Crunch: Fat Burning Blast

The cardio portion of this workout is broken into three segments, each representing one of Crunch's most popular fitness classes: Latin Grooves, Cardio Tae Box and Sweatshop. Each segment is about 10-12 minutes long and ends in a one-minute "power burst" of more intense activity. The Latin Grooves segment has easy-to-learn choreography and lots of hip action. Cardio Tae Box is fun, but could have used some actual kicking. I normally turn the knee chambers into front kicks for added intensity. Sweatshop is an old-school hi-lo class, with grapevines, ham curls and V-steps. There's nothing fancy or tricky here, just classic moves designed to keep you motivated and keep you moving. After the cool-down, there's a four-minute abdominal segment which packs a lot into the time available but could maybe stand to be a couple of minutes longer.

This has rapidly become one of my favourite workouts because it packs a lot of cardio variety into a fairly short (48 minute) workout and is almost ridiculously easy to follow. Because I don't have to struggle with complex choreography, I can really focus on my intensity. It doesn't hurt that the class is less whoopy and annoying than the typical Crunch video class.