Weight Loss Cardio Sculpt, Acacia, 54 minutes, DVD, $14.99. Available at Amazon.com, www. acaciacatalog.com and other retailers.
The mailbox has been bursting with fitness DVDs featuring "cardio," fitness-speak for cardiovascular exercise, all promising to help a person take off unwanted poundage by revving up the metabolism. The mind reels and eyes spin wildly at the seemingly limitless proliferation of such resources. We do live in the land of plenty.
From this mailbox melange, we have somehow managed to cull Violet Zaki's Weight Loss Cardio Sculpt, happily discovering that it successfully mixes cardiovascular activity with strength- and muscle-building exercises. Zaki, a fitness trainer in New York, understands that revving up the metabolism involves more than performing set periods of aerobic activity. She gets that people need to build muscle to sustain a higher calorie burn during the non-exercise periods that make up most of our daily lives. And she knows that strength-training involving muscle groups is efficient timewise and functional lifewise.
The two routines - totaling 54 minutes if done consecutively or 34 minutes each if performed separately - are labeled "Pure Sculpt" and "Interval Calorie Burn," but both intersperse "cardio blasts" with a blend of Pilates, yoga-like and free-weight exercises (which you can do without weights or with 3- to 5-pound dumbbells). It's a formula that works well, with the blasts of aerobic activity providing a respite from the intensity of the "sculpting" exercises, strange as that may sound to some.
The workouts, each including 14 minutes of warm-up and cooldown, are solid and challenging for all but the most conditioned of exercisers. Beginners may find the exercises difficult to undoable, but will be pleased to know that less-challenging alternatives of most movements are demonstrated during each workout. For example, the alternative to an overhead dumbbell press performed while standing on one leg is to keep both legs firmly on the floor.
Many exercises are done on one leg, which Zaki explains enables you to develop or improve your balance while also burning calories and building muscles. Multitasking to the max - while you're doing a lunge on one leg with the other extended behind you, you are also performing front and lateral lifts with the dumbbells.
The point of all these combos, as well as the cardiovascular intervals of sidesteps and marching and more, is to "get you out of your comfort zone," Zaki explains. That may put some exercisers out as far as Australia, but these folks may take heart in that the alternative versions allow them, again, to keep both feet on the floor and perform traditional squats or lunges while doing some kind of upper-body work with the dumbbells.
The routines also involve floorwork, including our favorite move - biceps curls performed while balanced on the most rounded portion of the buttocks with legs raised to a 45-degree or more angle. This is a total body experience, in a good way. (Note: When Zaki describes a movement as a "doozy," brace yourself.)
Zaki offers clear instructions for everything, although she obviously expects viewers to already know the difference between exercises like squat and side squat, and preacher and hammer curls. Even if you don't, it's OK. You can pick it up from watching her and the two other exercisers, who perform with excellent form.
In a land of "cardio" plenty, one good DVD can be enough. Weight Loss Cardio Sculpt ably qualifies.
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