Joy Bauer's Slimdown Workout

Joy Bauer works out beside Lisa Wheeler, who actually leads this workout in a large open room with pillars. The dvd has two 20 min w/o's and a 5 min warmup and 5 min cooldown. You can play all or select a portion if you are short on time. Workout 1 requires no equipment (I used weights) and workout 2 utilizes dumbbells.

Workout One: Lisa & Joy alternate cardio and strength moves such as: side lunges, grapevine boogie, curtsy dip, pushups, planks, bridges, and crunches. Lisa adds in balance moves & ups the cardio intensity to keep your body guessing & to push you that much harder. I rate this workout beginner- but you can easily use dumbbells to up the strength work.

Workout Two: This w/o is structured like w/o in that you alternate cardio & strength, and adds in balance challenges & cardio intensifiers. Moves include: tri kick back w/ toe tap, step kick w/ hop, upright row & pliet, planks, crunches, pec fly & bridges, 1 legged tri dips, squat with clean & press, low back work, lat row -knee drop, ham curls, etc. I rate this workout intermediate.

While some of the moves are compound- the poundage (in w/o 2) is always appropriate for both moves. The other moves allowed me to heavy up, but were at a quick enough pace to get my heart rate up- (using heavy dumbbells helps up the HR too). If you wanted to kick this up a notch: up your poundage, do the higher impact mods from the get go, add weights to w/o 1, etc. I liked the flow of this workout and found (w/o 2 in particular) solid. This is a great dvd for a beginner: master w/o one and then move up and work on workout 2. I received this dvd for review.