Switch!

This week I’m trying out Deante Dance – a sort of modern dance workout with a live soft jazz duo (piano and drums). Imagine the kind of live music they play in high-end department stores, with a little more percussion.

It seems like most dance workout DVDs are either hip-hop or Latin dancing, neither of which is really my thing, so I was excited to try something new.

Deante Dance has five different workouts on two DVDs. The First Timers workout runs 32 minutes, and is purportedly the beginner workout. The Fun-dation workout runs 46 minutes. The name of the 40-minute Dance Sculpt workout implies that it’s focused on strength training, but it seemed suspiciously like the other two dance workouts.

On the second DVD, Hottie Body is an intermediate dance workout that runs 43 minutes, and Core Builder Abs is a 30-minute workout focusing on more traditional ab exercises. The only thing resembling dancing in the Core Builder Abs workout is during the warmup.

I should have known I was in trouble the first time I watched the Core Movements section of the First Timers workout. The aim of this section is to introduce you to all the dance moves that will be used in the First Timers workout.

The problem was that they demonstrated each move for about 10-15 seconds, while talking about the muscles that were being used, but without explaining in any detail what you were supposed to be doing.

So you’d be listening to this muscles discussion while trying to visually dissect what the dancer was doing … all in a few seconds. Apparently even my learning skills are uncoordinated, because I had a lot of trouble processing this info.

I struggled even more once I started the workout and was supposed to be actually doing the moves. I’m not that good at dancing under any circumstances, and for some reason I had a lot of trouble with the moves in the First Timers workout.

The problem was exacerbated by the timing of instructor Karen Gayle’s cuing. Sometimes when she told you to switch to the other side, she meant to switch immediately; sometimes it meant to switch after you’d done one more on the current side.

I couldn’t figure out which “Switch!” commands meant now, and which meant later, so I spent a lot of time facing the wrong direction, muttering “Oops” and getting turned back to the left just in time for everyone else to make the switch to the right … so I’d still be on the wrong side.

I spent most of the week trying to get through the first workout (the First Timers workout, for total beginners!), and getting increasingly frustrated.

Midway through the week, I was ready to rate this one a 2. It would have been 1 star, but I have to admit it was kind of fun pretending like I was part of a flash mob at Nordstrom.

On the last day, I tried one of the other workouts (“The Fun-dation”) and found it much easier to keep up. I made it through the entire workout in one relatively frustration-free session. This improved my overall rating of Deante Dance quite a bit.

I ran out of time to try doing any of the other three workouts on the DVDs, but I did at least preview them to see what they were like.

It turns out that all of the workouts spend a couple of minutes at the beginning showing the core movements, not just the First Timers workout. So, there’s some repetition there, but none of the demonstrations go into enough detail for me.

I would have preferred to have a separate segment where they spent a few minutes on each movement, rather than a few seconds, where I could really have a chance to understand the move and practice it myself.

All the workouts have a nice long warmup and and cool down, incorporating non-traditional moves. I enjoyed the warmup and cooldown segments more than the actual dancing in some cases.

There is one dancer in the group showing modifications, and the pace of the music means the moves aren’t too fast. Gayle does a great job mirroring the movements and telling you what’s coming up next. If it wasn’t for the timing issue of her “Switch!” commands, the cuing would be pretty good.

Even though it’s “just dancing”, you definitely feel the effects the next day. I like an ab workout in disguise – one that works the abs without involving any actual crunches.

My main takeaway here is that it’s too bad I spent so much of the week on the one frustrating (First Timer) workout. I sure wish I’d “switched” to one of the other workouts sooner. This one will stay in my rotation, because I want to try out the other three workouts on the DVD.