Walk This Way
We round out vaguely inappropriate workout month with ShapelyGirl: Walking Fit and Fabulous. I know, it’s pretty weak as far as inappropriateness, but it turns out there are 5 Sundays in August this year, so I had to come up with something. In my defense, ShapelyGirl does sound like a brand of girdle.
The ShapelyGirl series is designed for the plus-sized exerciser. Instructor Debra Mazda once weighed 300 pounds, but lost over 140 pounds and has kept it off for 25 years. Now she and her ShapelyGirl team of plus-sized exercisers are showing others how they can achieve the same goals.
I loved the concept of plus-sized people being active and working out. Mazda and her story are certainly inspirational, and it was neat to see plus-sized people doing a fairly lengthy workout. Mostly I loved that all the exercises were automatically modified to be more doable for plus-sized people.
What I did not love is the way this DVD was broken out into separate workouts on the DVD menu.
The main Fit & Fabulous Workout consists of a 4-minute warmup, 38-minute main walking workout, 3-minute cooldown, 8-minute standing ab workout, 9-minute bonus walk, and a 23-minute Q&A with the exercisers.
That last one is definitely a bonus feature that has no place in the main track. I’d argue that the aptly-named bonus walk also has no place in the main track (… and after you’ve already cooled down, too. Who goes back to cardio after the cooldown?).
The Beginner’s Walk on the main menu is the 4-minute warmup plus the first 9 minutes of the main walking workout. It ends abruptly, in mid-sentence and mid-step, and you are taken back to the main menu. There’s no cooldown, and there’s no good way to get to just the cooldown on the menu. It doesn’t seem very approachable for beginners.
A sub-menu offers four different premixes that string together different components of the main workout. Like with the Beginner’s Walk, there were lost opportunities here; these premixes could have been so much better with a few minor tweaks.
The Quick Fit & Fab Walk premix is the last 29 minutes of the main walking workout, plus the 3-minute cooldown. No warmup.
The Bonus Fit & Fab Walk is the 4-minute warmup, 9-minute bonus walk, and 3-minute cooldown. This one makes the most sense of the pre-mixes, but is pretty short.
The Long Fit & Fab Walk is the 38-minute main walking workout, 9-minute bonus walk, and 3-minute cooldown. Again, no warmup.
Fit & Fab Standing Abs is the 4-minute warmup and the 8-minute ab workout. No cooldown. Maybe a cooldown is not needed for abdominal workouts, but then why was the warmup necessary in this premix?
I didn’t feel like I could easily get the components that I wanted in a workout. None of the premixes made sense to me. In addition, some of the transitions between segments were not smooth, with flashes of other workouts, and missing sound at the beginning of the new segment.
After experimenting with the premixes for a few days (and finding them very frustrating), I just went with the full Fit & Fabulous Workout, but skipped the bonus walk and Q&A. This brought the workout in at 53 minutes – a little lengthy, but doable.
The walking workouts themselves had a lot going for them. The exercises were low impact and didn’t move too quickly for me (with a couple of exceptions). There was no TIFTing (taking it from the top) … at most Mazda would string together two moves at a time.
These were not your basic walking workout moves though; she added some tricky combination moves. The dreaded grapevine made an appearance, but the one that really got me was one that was sort of like a grapevine but with a shuffle in the middle and a curtsey on each side. I never did get the hang of that one.
I found it helped on the trickier combinations to leave out the arm movements and just concentrate on my feet (although even this technique did not help me conquer the shuffle-curtsey grapevine). Thankfully, many of the moves had enough repetitions that I could flail for awhile and then get back on track.
Some of the moves were just fun – my favorite was one called Quick Feet, which was basically gangnam style walking. It’s possible that I added bonus gangnam style arm movements when doing this exercise, but you won’t be able to prove it.
I also seriously loved the standing ab workout. This is a major plus for the plus-sized, who generally do not appreciate lying on the floor being suffocated by their ample bosoms while trying to do crunches. If you can get the same effect without asphyxiation, then that’s the way to go.
The cooldown was unexpectedly mostly arm stretching, not leg stretching. You would think leg stretching would be called for after a leg-focused walking workout.
Throughout all the workouts Mazda did a good job of giving you notice about what was coming next … sometimes she gave too much notice, though. She’d tell us the next move, and I’d think we were going to do it right away, and then I’d think maybe we were starting after four more steps, and then I’d think maybe we were starting after eight more steps … sometimes it was kind of a surprise when we actually started doing the new move.
That was a little frustrating, but there were enough repetitions that I could stutter a little bit and then catch up.
Mazda solved any potential mirroring confusion by just pointing in the direction she was going to go and saying, “I’m going to go this way … everybody with me?” Every time she said this, I wanted to be with her, going that way. Sometimes I even was.
Parts of this workout were a little difficult for me to follow, but I feel like I want to keep doing it until I get the hang of the moves. There’s a great feeling of accomplishment when you figure out a tricky move.
ShapelyGirl: Walking Fit & Fabulous is definitely not the easiest walking workout around, but I think it’s worth the effort to learn how to “walk this way”.