Chuck Norris
This video is divided into 3 parts: an instructional section, a short "interval aerobic" workout, and a demonstration of more advanced techniques.
INSTRUCTION:
A 60 minute segment which covers stance, balance, basic punches, kicks and elbow strikes. The women in the class range from beginner to advanced, though the techniques shown are all basic. Chuck emphasizes that the goal of learning these techniques is to allow time to escape any attack situations, not to continue to beat up on your attacker.
WORKOUT:
Rated as begin/inter by Collage, but it's very short (21 minutes) and anyone at an intermediate level will probably need to tack it on to something else. There really isn't a warmup or cooldown, so this is pretty easy to do. The "interval" aspect of the workout comes from varying the speed/power fo the punches and strikes, but the faster segments don't last very long and it probably won't have an interval effect for anyone except a beginner. Intense Moves this is not.
The segments are as follows:
- front punches and front kicks
- palm strikes and roundhouse kicks
- spearhands and heel stomps
- forward elbow strikes, elbow strikes to the solar plexus, and back elbow strikes to the head
- front kicks and front elbow strikes
DEMONSTRATION:
Chuck is joined by Benny Urquidez, another professional kickboxer, to demonstrate more advanced techniques. Then Sara Urquidez (the advanced student from the workout) demonstrates how to protect oneself from an attacker, which she apparently did successfully at one point in her life. There was one pretty funny segment during this where Chuck's response to what Sara did was to make a face and say "ei". This is not a woman you would want to mess with.
General:
The set looks like you're on the roof of a very pastel building. The music is fairly inocuous synthesizer stuff with a lot of percussion.
I really like this tape. It does a great job of showing proper technique and the workout, though not very advanced cardiovascularly, is easy to add into other short workouts. I would highly recommend this tape to beginning exercisers or intermediates who want to be sure they are learning proper form.
Instructor comments: Chuck does an excellent job of explaining the moves. He's serious, but in a good way. He has tons more personality than the instructors on the other kickboxing videos I own (Stephanie Steele and Lisa Gaylord) and I wish he would put out a more advanced video to follow up on this one.
Karen Nagel
7/13/98
