Customer Reviews

Power Yoga - Strength

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

First a few words about myself so you can more easily judge if my opinion might be helpful to you or not. I teach Power Vinyasa Yoga at a local Hotel Spa Fitness Club. I train every day and prefer complete Power Yoga Flow Routines that challange your overall bodystrength a lot and still contribute to every aspect of Yoga (meaning the meditative aspects, proper breathing, inner awareness and so on).
Since I'm german my english spelling is pretty bad, sorry for that!

About the DVD:
The routine is about 25 Minutes long but still offers you quite a challange for the short time. I can't do 60 to 90 Minutes of Yoga every day, so I'm glad to own a couple of shorter programms for the days in between or for early in the morning.
Rodney Yee is a hihgly skilled Instructor with a very gentil and calm manner and an interesting style of Yoga. His voice is always soothing, but still encouraging.

The programm on the DVD is specially challanging for upper body strength but still working the whole body. It's fluid and, regarding the short time, complete.
The only one little thing I can critizise is that the verbal instruction is somtimes not absolutly in line with the instruction on screen. From time to time Rodny on screen is movin just a little to fast compared to his verbal instruction. But that's not very important and doesn't cause any problems, so I can still rate this 5 Stars.
If your looking for a short physicaly demanding Power Yoga routine, this is for you. It's not suitable for absolute Beginners since Rodny moves pretty fast from Pose to Pose and some are to challanging for an absolute beginner. I would recommend it for intermediate to advanced students.
If your interested in more Power Yoga, check out my other reviews about Power Vinyasa Yoga DVDs. To see al DVDs I recommend check out my listmania list. Let my know if you found the reviews helpfull. I truely hope so!
Namasté

The Good: Delivers a decent arm/shoulder workout. Puts in a few arm balances. Gets into the workout fast.

The Bad: Pacing is very fast, few poses are held for more than a couple seconds. Apart from a few arm-balances, not much to look forward to.

The Verdict: With only 20 minutes to work with, Yee gives your arms and shoulders an aerobic-yoga workout. Unfortunately, the practice is so short and fast paced, that it stands to be nothing more than a yoga-supplement to a more complete workout.


Full Review: I've been using Yee's "Power Yoga: Full Body" for a while now, and thought I'd put some mixture into my routine. As always Yee's calm delivery makes this easy to listen to. I nearly didn't have to watch the DVD before first attempting it, as it's not that difficult to follow-as long as you can move quickly between poses. No, really. Move FASTER!

The pacing of the routine is going to turn some people off, plain and simple. "Power Yoga: Full Body" is medium paced, while this is fast paced. Very fast. In fact, you barely have time to hit a pose before moving to the next. The only poses that you'll spend any time in are the arm-balances, and downward-facing dog.

It's a short, accelerated, 20 minute aerobic workout for your upper body, shoulders, arms, and reportedly abs. Realistically, I felt it in my arms, and to some extent my shoulders. After doing to routine a couple of times, I was able to keep pace easy enough, though admittedly I felt like I was really rushing through an otherwise enjoyable yoga practice.

The workout itself is brief, jumping straight into sun salutations (which remain for the entire workout), lots of up/downward-facing dog, standing forward bend, mtn pose, lunges, and a few arm balances and chair poses. You do two or three seated poses, then go into a short relaxation pose.

The obvious question here is why would Gaiam/ Yee make such a short "Strength" video? I mean, I did 20 minutes of Intermediate yoga and then had absolutely no problem knocking this one off. In no way am I saying that this workout is easy, but that it really is only worthwhile as a supplement to another routine I'll do before/after it.

In many ways, I just don't feel the workout was constructed well. Why cap a yoga practice at 20 minutes? Apart from a few arm balances, and a lot of downward-facing dog/sun salutations - this really isn't that inventive. Why didn't they put in at least another 10 minutes of arm balances... handstands, shoulderstands, forearm-stands, headstands, something, anything more? I think they could have slowed the pace back down to medium fast and added a few more strength poses to extend the time to 30 or 40 minutes, creating a fuller experience without losing the spirit of the practice.

I like Yee's instruction and delivery, and the DVD is a unique yoga workout-but I can't give it more than three stars. It's fast pace, and brevity make it of limited use to me.

Whoa, Rodney, this is for beginners? OK, yes, I feel great after doing the workout. But this is definitely not for anyone who has never taken a yoga class and who doesn't know at least the basic poses. How anyone can support their body weight doing the legs-elevated poses (e.g., pendulum pose) is beyond me. This will probably prove to be especially difficult for women without extremely strong arm and shoulder muscles. I found myself doing modifications on those poses because my jaw dropped watching Rodney Yee doing them effortlessly and calling them "simple."
This is very fast-paced, also, but it seems less so after doing it a few times.

I like this workout because it really guides and focus's on your entire upper body that I need to maintain. Rodney shows you step-by-step challenging arm balance poses from your core strength. He stands true in defining a greater balance with this workout.

Rodney shows you step-by-step challenging arm balance poses that I'm always afraid to tempt but I got over it once I got the hang of it. This challenge help defined a more lean appearance of muscle providing a great sense of balance. You can feel the empowering effects by using your own body weight on this course. This also helps build resistance to each move. The rapid sequencing is designed to increase power and adds a fat-burning aerobic benefit for a complete, satisfying yoga workout. At the end of this 24-minute workout you feel relax and empowered .

This is a great practice that I also recommend into your collection. When you get back to your other workouts you will feel an amazing difference in your strength, balance, and flexibility. Great for intermediate yogis wanting to boost upper body strength and burn fat with fluid, fast-paced sequences. However, if you are used to a slower-moving, power yoga style, this video is not for you.

This dvd is a good, challenging workout that I feel good about doing, but I wouldn't say that it's for beginners because Rodney doesn't teach you each pose step by step and he has some difficult poses such as crow and pendulum thrown in there. The workout is basically sun salutation with some other poses mixed in. It does work your upper body; at the end of it I can feel my arms tiring. He also goes a little fast from pose to pose, but after doing the workout a couple times it doesn't seem so fast. I do like that he uses a voice over to call out the poses and doesn't include a lot of extra chit chat. Also, the relaxation at the end is very short and I think it could have been longer.

I always thought of yoga as a waste of time. I like running and biking, you know, moving and jumping around. So I thought that yoga would bore me to tears. I tried this out because of the words power and strength. I really need to build muscle so I thought I'd give it a shot and I love this! I've been doing it for about 2 months and my flexibility has increased dramatically. The first couple times I did this it was a little hard but after awhile it'll be second nature although I still can't do pendulum pose. Word of advise, be careful when trying pendulum pose, I thought I could do it right away and wound up falling on my face! To wrap this up, you can't go wrong with this DVD. You should still do other muscle training but this'll work your arms and make you more flexible for sure!

This is an intense, fast moving, almost 30 minute workout that you will definitely feel in your shoulders the next day. Incorporating challenging arm balancing poses into the sun salutation.

As stated in the title this is a `power' practice so there is a flowing sequence to the poses and it moves very quickly from one position to the next. I noticed that sometimes even Rodney's dubbed in voice instruction had trouble keeping up. Those with a basic knowledge of the poses shouldn't have any problems but be aware that some of the arm balancing postures are quite advanced. The instruction here, although brisk is easy to follow and the workout has been filmed on a cliff overlooking a Maui beach so there's some nice scenery too. The same music has been used here as on other DVDs but you won't mind because it's quite good.

I did find this practice to be slightly repetitive, in that it's a long series of Sun Salutations alternating with advanced arm balancing postures. I would recommend 'Power Yoga Flexibility' over this or better yet both workouts are available on one DVD (Power Yoga Strength & Flexibility) for a few dollars more.

The practice includes; Sun Salutations, Powerful pose, Exalted Warrior, Side arm balance (bent & straight leg) Staff, Sage and Crane poses. Eastern Plank pose, Cobblers and Pendulum pose, Cross Legged lunge (in the air) Simple arm balance and a brief relaxation at he end. The only props needed are a strap and your yoga mat.

Highly recommended for an intense, quick workout Namaste

Positives:
Works on your upper body--a lot!
Laid-back voice-over narration
Beautiful setting
Rapid flow almost moves into a cardio workout for short periods
Challenging enough to give me goals to work toward
Negatives:
Voice-over narration is behind on-screen poses much of the time
Difficult poses, particularly for a "beginner" DVD
Overall, this is a good DVD to use as a variation from other yoga practices, but I don't think I'd want to use it daily because of the level of difficulty for me and the voice-over problems.

I have never written a review for a product before, but I needed to share how great this dvd is. I was skeptical that a 25 minute yoga workout could do me any good, but this short workout by Rodney Yee works body and mind in a remarkably complete way. It focuses on upper body strength and is challenging enough for me (I have been practicing yoga for 2 years and am in pretty good shape) so that I break a sweat, but because it's only 25 minutes from start to finish there are no excuses to not do it at least once per day. The only problem is that now I am getting a little bored with it. So I am back on amazon looking for another- just thought I'd share. Namaste.

This is a really nice Upper Body workout. It's less than 30 minutes. I usually do this to warm up and stretch my muscles before i do circuit training.