Finally a kickboxing workout I love. Yeah! Not that I hated my other kickboxing workouts, but I have really felt pretty neutral about them. I really want to like kickboxing, because I like doing the kicks and I love that you can often get a fairly intense workout with little impact (especially with heavy legs!) But I am a choreography lover foremost and I can get bored with workouts fairly quickly. The only kickboxing workout that I found pretty interesting previously has been CIA 9809, which is full of things I don't like about it, like a jump-roping warmup, bad cueing, messed up directions, and several portions where she spends a lot of time doing very basic moves (like the X) and not enough time doing/teaching the more complex. Kick It (9907) is so much better than Kickbox Express (9809) in my opinion. Many of the things that bugged me in 9809 are not an issue in Janis' latest.

The workout starts out with an 8 minutes warm-up and stretch. The warmup is kickboxing specific and I feel ready to go after doing it. The first section is a 30 minute drill section. This section is a lot more fun than I expected. The drills are almost all combinations of punches and kicks, so right off the bat you are doing combos instead of just repeating one move 8 or more times. (There are enough tapes that do that already!)

The second section is the choreography section which is 35 minutes. A nice thing about this is that she uses some of the drills we learned in the first section so she does not have to spend as much time teaching. There is teaching of new moves in this section, but it is easier to pick up because you know some of it already. She teaches the 1st combo, then the 2nd and then puts them together. Then she teaches the 3rd combo and then the 4th and puts them together. At the end she puts all 4 together to create a whole routine. This is what I love about the workout. The combos for the most part do go well together, and once you get it is a lot of fun. There is one part in the fourth combo that does not flow. Once you finish one side, you just walk back and march in place before starting the other side. Other than that the choreography is pretty smooth. This part of the workout does take up some space. I don't have much space to move forward and back (without kicking over my TV) so I do have to modify, but I am used to that. The choreography is mostly made up of kickboxing moves. However, there is a shuffle or two, squatting, some pivots and directional changes., but this is not a hi/lo workout with kickboxing moves thrown in.

The third section is 30 minutes of conditioning. In 9809 my heartrate stayed up in the conditioning section (which was only 16 minutes), but in this tape it dropped. I do not mind after 65 minutes of cardio. I even found the conditioning section to be fun. The first 20 minutes is standing work which includes slow and at tempo front kicks and side kicks, punches, back lunges, various knee ups and balancing moves. You move non-stop in this but it is at slow pace. There is about 5 minutes of floor work and 5 minutes of abs.

The final cooldown is Tai Chi inspired and short and it is followed by a fairly complete, but somewhat brief stretch section.

There may be debate about intensity of this video. I felt it was intermediate/advanced and could be either depending on what you put into it (energetic boxer shuffles, deep squats, using the hand weights etc.) She does keep the intensity up with jacks in the drill section and this could be done in the choreography section when needed.

This tape may not be for everyone. I guess some people do not like choreography as much as me! If so, you may not like this tape as much as I do. On the other hand you may enjoy portions of it like the conditioning section and part of the drill section. If you got frustrated with Janis in 9809 because it was hard to follow her, you might want to look at this tape because it really is an improvement in many ways. Not perfect but definitely an improvement.

Instructor Comments:
Janis' vocabulary has improved in this tape, I don't even remember hearing "awesome". Her cuing is also better and she does not screw up the moves as frequently as in 9809. She still does make some mistakes but there are fewer of them. I really enjoy her choreography and am glad that she was able to put together a more organized, smooth and professional workout this time.

Lisa C