Customer Reviews

Bellydance Fitness for Weight Loss featuring Rania: Daily Quickies... 5 Ten Minute Workouts

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The idea of 10 minute bellydance "quickies" sounded like a great and original idea for a bellydance girl on-the-go. Unfortunately the material on this DVD isn't anything new nor is is bellydance!

If you already own any of the videos form Rania's "Bellydance for Fitness and Weight Loss" Series: Bellydance Boogie, Hip Drop Hip Hop, Cardio Shimmy, or Pure Sweat, or Veena and Neena's Bellydance "Slim Down" video then you will recognise these workouts (really just 10 minute long guided movements) from the bonus sections of these DVDs. They've taken all five of them and put them on this one DVD.

Importat notes:
1. These are not "NEW" workouts. (Note to Rania and Natural Journeys) Please don't repackage old material and call it "NEW" just to pad your own wallet. This is insulting to the consumer and a waste of my money.

2. As a fitness professional, I can tell you that thse are not "workouts" for weight loss as claimed but merely ten-minute guided movements. Stating that doing one of these 10 minute workouts will help you loose weight is a gross overstatement. The body does not even BEGIN to burn fat until after more than 20 minutes of cardiovascular exertion. (Sitting on the couch burns next to zero calories so this workout would still be better than nothing.) :o) Putting this one in and doing all five workouts in a row would really give you a workout, which I recommend doing, but that defeats the whole point of these being "quickies."

3. This is't bellydance!!! Let me say this again, this isn't bellydance!!! It's stretching and strengthening exercises that will help put your muscles into the condition required to bellydance better, I recommend adding light hand weights for the "Arms, Chest, and Back" section to get any real benefit, but don't buy this video looking for bellydance instruction or workout! The "Waist Sculpting" section is the only one that even resembles bellydance.

4. If you own any other fitness videos, I'm sure you've noticed that nearly all of them remind you to do at least twently minutes of warmup and stretching before beginning their workout. Now THAT's a reason to own this DVD. Just pop this puppy in first and you're on your way!

5. These are excellent guided movements! You won't learn or practice much bellydance but if you use this video in combination with other fitness videos or as an addition to an existing fitness routine, it's great.

6. Current fitness research says that if you only have ten minutes to workout, that's OK. You can do three ten minute workouts in one day and get close to the same benefit as one thirty minute workout. Thirty-plus minutes is still better than three ten-minute sessions but 3 ten-minute sessions is still better than nothing! Try to fit more than one of these into your day for better results.

0 stars for remarketing old stuff as new.
4 stars because this could still be used conjunction with other videos or all five could be done in a row for a great workout.
2 average

Bellydance has been practiced for over five thousand years and has roots in ancient cultures: Macedonia, India, Greece, Persia, and Turkey. This workout does not include any bellydance routines, but will strengthen the muscles you need to use when creating routines.

It is a workout to help you strengthen and stretch every muscle in your body. Not only did I workout harder than I have in any workout I've tried recently, this took my body to new and undiscovered areas of fitness.

Rania Bossonis is an AFAA Certified Fitness Instructor and world famous Bellydancer. These workouts combine traditional strengthening exercises with moves and poses from Modern Dance, Yoga, Ballet and Bellydance. You are moving at a fast pace throughout the workouts and you will feel the "burn" and feel the effects and the day-after-I-worked-out-really-hard feeling.

This is a good workout to do if you are about to give yourself a day off or you can just do the 10 minutes after walking for 30 minutes to give yourself 40 minutes. I'm finding that 70-80 minutes of exercise 3-4X a week is the way to go if you want to start to see the inches drop.

You can really use this workout in a variety of ways. The most challenging way to start this workout is to go through all 5 sections in about 60 minutes.

Day 1 - Abs Only
This section is a combination of isolation exercises that will take your abdominal muscles to new and rather interesting places. This section features: crunches, oblique exercises, lower abdominal work, standing abdominal bellydance isolation, belly rolls and an abdominal stretch.

Day 2- Arms, Back and Chest
After doing this workout, I went out and bought some tiny little 1 pound weights to do during the second workout. The workout is intense enough by itself, but in a few weeks, I can add the weights for advanced training benefits. You will recognize moves like: Lateral Pull Downs, Upright Rows, Shoulder Presses, Biceps Flexion, Push-ups, and Prone Hyperextensions, combined with Bellydance Isometric exercises such as Chest Raises and Drops, Snake Arms, Shoulder Rolls, and Shoulder Shimmies.

Day 3 - Dancer's Legs and Butt
Rania teaches moves she learned in Modern Dance training. You will enjoy doing plies, bellydance pelvic camels, one-legged lunges with leg extensions, inner and outer thigh exercises. The floor exercises put an emphasis on the hamstrings and gluteal region.

Day 4 - Waist Sculpting
This goes beyond traditional abdominal workouts. We are talking about Figure-8 bellydance moves and rib slides. You start to feel a bit like a bellydancer in this segment. The isolations exercises encourage coordination and posture.

Day 5 - Flexibility Training
A combination of Bellydance, Yoga, Ballet/Modern Dance and stretches.

Special DVD Features:
Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound
Interactive Full Motion Menus
Chapter Selections

This is an amazing workout that will test your endurance and give you creative coordination challenges. I love the full-body workout when you complete all the exercises in about 60 minutes.

Very Impressed.

~The Rebecca Review

I'm rating this 3 stars not because of the quality of the workouts, but because of the originality in the issuing of this DVD.

If you already own Rania's other DVDs (Bellydance Boogie, Bellydance Hip Drop Hip Hop, Bellydance Pure Sweat, Bellydance Cardio Shimmy) and you also own one of Veena and Neena's Discover Bellydance DVDs (editing because I previously stated that I didn't remember which DVD had the flexibility workout. I just found it, its on the Veena & Neena Bellydance Slim Down DVD) ... then you already own all of the workouts on this DVD. These workouts were bonus workouts included on other DVDs.

All this is is a compilation of those bonus workouts put onto one DVD. They couldn't come up with anything original, so to make money, they decided to put them on one DVD and call it NEW. PUH-LLLLEASE.

If you like having the compilation aspect just for the ease of it, this is a good buy. If you already own the other Bellydance DVDs I mentioned, and you were thinking this was something new, save your money.

The workouts themselves aren't bad, but they aren't new. Just an FYI.

...but the title is sort of deceiving because these are not bellydancing workouts, they are just plain good workouts that kicked my butt, but no dancing. I knew Rania is a famous dancer, but until this video I did not realise her fitness instructor abilities apart from dancing. After I bought it and brought it home and read the box copy, I started to wonder if there was any dancing, but the title should have made it clear. Anyway, these are great workouts that I like to do when I get home from work, before I start cooking and wind down for the evening. The Abs workout is a killer.

The first thing I thought of as I was working through these sequences was the book, "Eight Minutes in the Morning." These workouts would fit in very well with that philosophy, as a small part of a workout program.

These are exercises, not dances. Although some bellydance motions are included in the abdominal and waist sculpting segments, you should approach this expecting exercises, not dances. In fact, has the title of this DVD more acurately reflected the contents, I would have raised my rating to at least three stars. I believe "Five Ten-Minute Workouts Featuring Bellydancer, Rania" would be a FAR more acurate title for this DVD.

The music is, at best, inoffensive. It is not the strong music one associates with bellydance--Muzak comes to mind. This was another disappointment for me.

Still, the exercises included in each segment do stretch and strengthen the intended body parts as specified. I was suitably aware of the muscles being worked both during and after the exercises, and I will continue using it as part of a morning routine. I'm still looking for a good bellydance workout, however.

This is too much of a generic aerobic workout video. Has very little belly dancing content actually. Doesn't talk about technique. It is a mild belly dancing workout for epople who want general aerobic workout. Not for people who are serious about belly dancing.

This is NOT a video to learn bellydance. If you're looking for an instructional video, you will be dissapointed. In fact, there really isn't much bellydance at all except in the waist shaping segment. However, if you want a good strength and flexibility routine for fitness and dance conditioning, this might be just the ticket.

I like to do the entire 50 minutes as a single workout and I feel that it addresses all the major areas that a dancer needs to work on. I love the way this video makes me feel and I look forward to seeing what continued use will do for my dance. I also apreciate the clear, steady camera work and the lack of "special effects" camera work that spoils so many bellydance videos. The moves were clear and the naration was encouraging without going overboard.

As a physical therapist, I am familiar with the types of exercises that will challenge the various parts of the body. This video certainly is challenging to many muscle groups. However, I think that she has done a poor job in a couple of areas. 1.) Not enough focus on firing of the deep abdominals to set the back before various exercises. In my experience many people need several verbal cues to correctly fire these muscles and protect their backs when doing exercises like these. Also too much focus on the rectus (vertical) abs and I doubt most people could maintain their neutral supported spine at the speed she does the lower ab workout. Quality is key before speed. 2.) Poor cueing for lower extremity protection during single leg squatting and balance exercises 3.) Video is really best done in one setting, breaking it up into the 10 minute segments is not optimal as she doesn't have the opportunity to adequeately warm up and cool down. 4.) And lastly -on more general terms - if you were looking for a lot of belly dancing moves this is not the video for you. This was the bummer for me. I would also recommend that Rania review the use of important verbal cueing to help fire the transverse abdominals to ensure back protection as is done in many core stability programs. I would not recommend this to most of my patients as it is for much more advanced fitness seekers and lacks the proper cueing for optimal performance. If you have excellent command of your core and posture, go for it - it will certainly burn your muscles.

This is, make no mistake, NOT for beginners to exercise: it is pretty challenging. It is fun to be able to do either one segment or put more together for a fuller workout; if you do all five secions, it really is a good strength and flex day. The reason I didn't give it five stars was the lack of safety advice; in the back stretches, for example, you could really damage yourself if you didn't have some Pilates or yoga knowlege, and I thought the final flex section was dangerously under-explained. Okay for me, I take Pilates, but not so great for everyone. What wasn't so good for me (and the other reason it lost a star) was the waist section: this is the only part where belly dance experience, even a little, would help (I have none, and boy does it show: I imagine I look like an embarrasssing aunt trying to dance at a wedding) but what would help more is if the camera let you see the legs and feet when we are being told what to do with them! There is one move, repeated for ages, where you NEVER see this. But otherwise, this DVD is terrific and you will definitely feel it the next day. Oh, and the arms section contains one of the best tricep reps I've seen; my advice for this section is to use light weights with it - I use 1kg (I'm English) which is about 2.2 pounds I think, and that is half what I use for my usual arm work, but is plenty for this. Enjoy!

Sounds like some people may be disappointed with this video, and I'll bet that's because it's mistitled. But it is exactly what I've been looking for--short, basic drills to help improve my dance (in my case, salsa dance). I particularly like the 10 min. "waist sculpting," which is basic body isolations, but so helpful to supplement my weekly Body Isolation dance class. I wouldn't suggest using these 10 min. workouts as your primary form of exercise--but they are great dance drills to tag on after whatever other exercise you like to do!