Rules of Fat-Burning

In this video, instructor Kathy Smith has taken portions of her previously released workouts, chaptered them, and organized them on one nice, programmable DVD. The excellent chapter menu allows you to choose amongst each of the six workouts offered, and you can program them to play in any order you would like, doing just one workout or all six. The six workouts are comprised of two "long slow" cardio segments, two interval cardio segments, and two weight training workouts. Full descriptions are provided below.

1) Long Slow 1, Low Impact (20 minutes). This workout comes from the Timesaver Cardio Fat Burner video. Kathy uses mostly basic steps--eg, v-step, knee lift, hamstring curls, grapevines, etc.--but the choreography becomes a bit more complicated as the segment continues, and Kathy frequently takes it from the top. However, the moves are fun, and it's a high-energy workout.

2) Long Slow 2, Kickboxing (15 minutes). This segment is taken from the first half of Kathy's Kickboxing Workout. She leads simple drills using the jab and cross punches plus front and side kicks. Some jump kicks are included, and there's also an easy combination towards the end.

3) Interval 1, Functional Fitness (20 minutes). This workout comes from Functionally Fit Peak Fat Burning, and it alternates two minute high intensity intervals with lower intensity recovery periods. During the latter, you get in a bit of lower body strengthening with moves such as squats and lunges. Overall, this program is more athletic-like, less fun.

4) Interval 2, Jump Rope (17 minutes). This segment comes from Aerobox, a video Kathy did with boxer Michael Olijade, who leads the workout. Michael takes you through progressively more difficult jump rope variations. One of the background exercisers follows along without the jump rope.

5) Weights, Upper Body (20 minutes). This segment comes from Timersaver Lift Weights to Lose Weight. Here Kathy uses a dual track system which allows you to lift lighter with more repetitions or lift heavier with breaks between sets. Kathy begins with back work, moves on to chest, biceps, tricpes, and finally shoulders.

6) Weights, Lower Body (20 minutes). This segment is also from Timesaver Lift Weights to Lose Weight. Most of the exercises are performed in a standing position (squats, extensions, etc.) to work your quads and thighs, but it also includes some lying hamstring/glute work using a chair plus just a few back extensions to finish.

Overall, this is a very versatile DVD providing a variety of workout options. However, there are a few minor flaws: 1) there are no warm-ups or cool-downs, so you'll have do some light cardio before as well as some stretching after, and 2) there is no abs work--the 7-minute abs segment from Lift Weights to Lose Weights is excellent, and it's a shame it wasn't included here. Otherwise, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this DVD for advanced beginner to intermediate exercisers.

This dvd is a compilation of sections from Kathy's various other dvds. These sections include:

Upper Body (20 minutes) and Lower Body (20 minutes) from Timesaver Lift Weights to Lose Weight

Cardio (20 minutes) from Functionally Fit Peak Fat-Burning and Cardio (20 minutes) from Timesaver Cardio Fat-Burner

Kicboxing (15 minutes) from Kathy Smith Kickboxing and Jump-Rope (15 minutes) from Aerobox

Others have pointed out on the forum that it lacks any ab work, and does not have a warm-up or cool-down. I did not think this would be an issue for me, but I must admit, I did miss having a warm-up option.

I love the way this dvd is set up. There is a really interesting little intro section where Kathy explains about fat-burning and why you need both long slow and high-intensity workouts. She glosses over the importance of weight training a little, but otherwise I enjoyed this section. Then to use the dvd, you program in your choices using a well-designed menu. One thing I really appreciated was the fact that it lets you pick the same option more than once if you wish. So you could for example make this a decent-length split routine by choosing upper body twice if 20 minutes feels too short for you. The weight training section also uses an interesting dual track format where you can do less reps at higher weight or mroe reps at lower weight. So if you wanted to program it twice and follow a different track each time, you could do that.

This dvd gives you so many great workout options. For example, for a 20-minute workout you could choose upper, lower or any of the cardio options. For a 40-minute workout, you could choose upper and lower, upper and a cardio option, lower and a cardio option or two cardio options.

I already had Timesaver Weights on dvd, but I figured this would be a good upgrade because it still has both the upper and lower body sections from Timesaver, but I get some cardio stuff too. So this dvd pretty much lived up to my expectations. I would have liked some warm-up though.