Renew You: Sleek and Lean

Tracey Mallett
Year Released: 2006

Categories: Ballet/Barre, Pilates/Core Strength , Total Body Workouts


In this DVD, Pilates instructor and personal trainer Tracey Mallett offers a full-body workout which blends various styles, including ballet, yoga, and Pilates. She notes during her introduction that as a busy mother of two herself, she has created this workout so that it can be used in parts for when you are short on time. The Main Menu of the DVD offers the following options: Introduction to Renew You--Full Workout--Pick Your Workout (chapters)--Bonus Features (a breakdown of abs work and trailers of other workouts)--Credits. Tracey is exercising outdoors on location at a classic hotel, and she is joined by two background exercisers, Stephanie and Broni (who shows modifications for some of the exercises). I have broken down each segment of the workout in detail below.

Warm-Up: Revitalizing Yoga (7 minutes)
This entire segment is performed seated in a chair. The moves focus mainly on warming up the spine--e.g., side bends, body rolls, contractions. Tracey concludes the warm-up with some brief legs work (maintaining a "c-curve" position with the spine) and hip flexor stretches.

Ballet Barre (14.5 minutes)
Tracey and crew use a chair for this segment. The initial moves--which include plies in parallel, first, and second positions--feel fairly easy, as Tracey doesn't do many repetitions, and she keeps switching from side to side. However, she gradually adds a bit more intensity: balance holds, side lunges with lifts, rear lifts, and rear attitude lift. She finishes with a side leg lift plus standing crunch to work the legs AND the obliques.

Power Yoga (13 minutes)
In this section, Tracey and her friends have their mats placed perpendicular to the viewer. Tracey basically cues two full sun salutation sequences, moving at an unhurried pace. For the first round, she includes modified plank (on knees), baby cobra, warrior 1, warrior 2, and side angle pose (which she refers to as triangle). For the second round, Tracey again does a modified plank, baby cobra, warrior 2, and side angle, but this time, she also adds in wide-legged forward bend, including a twist here. She returns to downward dog and jumps forward to standing to finish.

Abs and Buns (19.5 minutes)
This challenging segment begins with some Pilates-inspired abs work; Tracey includes the single leg stretch and a version of the Pilates frog exercise. Moving to a side-lying position, she performs a series of leg extensions which target both the core and the glutes. From a seated position, Tracey does the pretzel, a move borrowed from barre-type classes such as Lotte Berk, made quite challenging here by using no arms. She concludes this segment with the Pilates teaser, both 1-legged and the full version.

Upper Body Sculpt (15 minutes)
Although the menu lists this segment as Upper Body Sculpt, Tracey calls it the upper body and back section, which seems more appropriate. She begins in a prone position for a series of various back extensions. After a brief rest in child's pose, Tracey transitions to down dog and then to plank. From here, she does several sets of push-ups Pilates style: she starts with 1, comes to standing, goes back down for 2, comes back up, etc., for a total of 4. Additional work for arms includes table, triceps dips, and reverse plank. A few very brief (about 2 minutes) stretches conclude the workout; these include seated butterfly stretch, seated wide-legged forward bend, and a triceps stretch.

Overall, I liked this workout, but I wound up feeling that Tracey tried to do a bit too much with it, especially at almost 70 minutes long. The yoga segment in particular felt completely unnecessary; it's not a bad segment, it just didn't seem in sync with the barre/Pilates focus of the rest of the workout. And while I liked the short back work in the back and arms segment (most of us don't focus enough on counteracting all of the spinal extension that we do--e.g., from sitting, driving, working at the computer, etc.), the arms work felt pretty insignificant to me, so I think that entire segment could have probably been left out as well.

But, I DID think that Tracey did a great job with both the lower body and the abs work. Although the standing barre work didn't feel that tough, it kind of sneaks up on you, and I think if I had done the Abs & Buns segment immediately after the Ballet Barre (i.e., instead of with the yoga in-between), I definitely would have felt even more of a challenge. So, in the end, although I might not use this entire DVD, I am still glad I purchased it, and I would recommend it to others.

Instructor Comments:
This is the first time I have tried Tracey in a long time, since she was doing "The Method" DVDs. Back then, I tried one of her workouts and did like her but thought that her cuing (on the Method kickboxing DVD I tried) was awful. Apparently, she has improved over the years, because I had no problems with her cuing here: she did a very nice job providing mirrored cues throughout the workout. Overall, I think that most viewers would find her to be very warm, likable, and approachable.

Beth C (aka toaster)

02/20/2011