Tae Bo II Get Ripped Advanced Workout

I loved this. I love that it's a real class with real people, some of whom can't stand on one leg for the isolation moves.

I love that some people used the bag.

I loved that it was fun, full of energizing combos.

And I love that it's on DVD. I wish he would release all the Live's on dvd.

The music may not have been as motivating as , say, Tae Bo Advanced Live #4, but it was motivating to me, and I had a great time.

Workout was about 50 minutes long, no floor work, but some isolating moves in the end (balancing with slow and fast kicks)

On cardio work, I am an intermediate exerciser who is playing with advanced choreography. For a change, I do kickboxing periodically. I have the DVD with both “Get Ripped” Advanced workouts. I find that I do the first one more often than the second, but I’m not sure why.

Billy leads a large group of background exercisers and often stops exercising himself and runs around to motivate and correct form of the other exercisers. It is a good and intense workout. There are times, however, when it seems like Billy is making up the routine as he goes. The pace on some of the moves is simply way too fast - and I’ve learned to just go at my own pace and not worry about how fast they are going. The two sides of the body are not always worked equally. If that is important to you, this workout will probably irritate you.

By the end of this workout, I am usually dripping in sweat. It is a good workout for me. I don’t, however, pull it out very often. It is nice to have when I am in the mood.

My neighbor ordered the Tae-Bo "get ripped" tapes from QVC, and she gave me the advanced tapes. Both of the advanced tapes are wonderful!!!!! The aerobic sections are long and continuous, and there are no big pauses for instruction during this section. Billy Blanks throws out alot of safety reminders and motivational advice, but does so without stopping the workout. I absolutely love these tapes and hope there will be more in the future!!

I am wishy-washy about this tape. One second I think "I liked it!" and the next minute I think "that was disappointing. . . "

It was, well, your standard Tae Bo! I liked the workout. I felt that it was pretty intense but I am WAY de-conditioned to Tae Bo workouts so that probably factored in. It wasn't a total intensity, go-go-go every minute workout (like I hear, via the grapevine, that the blue advanced tape in this series is). There is enough marching, shuffling, and half time movements interspersed with the intense stuff that it would probably feel fairly moderate to someone who is conditioned to kickboxing. I think the reason I swing back and forth about this video is that the workout was FUN and intense and I liked it. But the music was so-so. In fact, I hardly noticed it. When I previewed TB AL 8 which I recently got in trade, I could hardly stay on the couch because the MUSIC was so fun!! So I have a preconceived notion that Tae Bo = great music. In this case, I still really liked the workout, BUT it was just less inspiring without the great music. There was still Billy, talking to the camera, gettin' in your face! It was motivating in that sense. But it just didn't make my feet want to hop and jump like some of the Live series.

The workout was excellent, it started with a 6 minute vigorous warmup. As Billy is prone to do, he just jumps right into it instead of TRULY warming you up (which my reluctant body wasn't ready for this morning!), then goes into a nice series of Tae Bo stretches. The workout itself (excluding the warmup) is 49 minutes and (true confessions time) I couldn't do it all! He does some standing glute and ab work interspersed in the aerobic section but you definitely stay aerobic or close to it during that stuff. About 42 minutes into the workout he stops you cold at the bottom of a plie squat and proceeds to keep you there for 51 long, long seconds. One guy is making horrible faces which made me want to laugh ("hey I'm a GIRL and I don't have to make faces like that!!" --of course, I didn't stay for the whole 51 seconds, either. . . I guess my theory is that if you have to make faces THAT horrible you should either be in labor, or if exercising you should take a water break. It made me laugh which broke the concentration it was taking to stay there!). Then you go into a brief floorwork section. At the end is a power move that was, well, fun to watch anyway (yowza!), then you go into a tai chi cooldown that is WAY too short, some stretches, and a motivational speech by Billy.

Tae Bo is so endearingly quirky. . . Yeah the warmup is too suddenly intense and the cooldown astonishingly inadequate, but we're all educated enough consumers to deal with modifying that if we need to. Overall I felt like this was a good abs and glutes workout, and a fairly long, fairly high intensity aerobic workout (probably moderate to confirmed Tae Bots) that was enjoyable to do. The only real disappointment was the lack of good, driving music.