Customer Reviews

Basic Aerobics

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I bought this video about a year ago in a local department store. I watched it at home, and needed to stop it after only a few minutes. The instructor was not the type of person that I would like leading a fitness routine. I didn't liked the choreography of the moves, and the people in the backround where doing different moves. So there was no way for me to ever try even doing the fitness routine. I was lucky to sell it to another person! I would not recommand buying this video!

While the instructor in this DVD had a lot of energy and an upbeat attitude, the workout is barely 18 minutes long. It isn't challenging, and it doesn't have much flow. For instance, the women working out behind the instuctor are out of step and seem to be struggling to follow him. For half of the workout, he does arm lifts, but seems to be doing them his own way. Half of the women following him interpret them one way (arms up) and the other half does arms to the side. If this reveiw seem confusing, it is because that's how the workout was!

I have this theory: that it's impossible to make a really bad exercise video. A boring video? Sure. An ineffective video? Of course! A confusing video? Certainly! A video that moves too fast or has a style of music you don't like or just isn't your style? Absolutely! But not a video so poorly done that you wonder how in God's name it made it past the production stage.

Because, after all, how hard could an exercise tape be to produce? You get a perky trainer, design a short routine from the thousands of patented aerobics moves out there, get some music, add a cheap set, and throw a few extras in the background for good measure! Easy as pie, right?

Boy, was I wrong on that count! Even something as cheap and easy to create as an exercise video can be screwed up if you make the effort. Take this video, for instance. It's like a tutorial on how not to do an aerobics tape. How bad is it? Let me count the ways:

1. Get the instructor to literally scream his instructions nonstop, like someone just lit his **** on fire and is blowing on them to stoke the blaze.

2. Slap together a stark, creepy, offputting backdrop that looks like something straight out of one of the sets from Caligula.

3. For no reason at all, make sure all the extras look like bored housewives who have all the verve and energy of the models in a Robert Palmer video.

4. And unlike most videos that try to appeal to a broad audience by stocking background extras with both sexes and a wide variety of ages, body types, and ethnicities, have all the models be young, thin white women.

4. Don't correct the one spaz amongst the extras (a woman to the left of instructor Harris), who not only is uncoordinated but does the moves from the wrong side the entire time

5. Have a routine with moves that were clearly meant to be used with a step but are used without one, making them not only pointless but confusing

I could go on, but being as I couldn't make it past 10 minutes without going into convulsions of laughter and going back to my older tapes, I couldn't tell you how much worse it got. All I can tell you is that this tape is pretty horrible from what I saw. Avoid at all costs and if you're still tempted, remember-- it's in the bargain bin for a reason!

I agree with the 2 previous reviews: not recommended. (I wish I'd read them before wasting my money.) An 18 minute workout is just too short. The instructor shouts at you the entire time. I guess it's good that he's got a lot of energy, but I found it annoying. The woman right next to him can't follow his moves and so the 2 of them are mostly out of step. A confusing and ineffective workout.

At a first glance of this video, I thought it wouldn't be effective. However, after my first workout I was proven wrong. This dvd is great and guides me to work muscles I didnt' even know I had.