Whirling Dervish

After trying out this week’s DVD selection, Soul Sweat, I have come to three conclusions:

1. The didgeridoo is underutilized in workout music.
2. Flowing pants are a must for dance-related exercise.
3. I’m not sure I’m quite ready for this DVD.

You may remember me talking about my Joyful Dancing Friend (JDF) in a previous review. Soul Sweat seems tailor-made for her. Ethnic music, flowing garments, and dance.

According to Oxygen Magazine, it’s “a beautiful rhythmic fitness journey”. Less poetically, it’s a dance exercise DVD.

There are two dance workouts on the DVD; a 45-minute full workout, and a 30-minute quick workout that appears to be just a subset taken from the middle of the full workout. There is also a 14-minute yoga-based stretching segment, and a much-needed tutorial of the dance moves used in the workouts.

Instructor Chantal Pierrat is by herself in the tutorial, and leads a group of six dancers in the workouts. This includes one poor guy in the back who looks about as spastic as I feel doing this workout. I think his sole purpose is to make uncoordinated people like me feel better about their performance.

The first day I did this DVD, I started with the tutorial, and felt like that was a workout in itself. Once it was over, I started the short workout, but only made it through about 10 minutes before I got confused … and I was tired from the tutorial anyways (I can rationalize with the best of them).

The next day, I started with the shorter workout again, and made it through about 20 minutes before I got confused. The moves from the beginning of the workout were starting to look more familiar.

Then I tried the longer workout, and got confused pretty early on, but I persevered long enough to at least recognize that the short workout was just pulled directly out of the middle of the long workout.

After that, I got smarter. Each song on the DVD goes with a different set of dance moves, and there are chapters built into the DVD for each song. So, I could pick a couple of songs where the moves didn’t seem as difficult, and make that my workout.

Each day, I would do the two songs at the beginning of the short workout, and then switch to the stretching segment. I particularly liked these two songs because the focus was more on the leg movements, and you were just supposed to wave your arms around in whatever way struck your fancy, which was appealing to me. I’m an expert arm flailer.

I figure that once these two dances become super easy (it could happen!), I can switch one or both out with a different song/dance segment. Eventually, I could be good at all of them.

You definitely need to learn the dances though. All the dances move pretty quickly, instructor Pierrat does not mirror the moves, and she relies heavily on the names of the moves that she introduced in the tutorial.

She’ll just call out “Earth Walk”, often after she’s already started doing it, and you’re struggling to remember what Earth Walk is for the first few repetitions (it’s not like the Moon Walk, for those that are wondering).

Even though it can be difficult to keep up with the instructor, I think this DVD will stay in my rotation. The payoff for getting the moves right seems worth the extra effort. If you can get it right often enough to keep the frustration levels down, then this workout is just plain fun.

You’re moving fast, you’re caught up in the music, the pant legs are flying (gotta get me some flowing workout pants!) … this is joyful dancing at its best.