I really enjoy the "G-Force Ultimate Funk" workout. This is a floor aerobics tape about an hour long led by three fun, attractive young (or young-acting!) men with great choreography, good instruction and excellent cueing. I’ve been doing dance aerobic videos, especially funk/hip-hop style videos, for almost 10 years and would rate this at the intermediate level for choreographic complexity and low-intermediate for intensity. Much of the reason for the lower intensity rating is the common characteristic of fairly complex dancy videos of slowing down the movement while a new move is being presented. However, this is not done to an annoying extreme in this video; I think this just goes with the territory (although I wish sometimes producers would do TWO versions of the same workout—one mainly instructional & one the continuous, repeating routine for the time when you’ve learned it all! Anyone listening?)

I find that an aerobics tape lead by three guys is a nice change and these fellows have a different sort of playful rapport with a bit of the "guy-bantering" and some of the hip-hoppy trendy encouragement you might expect—e.g., "Let’s get busy, let’s work it!" but I find none of this annoying at least not after doing the workout six times or so. Most of the moves are fun to watch and to do and flow well from one to the other. The tape has a fairly long warm-up which is OK and a much shorter (and somewhat more interesting) cooldown which should include a bit more stretching , but I feel that way about every one of the 30-40+ exercise tapes of all types I’ve tried.

In short, if you like funk and don’t mind the typical lowered intensity that goes with teaching all the cool moves, you might agree with my A+ rating of this tape!

Annie O.

08/26/1997