This week I've done three out of five segments in the exercise video "
Dance Fitness for Beginners: Daily Quickies 10-minute Workouts."
I did Rania's Upper Body Toning section, Suhaila's Buns section, and Jayna's Bellydance Body section. I haven't yet gotten to the two hiphop workouts.
These workouts are not bad, but the video suffers from a
horrible case of mislabeling. Rania's "Upper Body Toning" section is mainly chest isolations, which is not what most people think of for upper body toning -- there's little for shoulders and arms, although it is a nice bunch of chest moves. Jayna's workout is described as letting you "dance the weight away" but she uses almost no motions that are quick in tempo -- lots of hip circles, chest circles, shoulder rolls, figure 8s. Again, very nice, but not exactly cardio.
Suhaila's workout will indeed work your butt, but like the other two, there is a mislabeling problem here: where does "beginner" come into it? She gives 10 minutes of glute squeezes: half, full, and double time; walking on releve; walking with the squeeze on the weighted foot and then on the unweighted foot; then two different 3/4 shimmies. It's a great drill if you want to work your glute shimmy! But exactly what beginner could do this stuff? (Most would flee at the sight of the opening glute squeezes in straddle stance.)
To sum up: these little sets of drills aren't bad! In fact, if you needed an absolutely miniaturized set of isolation drills, or wanted to work your glute shimmy for all it's worth, for $14.95, this is a steal. Just don't believe all the text on the box!
