Dogs and Cats and Snakes, Oh My!

This week’s selection, Budokon Beginning Practice, had two strikes against it before it even got started.

First, according to the insert in the DVD, this is part of the Eastern Practice Series, which includes T’ai Chi Beginning Practice and Qigong Beginning Practice … both of which I have previously (and somewhat unfavorably) reviewed.

Second, the DVD blurb read very much like an infomercial. I felt like I was being sold snake oil. One of the claims on the box is that the workout will make you “feel invincible”. I am not making this up.

So, I was already kind of predisposed to dislike it, but I had a week, so I tried to give it a fair shot.

Budokon appears to be something that instructor Cameron Shayne made up, which is a combo of power yoga, martial arts, and meditation. The blurb makes it sound like a revolutionary new fitness technique, but in reality, it’s just warming up with sun salutation variations, followed by some standard martial arts punches and kicks, and ending with a guided meditation.

There is a 39-minute “full workout”, plus a “short” workout which seems to be the same workout with the extra instruction bits cut out, and a pose guide, which spends 30-60 seconds on each move used in the workouts, explaining the form and technique.

I started with the 17-minute pose guide, thinking that this was a valuable way to learn about the moves before doing the workout. I got a little concerned when I saw how many of the yoga pose demonstrations started from the downward dog position (this turned out to be a valid concern, since every other yoga pose in the full workout seemed to be downward dog).

The martial arts section of the pose guide was a little more useful for me, since I don’t have a lot of prior experience with those moves. Instructor Shayne fit a lot of info into 30-60 seconds, giving plenty of detail about the stance, the movements, and the breathing for each move.

It would have been nice to have more time built in to the pose guide for me to practice the move myself before moving on to the next one, but that’s what the pause button is for.

You can also access the pose guide from the full workout, so if in the middle of the workout, you can’t figure out how to do a Cat Stance Front Kick, you can go right to the appropriate part of the pose guide for more info.

The full workout consists of 20 minutes of yoga warmup, 15 minutes of martial arts, and a 4-minute guided meditation. The “short” workout is the same as the full workout, but with some of the instruction segments removed.

Cutting out the instruction shortens the workout considerably … down to 27 minutes (15 minutes of yoga, 10 minutes of martial arts, and 2 minutes of meditation). This is great for people who know what they’re doing, but needless to say, I stuck with the maximum instruction version.

Like with the other DVDs in this series, the movements are not mirrored. This was one of my main issues with both T’ai Chi for Beginners and Qigong for Beginners. It was less of an issue here, perhaps because of my familiarity with the yoga poses, or perhaps because I wasn’t looking at the screen and was just listening to which foot he told me to use.

It was even easier with the martial arts segment, as they did all moves on the right side, and then went through the whole martial arts routine again on the left side. So there just weren’t that many chances to get on the wrong foot.

There is one exerciser doing modifications, which is good. What is not so great is that they just cut to a shot of her doing the modification, without verbally describing it. This is a problem if you’re doing a yoga pose where you can’t see the TV (which is 80% of yoga poses). You may not even realize there is a modification available.

During the martial arts moves, they all made hissing snake noises with each punch and kick. This was a source of endless amusement for me, as well as something that seemed appropriate when the DVD blurb made me feel like I was being sold fitness snake oil.

To sum up, I didn’t like the yoga segment (although not because it was especially difficult to follow; it was more the excessive downward dogs); I liked the martial arts segment (the cat stance moves were especially fun); and I thought the whole thing was over-hyped (that’s where the snakes come in, or more specifically, the snake oil).

I might use this DVD again, but would probably choose to do my own yoga warmup, with fewer downward dogs, and possibly more snake noises.