Diane Gausepohl
I picked up this 1993 video off a discount rack, and I was surprised to see
that it hadn't been reviewed before.
The workout comes in just over 30 min. The setting is generic aerobics
studio and the music generic aerobic mix, which I only noticed once or
twice. It starts with a 4 min warmup and stretch, followed by 12 min of
easy low impact aerobics, designed for the old and excessively safe ACOG
guidelines, with two heart rate checks. There is a 3 min cooldown with
another heart rate check, and then 8 min of floorwork, including glutes,
adductor and abductor lifts, and abs. Then there's 4 min with pelvic tilts,
kegels and a closing light stretch.
Neither advanced exercisers nor choreo fans will find much for them here,
and many exercisers may want to repeat the aerobics section to feel like
they got much of a workout at all. She did get my heart going slightly
faster than Madeleine Lewis's Buns of Steel Pregnancy Workout, but in order
to do that I had to make the movements a lot bigger. She keeps her feet
close and her knees shallow most of the time, and her shuffling "grapevine"takes up about the same space as most instructor's out-out-in-in move. Nor
does she tell you to use your back to intensify your arm movements. On the
other hand, it does make for a good apartment video.
Her lower body work ignores the quads and the hams, but I can live with
that, most of my other videos give short work to the inner and outer thighs.
For abs, she shows two variations, shallow crunches that I had no trouble
doing while six months pregnant, and abs contractions while lying on the
side. Myself, I find abs contractions more effective when on my hands and
knees working against gravity.
She packs a fair bit into her 30 minutes, and since I so often have energy
only for a short workout, this one is a keeper for me. At least for the
next three months...
Instructor comments:
Her manner was professional, but her cueing was sometimes a bit late, and if
her form had used deeper knees, the exercises would have been a lot more
effective.
Heather Fraser
1/11/01
