People have said that they learn a lot from negative reviews, so here goes. I did this video twice (actually, I didn’t even do the whole thing), and I so disliked it I traded it without even giving it more of a chance.

Just to give you a little background, I consider myself an intermediate/advanced exerciser and do mostly the Firm, Cathe Friedrich, and CIA videos, with some Kari Anderson and Gin Miller thrown in there. For kickboxing videos, I do Tae Bo, which I think is OK but not the greatest, PowerKicks and Kathy Smith’s kickboxing tape, both of which I really like.

The main thing I didn’t like about CIA 9809 is that I felt like it took forever for Janis to teach the moves and I was stuck doing a lot of basic moves while I watched her. She also did a lot of moves at half tempo, which is a method I’m not crazy about because my heart rate falls. Then once we finally got to do the combination, she’d only run through it once or twice and never let us do it again. (No taking it from the top, for those of you out there who hate that.) All that work and time for such a small reward! The other big thing for me is that it was that same old music from CIA 9701. Music is a very important part of the workout for me, and I just couldn’t get into it.

I didn’t even bother doing the jumproping section ‘cause I hate jumproping, or the toning section because I prefer other tapes to CIA tapes for strength work. Basically, I decided life is too short to spend more time trying to like this video.

Mary Truscott