Walk the Walk

This is one of my favorite Leslie videos. It uses wonderful Christian music (includes "He Walks With Me" and "How Great Thou Art") and is filmed in a very open, spacious room with wooden floors. Leslie is joined by two of her walk instructors, one of them being Carol - my favorite of her background exercises. Carol always seems joyful and happy to be there.

The video covers two miles in approximately 30 minutes.

This Hanukkah, my fitness video buddies gave me Donna and Leslie's gospel workouts, which explains how a nice Jewish girl, like myself, ended up with two Christian programs. I wanted to check them both out before putting them on the trade so I could make sure the dvds played okay and other stuff. I've already reviewed the Donna tape, and had fun with Donna's dance party type cardio. Her pilates section was okay, though nothing exceptional and the stretch was very relaxing- a good program. Furthermore, her emphasis was more on general spirituality (though the music was defintiely Christian gospel). So I had high hopes for the Leslie workout, though Leslie and her banter grates on my nerves. This dvd has two workouts- a one mile and a two mile. The one mile is Leslie alone and it is her standard 4 step walk aerobics fare. The volume of the music makes it hard to hear Leslie at times, which may be a bonus to you, depending on how high your tolerance is for Leslie's endless comments. From what I could hear, her comments are about good health, being thankful for family and friends, and trying to be healthy in body mind and spirit- very general spirituality. The second mile has Leslie joined by two buddies and she talks more with them, though she still doesn't have many inside comments, just a few. Leslie ups the religious ante here, there are still some general comments, but she starts getting into more Christian themes, and I started to feel excluded at this point since it didn't speak to my beliefs. Leslie does introduce a few new moves in this section and keeps things moving at a good pace. Leslie also includes a relaxing stretch at the end of mile 2, the first I recall seeing on one of her tapes. She doesn't instruct or offer pointers though, since she has a minister's sermon playing at this point.

Overall, someone looking for "church with sweat" will probably be very pleased with this dvd. Leslie does say a few weird things. At one point, she says something like "c'mon guys, lets go." and then goes on to say she knows her exercisers are girls and they know they're girls or some such thing. It was just really odd, especially since Leslie seemed to think it was so funny. In both workouts, she looks off to the side alot, which seems odd and a bit disconnected. At times, her background exercisers look less than enthused. While Donna had contemporary gospel (I didn't recognise it but liked the beat) with a great beat, Leslie has synthed up church classics. I have many Christian friends and I recognised these songs like Holy Holy Holy and How Great Though Art. Its nothing you'd write home about, but if you like the songs you might be able to look past the less than inspirational renditions presented here. Overall, this is a typical Leslie workout with her standard steps and lots of chatter. i definitely thought this one had a more religious feel than Donna's and I liked the music less. However, someone looking for a workout with a truly church feel and classic hymns will probably prefer this to Donna's, especially if they also want much simpler, easy to follow steps.