Self Firm Flat Abs Fast!

I love ab work and I've been a fan of Violet Zaki since Crunch's "Cardio Sculpt" so I had high expectations for this workout. It did not disappoint me.

The workout begins with a warm-up that includes standing ab work with a dumbbell. Standing work is my least favorite approach to abs, but I thoroughly enjoy this routine.

The second series is stability ball with a variety of standing and floor exercises. I especially like the reverse crunches with the ball held between your legs. I can really feel it hitting my lower abs.

Both the warm-up and the stability ball sections include some lunges. Lunges usually bother my knees, but I haven't had any trouble with these sections, maybe because they are either moderately-paced or held, stationery lunges.

The next series is pilates. I'm not a pilates expert but I love that the exercises here are a bit different such as leg circles with both legs. I find this version easier to do effectively and can really feel it in my abs, much more so than the standard single leg circles. I love that the bicycle twist is done slowly and held to a count of four. For an ab lover like myself this is candy!

The last series of exercises is yoga-based. It includes plank and side plank work, an interesting combo of boat with toe taps, and some cobra and locust inspired back work. There's one lovely side stretch with your legs tucked to one side where you raise one arm and slowly bring it down and thread it through your supporting arm that I just love. It's simple, feel-good elements like this that, for me, make the workout fly by.

I used to skip the cool down but have since realized that it's so short there's no reason to not do it. It's just a few minutes of some simple twists and stretches.

The workout is filmed on a beach with two background exercisers. One shows modifications. From warm-up through cool down is about 27 minutes with the chapters running about 6 minutes each (the cool down is shorter). The chaptering allows you to select one or more sections but I've found that once I get started I don't want to stop. It's a good 25 minutes of lower intensity, non-traditional ab work. If you're the type of exerciser who likes fast-paced crunches a la Cathe or the Firm then this workout is probably not be for you. But if you are looking for a fun way to work your abs I can't think of anything better.

Violet starts off using a weight for the ab workouts. No advice is given on poundage for it though. These exercise concentrate on the obliques. Then she does stabilty ab exercises. Nothing really new here, mostly crunches. The next segment is Pilates inspired. Then yoga, using planks. I also liked the yoga section. The segments move right along so I had a bit of difficulty in moving the weight and ball out of the way quickly to go on to the Pilates and Yoga parts. There is a warm up and cool down for the DVD.

The "bonus" cardio (which was about 4 1/2 min) was fun. Wish she'd do a whole video off of that. She did high and low impact squats, a v step, knees up. Should be longer.Violet was alone in the cardio section.

The two background exercisers don't say anything. One shows some modifications. Beatiful scenery as it is filmed on a beach.

J'Ann

The workout was a bunch of different core styles chained together.

Tough, but not something I will reach for again, given my strong collection of TLP (and soon, TLT) workouts.