With strength work, I am an intermediate exerciser, who doesn’t really want to move up to advanced work exclusively, although I flirt with that level sometimes. I have really enjoyed getting into workouts on the ball and Pilates as an alternative to traditional strength training.

Body Design is a functional fitness workout, much like his Kitchen Sink Conditioning workout. Let me first say that I loved, loved, loved Kitchen Sink Conditioning, so if you see a lot of comparisons to it, that’s why. Second, I’m not sure I can give a complete review of this DVD because of the problems I ran into with it. The first time I did the workout, the DVD stopped at a couple of points in the workout and returned to the menu before that section was complete. Thinking the DVD was scratched or something, I contacted Patrick and he immediately shipped me out another one. Same result as with the first DVD. I then tried it someone else’s DVD player and it worked fine. Apparently, a small percentage of DVD players have this problem since I saw someone else posting about the same problem. That other person returned theirs to Collage for a refund. I didn’t even ask Patrick for a refund since it’s apparently an issue with my DVD player. I’ll just try to trade it to someone whose DVD player has no problem with it.

Overall, I am very disappointed that this DVD is glitchy playing in my DVD player because I would have liked to have kept it. I didn’t like it as much as Kitchen Sink Conditioning, but it’s still an enjoyable, challenging functional fitness strength workout for me. He does a lot of traditional strength moves and some newer ones (to me, at least), but everything seemed to be done in a creative way. For me, the workout seemed to fly by. And, I felt worked out afterward. I even did much of the abs section, and I often skip that part in workouts.

Patrick leads the workout with two background exercises. He interacts with them, but not as much as in KS Conditioning. As with KS Conditioning, he stops at various points and goes to point out something about the form of one of the background exercisers. The set I wasn’t thrilled with because it seemed rather dark, but there was no problem seeing anything. The music was okay, but frankly I didn’t pay much attention to it because I was concentrating on doing the moves.

The DVD is chaptered by body section, so you have two lower body sections with upper body in between. If you customize the workout, it takes you back to the menu when you are done with a section to choose the next one.

There were a couple of places I felt there were too many exercises on the hands. I have arthritis and my hands and wrists are my worst joints, so I have trouble with most moves requiring that I support my body weight on my hands. Specifically, the warm up is fun until the last part where he does burpees and pushups. (I just stopped that that point and moved on to the next section.) And, the chest and back section had too many exercises for me from the plank position.

Instructor Comments:
I just love Patrick's style and demeanor on the workouts I have of his. He just sucks me in and makes me feel like I'm in the room with him and the other exercisers. And, he makes me laugh - something very important to me in "real life".

Laura S.