Los Angeles Times
Monday November 09, 2009
DVDs fit to get fit to
By Melinda Fulmer
So you’re ready to ditch the hassle and expense of the gym and become your own personal trainer. Great! Just make sure you have a backup plan for those days when you lack the motivation to crack the whip on your own workout.
You might want to invest in a couple of total-body workout videos and let the experts coach you through the cardio, toning and stretching you’d typically get on the treadmill and weight machines. We picked four of the best and most recent DVD releases to review — two of them are sets of multiple workouts — so you can piece together your own at-home fitness program.
Not all of these workouts are appropriate for beginners, so proceed with caution if it’s been some time since you’ve picked up a dumbbell or if you have health problems.
‘Physique 57′
These workouts, from the renowned New York City studio, use the dance-inspired basics of the Lotte Berk method to sculpt long, lean muscles. The fast pace and high number of repetitions also elevate your heart rate enough to give you a cardiovascular workout.
Led by Tanya Becker, one of the founders of Physique 57 and a former Lotte Berk instructor, and Shelly Knight, one of its master instructors, these excruciatingly effective routines — the 57-minute “Classic” workout, as well as a 30-minute “Express” — incorporate a barrage of standing ballet barre work for the legs and glutes, as well as more standard exercise fare, such as push-ups, planks and Pilates mat work for the abdominals. The longer workout adds more upper-body exercises and additional abdominal work to the mix.
Make no mistake: These are tough, fast workouts — maybe too tough and too fast for someone new to exercise. And Becker’s relentless coaching and chanting “No fat cells!” will either repel you or motivate you. But you won’t feel like you’ve wasted your time or money. (The Manhattan studio charges $35 a class.)
Price: $24.95 for each of three workouts or $49.95 for the set; www.Physique57.com.
