There are two Mindy workouts on this tape . Extreme Intervals is the cardio workout. You will either love or hate Extreme Intervals. Despite its many good qualities, including adorable lovable Mindy herself, I hated it. I've done it four times, because I wanted so badly to learn to like it. There will never be a fifth time.

My biggest turn-off is that Mindy is a late or non-existent cuer. You either adjust to it or you get frustrated. I tend to get frustrated. Another negative: this workout is the highest-impact workout I own. A lot of the step moves require you to jump off the step and land on the floor at very high speed, so you don't have time to make the moves plyometric and cushion some of the shock. Ouch. On my carpet over cement basement, I feel as if my feet are on fire. Consider this fair warning. For context: I generally love high impact workouts and I am even a 15-20 mile a week runner, so I can handle a fair amount of impact. This is too much impact for me. The first time I did this workout, my feet hurt for 2 weeks.

Don't get me wrong, this is NOT a bad video. There are many exercisers who will love it. It has lots of good things going for it, such as: the choreography is simple, but enjoyable and the format is really easy to break up into 2 or even 3 shorter interval workouts. You keep changing what you're doing, so it's impossible to get bored. There are intervals with the step horizontal; intervals with the step vertical; and intervals with no step at all. The music is a good mix of current vocal hits. Mindy and her two background exercisers Tracy and Joe really have sparkling personalities.

On the neutral side: The intervals feel more like "sprints" than big powerful intervals such as Gin's and Cathe's. They rely on speed and footwork. In my opinion, I don't think they are as cardiovascularly challenging as Gin's/Cathe's intervals. Also, Mindy talks a lot. If you don't like chatty instructors, her banter might annoy you. If you like an instructor with a sense of humor and a very natural and unaffected manner, you will love her. For what it's worth, I hated her with a passion during the parts of the workout that I couldn't do. I loved her like my best friend during the parts I could.

Onward and upward to Pump Party. This I love. It's about 40 minutes of strength training and you touch on all the body parts. The music is still great and I start to finally enjoy Mindy's jokes and chatter, instead of feeling frustrated and annoyed. Her background exercisers stay with her for this part of the workout. In some ways, it feels like an endurance workout, but it probably should be characterized as a functional fitness workout. Mindy uses a body bar for almost all of the work: I switch between my 15 pound body bar and 5 or 8 pound dumbbells. The leg work mostly consists of squats and squat variations such as lifting your knee at the end of the squat. There are some fast-paced side lunges that feel quite awkward because I am struggling not to extend my knee beyond my toe. There are some lunges that are more like power scissors, only you are holding the body bar. These are the toughest part of the video. She incorporates some balancing moves during the 1-legged squats that are also challenging. I really like her push-ups at the end.: she does 3 different sets of non-traditional push-ups. Some of them remind me of a yoga push-up. On the last set, you walk your hands from side-to-side during the push-ups. I've never laughed during push-ups before, but I often laugh during these. Her ab work is short and not tough. The stretch at the end is short.

Instructor Comments:
Mindy is very dynamic, has a great rapport with her cast and she never forgets she's talking to her home audience. She is a stitch.

Daphne M