She blinded me with science!
Today’s DVD, I Want That Body!, is brought to you by instructor Tamilee Webb (of Buns of Steel fame). What hooked me was the tagline: The Science of Fitness. Webb worked with scientists to measure how effective each exercise was at working the muscles, in order to maximize the benefit of these short workouts.
The DVD was originally 3 different VHS tapes (I Want Those Abs!, I Want Those Arms!, and I Want Those Buns!), which have been combined onto one DVD. Each VHS tape has a short intro about the science behind the workouts, then two 15-minute workouts (one beginner and one advanced) with the chosen focus (abs, arms, or buns), for a total of six 15-minute workouts. Luckily, the DVD menu allows you to go directly to the workout you want, so you don’t have to watch the science intro every time.
Special features include a diet plan, nutrition tips, and Q&A. I assumed the Q&A would be like an FAQ, but it was actually a quiz to see how much you’d learned. Score one for nerdy fitness!
I started with the Level 1 Arms workout, since arm workouts are generally less fraught with peril than leg workouts. If you think about it, getting your arms tangled up has far less potential to cause lasting damage than getting your legs tangled up.
This was the theory, but the arms workout went almost immediately into the dreaded mambo (can I never escape the mambo?). Since it was just the warmup, I decided to forgive Webb and just do a regular walk instead. Mambo aside, the workout was pretty easy to follow, taking you through a fairly standard set of weight-lifting exercises for the shoulders, biceps, and triceps.
I also really liked that Webb didn’t use 1 LB Barbie weights, and frequently encouraged people to use heavier weights if the exercises were getting too easy. The only trouble I had with this workout was that when switching weights, it didn’t seem like there was always enough time allotted to set down or pick up the weights. Still, it was easy to catch up again.
Two days later I tackled the Level 1 Buns workout. This one was harder for me to follow. It was a grueling sequence of squats and lunges, with many variations on the theme. It was the variations that made it tough, trying to figure out whether this time you were supposed to alternate the lunges with kicks or with knee lifts, or with something else entirely.
In addition to the difficulty in following the workout, this was the toughest one for me in terms of exertion. Clearly I do not have buns of steel. At best, my buns are aluminum.
I saved the Level 1 Abs workout for last, possibly because I hate ab workouts and secretly hoped I’d run out of time to do it. The workout was as expected – a never-ending series of crunches. It could be a little hard to see what instructor Webb was doing while you were lying on the floor, but really, you couldn’t go wrong if you just chose to do more crunches.
The Level 1 Abs workout did sport my new all-time favorite exercise DVD quote though: “If you’re feeling like, I’ve got way too much brains and I need to support my head …”
It was a little disappointing that these workouts, which were so short to begin with, featured so much repetition. Once I thought about it some more though, it is just like traditional weightlifting – you do multiple sets of the same exercise. Also, repetition can be good when you have trouble keeping track of which exercise to do next.
Some of the science in these workouts seemed a little bit suspect, but that could just be due to the age of the DVD. For example, the warm ups and cool downs were so short as to be virtually nonexistent (averaging 2 minutes for warm up and a whopping 45 seconds for cool down), whereas workouts of today place a lot of importance on warming up and cooling down to avoid injury.
I was also surprised to see so much isolation of the muscle groups in these workouts (all arms one day, all abs the next, etc.), when conventional wisdom says that you get the best workout from doing large scale movements that work several different muscle groups at once. This isolation could have just been a marketing tactic to sell 3 VHS tapes instead of one.
Despite these issues, I really liked the science aspect of the workouts. Webb spent a lot of time explaining the muscles that were being worked, and giving tips on good form (including explanations of why it was good form). And she most definitely met her goal of using science to pack the maximum workout into the minimum timeframe.
I probably won’t have buns of steel when this is all over, but I Want That Body! is a solid strength training workout (with a dorky name), and there’s plenty of exercise knowledge to take away from it. As Webb says in the Level 1 Arms workout, “You get smarter each time you do this workout.”