ Complete Tangolates Set provides the perfect formula for success in clubs, in classes, and
with clients. In fact, this Set guarantees fun, exciting and effective programming into any workout setting.

The T- Di Tella™ Complete Set includes a 60 fully illustrated page comprehensive training manual; Four (4) support DVDs that show proper setup and execution of each exercise (on T- Di Tella™ apparatus, mat or reformer). It also comes with (8) poles that can be used interchangeably according to the exercise; (2) platforms that can be used as either mat (when they slide together), or as steps (when they slide apart); and (2) pillows to cushion you lower back or to create new and fun classes.

The Set also includes: an exclusive music CD, a T- Di Tella™;  T-DiTella Tangolates Buenos Aires/Certificate; a License Agreement which also allows you to become a distributor of T- Di Tella™ Tangolates Set;  a Voucher to take a 4 day course in Buenos Aires (with room and breakfast included for foreigners).

Finally, the T- Di Tella™ Complete Set it includes a carrying bag to keep everything organized and, for an additional cost, you may get the 100% superb quality genuine leather carry-on bag to keep everything organized.

The T- Di Tella™ Tangolates Workout Manual

Each T- Di Tella™ Tangolates Complete Workout Set includes a comprehensive manual, instructional DVDs that show proper setup and execution of each exercise, an exclusive Power Music CD and a carrying bag to keep everything organized.

The T- Di Tella™ Tangolates Complete Workout Manual is an all-in-one solution for learning how to use the T- Di Tella™ apparatus and its  Tangolates exercises and routines.
It also provides a great variety of exercises for other pilates equipment readily available in clubs.

The T- Di Tella™ Tangolates Workout DVD’s

The four instructional DVD’s demonstrate exercise options and variations for
the T- Di Tella™ apparatus. Mat and reformer pilates exercises are provided as well.

The DVD includes:

1. Instructions on how to use the T- Di Tella™ apparatus, with detailed  safety tips.

2. The fundamentals of Tango training: posture, vertical neutral position, proper breathing, proper walking, how to lean on the partner etc.

3.  Preparation workouts to perform before you start, such as basic abs, arms, legs and derriere routines.

4.  Tangolates: Selected Tango choreographed movement sequences and fun partner fitness work. 

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If you are a fitness enthusiast, a pilates instructor or a dance expert, you may become a T- Di Tella™ Tangolates Licensee without any additional cost by acquiring the the T-DiTella™ Tangolates™ Complete Set.

Why choose us? Because we are the best in our field.

The genesis of our T-DiTella™ Tangolates is the field of medicine. More specifically, the Tamara Di Tella Rehabilitation Ward for Parkinson and abnormal movements patients.

Neurologically originated motor functions and neuromuscular physiology are basic to human movement and provide the scientific basis that backs our remarkably complete approach to training, as well as the constant updates we offer our Licensees.