This is a great workout that can probably be appreciated by people of varying fitness levels (not beginners though) and by choreography lovers and choreography haters alike. I think this tape is one of the most advanced workouts out there, but there are opportunities for modification, and in many sections you are encouraged to go at your own pace. It reminded me in a some ways of Interval Max and Boot Camp (but it is very different than both of them.) Perhaps the intensity is slightly less in parts, but it is longer. The cardio section is 57 minutes. That includes the 16 minute warm-up. This warm up is pretty intense. If you need to ease into a workout, you might want to warm up a bit on your own. This warm-up is a combination, but it is not dancy or complex at all. At the same time it was still fun. It includes scissors and many variations of the shuffle repeater. After 10 minutes of the stepping Mindy has you doing squats and lunges with one leg on and one leg off of the step. You do many variations on one side before going to other, which really warms up your legs (as if they were not already warm) and keeps the heart-rate up. There is no stretching after the warm-up.

The body of the workout consists of 5 sections:

• 7 minutes of intensity and agility drills
• 10 minutes of kickboxing
• 10 minutes of football inspired drills
• 5 minutes of more intense agility drills
• 8 minutes of pure intensity drills

Each of these sections is intense. The kickboxing is probably the least intense, but I did not find my heart rate dropping too much. There are 2 moves in this section that I love. One is where you step up onto the step and you lift your other knee then straighten your leg, then go back into a knee up than kick back without touching the floor, slowly to work on your balance. The other is where you step up onto the step from one end, straddle down (or shuffle down 2 times) punch twice, and repeat to get to the other side of the step.

The first time I did the tape, the football drill section was hard for me to do on a 6" step. There is a part where you do one regular basic followed by two double time basics, another regular basic followed by a double time basic up in-out-in-down. I found that I just could not keep up with the fast footwork. Also, my calves were extremely sore the next day and I guessed that it was this section that did it to me. So the next time I did the tape, I lowered the step to 4" for this section and it helped a lot and I didn't really sacrifice much intensity because the intensity comes from the speed.

In both the kickboxing and football sections Mindy teaches various drills and then you put them all together at the end. So this workout is partially choreographed, but in a simple way. Although I am a real choreography lover, I still liked this workout a lot. You are still changing what you are doing very frequently and will not get bored.

In many of the intensity and agility drills Mindy tells everyone to go at their own pace. It is actually nice because you can pick a person to follow and don't have to keep up with the fastest person. The agility drills were mostly done on the floor and often included variations of running around your step in different directions. These were a lot of fun. Many of the drills in the last section of pure intervals were reminiscent of moves in the Boot Camp video. There were some that were really fun and different also, like the squatting section at the very end, in which you squat and flip yourself around to face the back wall - back and forth.

The cardio is followed by a toning section and the people working out with her show different ways to do the moves (with a band, dumbbells, or nothing.) There is no cool down so I use the leg work she does (at the beginning of the toning) as a chance to cool down. She has a very short ab section with a FitBall. I have not done the upper body toning section because I am currently doing PS. I will try it later for an endurance type workout. There is a pretty nice stretch at the end - a little longer than most CIAs. When doing the quad stretch balancing on one leg, she has you close your eyes, which makes it really hard. I have good balance and could stand that way forever with my eyes open, but with them closed, it becomes a lot tougher.

Instructor Comments:
Mindy is sort of a cross between Helen V. from 9903 and Jennifer M-P. She is hilarious actually. She talks throughout the whole workout, and doesn't always cue, which is fine, because you know the moves fairly soon into it. What fun it was to work out with her.

Lisa C