I purchased the tape for $4.99 at Best Buy. The date
on the box is 1987. The box gives this breakdown of the
exercise segment times: 8 minutes of warm-up, 25 minutes
of aerobics. A cool down and muscle toning with another
cool down follow the aerobics but no breakdown of time is
given for these segments and I haven't timed it! The set
is a decorated exercise room and Judi is the instructor.
Five other Jazzercise instructors are exercising with her
including a guy. The production quality is excellent.
I've noticed that Judi makes very few mistakes in her
videos. They are closely choreographed and
well-rehearsed. The music is your garden variety
instrumental jazz music with an attempt to theme it up
and enliven it by giving it a slight country or calypso
sound, just to name two examples.
I would rate this
as intermediate. The warm-up is an active one i.e. you do
isolation exercises like moving your rib cage from side
to side while side stepping your feet at the same time.
One segment intersperses the Twist with other moves. A
little bit of the Twist seems to be standard on
Jazzercise videos. Since they are interspersing it with
flick kicks, etc., I find it easy to ignore the Twist
which I feel is bad for my knees and just carry on with
the other moves in time to the music. One segment is
really extra good for raising your heart rate. It
includes a lot of knee repeaters. I was wearing
gloveweights and so I had to make my arm movements
smaller because the repeaters were already doing enough
for my heart rate! As always, one of the exercisers is
clearly doing Judi's light or low impact version. During
one segment the exercisers give their names while leading
the exercise briefly. It's a solid, dependable, fairly
standard Jazzercise workout. Judy is an excellent cuer
and friendly but not shouting and vamping like in her
earlier videos. I miss that!
The toning section includes some standard crunches
and leg lifts. Not too exciting. The fun part of the
toning is a balance segment. Judi has you standing on one
leg e.g. you raise one of your legs 3 times and on the
4th time hold it up and balance. I enjoyed that segment
which occurs right after aerobics. The stretches are
good. For $4.99 this tape was an excellent buy. Some may
disagree with my intermediate rating but if you wear
gloveweights and make your motions big and do the arm
movements, it's definitely itermediate.
Yvonne Delamater
4/97
