Irreconcilable Differences

This week’s workout DVD, Tai Chi Balanced Workout, aims to please fans of both tai chi and kickboxing with a fusion workout featuring both disciplines.

Bringing the two types of martial arts together are two instructors: Janis Saffell leads the kickboxing exercises, and my favorite Scott Cole leads the tai chi exercises. I’d never heard of Janis Saffell, but judging from the DVD case design, she’s the big star here.

The instructors switch off throughout the workout. The 10-minute warmup includes tai chi stretches led by Cole and more traditional warmup exercises led by Saffell. This is followed by 28 minutes of kickboxing and tai chi intervals, then 8 minutes of strength training, and 8 minutes of stretching – again, with the instructors alternating throughout.

Combining kickboxing and tai chi seems like a great idea in theory, but in practice, the workout has kind of a split personality. You are jumping back and forth between disciplines and teaching styles every few minutes.

Couple that with some abrupt transitions (plus my copy had some scratches which made for a few very abrupt transitions), and somewhat awkward forced chemistry between the two instructors … and you end up with a workout that feels very disjointed.

I liked the tai chi segments in the workout, of course; there was a lot that I recognized from other DVDs of Cole’s. This is the DVD where I found out that Cole’s tai chi is not ‘real’ tai chi. I’m not sure that this matters to me; I’m not pursuing it as a martial art, I’m pursuing it as a fun way to exercise and reduce stress. For that, it’s just right.

Plus, you’ve got to appreciate a guy who sets tai chi moves to disco music.

It was also very interesting to see the tai chi used in a more ‘martial’ way. During the warmup, Cole did traditional slow-moving tai chi exercises, but during the intervals, he sped up the pace and showed how to do punches and kicks the tai chi way.

The kickboxing segments were a lot tougher, at least for me. I did enjoy the ‘slow kickboxing’ segments at the beginning, where each kick and punch was performed multiple times at a much slower speed (tai chi speed). This enabled me to really understand the moves and focus on having good form.

Once it got up to tempo though, I found it really hard to keep up. It just moved too quickly, and like with Cole’s tai chi segments, there was not a lot of time for instruction.

Plus, the kickboxing moves were just plain difficult, requiring a lot of core strength and stamina. Saffell was even trying to work her abs in the cooldown/stretch segment. That woman is hard core (both literally and figuratively).

All the pivoting was really tough on the ankles and knees too … not just with Safell’s kickboxing, but also with a couple of Cole’s tai chi moves. Keep that in mind if you’ve got any joint issues.

Ideally, I’d have liked to skip over some of the really ankle-twisting segments. It was disappointing that the DVD was just chaptered at major sections, so you couldn’t easily skip past individual segments. I did find that my enthusiasm for the workout skyrocketed if I fast forwarded through a few of the segments with more complicated choreography.

This is not a beginner DVD. Neither instructor did a whole lot of explaining of technique. The cuing was easier to follow in the tai chi sequences, because as Cole mentioned in the DVD, tai chi moves slowly enough that you have time to correct.

It helped a lot that I had done Scott Cole’s Discover Tai Chi: AM/PM Workouts DVD too. I recommend getting more familiar with the moves using that DVD before attempting this one. Perhaps if I had done other Janis Saffell workouts, that familiarity would have propelled me through the workout like it did with the tai chi segments.

The strength training had some very interesting variations on traditional strength exercises (most notably the tai chi-inspired squats). Again, they were very complex moves, but you are moving slowly enough that after a few run-throughs, you start to get the hang of them.

It’s pretty clear that I liked the tai chi parts of this DVD better than the kickboxing parts. Somebody else might have the opposite preference, but I don’t know that very many people would like the two parts equally.

I would have liked to see menu options with some different breakdowns of the workout, so you could have more variation and possibly some shorter workouts.

For example, have a menu option that only plays the Saffell sequences, and another that only plays the Cole sequences. Have a menu option for a strength workout, that only plays the slow sequences plus the strength segment. Have a menu option for a cardio workout, that only plays the up-tempo sequences and leaves out the strength segment.

As it is, the only option given was to do it all: play the whole 54-minute workout straight through, with kickboxing and tai chi; cardio, strength, and relaxation. This makes for a long workout, with something for everyone to dislike.

I think these two disciplines, two workout styles, and two instructors are so different that the sum of the parts ends up being less than the whole. I’d rather be able to more easily pick out just the pieces that are more valuable to me, instead of spending so much time fast forwarding.

So, how do I reconcile the 4-star slow segments and 2-star fast segments of Tai Chi Balanced Workout? I split the difference and give it 3 stars.