To give you a bit of background, I am an advanced exerciser who adores complex choreography. Christi Taylor, Patrick Goudeau, Seasun Z., and Rob Glick are all close, personal, workout buddies ( on my TV screen only, of course . . .SIGH ). I was recently introduced to Marcus, and it was love at 1st sight. :) Aerodynamics is part of the Evolution series, and is 90 minutes of hi/lo, broken up into 3 sections. Each section is a distinct “style” of aerobics. He calls them “traditional,” “athletic,” and “dance style.” Within each section you do a complete “take it from the top,” ( TIFTT ) but there is no TIFTT for the entire DVD. The DVD version is extremely well chaptered, so it would be easy to make this a 30, 60, or 90 minute workout, depending on how much time you have, or to combine with another workout. There is no warmup or cooldown, but in the 1st section, you work up in intensity gradually enough to get warm. Cooldowns I don't mind doing on my own. Marcus being Marcus, even in the sections he calls “traditional” and “athletic,” there are lots of twists, turns, mambos, and cha chas. Fun, fun, fun! He's having a great time, and you can't help but smile back at him as he laughs at himself and his 2 “backup babes,” when someone messes up or is just plain winded. He comes across as genuinely someone you would enjoy spending an hour or 2 working out with. Don't expect to get knocked on your behind in this workout, like with some instructors. Marcus is my guy for a moderate intensity workout that, even on the days when I don't have time to do all of one of his 90 or 100 minute workouts, I still WANT to. In fact, once I get started, clock ticking or not, I usually go much farther in the workout that I “had time” for.

While this workout isn't MIC high impact, there are higher impact moves, especially in the 2nd section, which Marcus dubs "the athletic section." He does lead into those moves with low impact moves. For example he does double hamstrings before doing the higher impact version where you do the double up-and-back move. Since Marcus uses a layering technique though, I was having trouble envisioning how to keep some moves low impact without losing the flow of the combination. Nothing was nearly as high impact as jacks, but my touchy knees were feeling it a tiny bit by the end. I suspect it's because most of the higher impact moves also involved some torque ( i.e. Hopping in a half-turn ). Since my workout area is carpeted, I have to be sure to really JUMP on turning moves.

The set is very dark, with monitors in the back with the rotating red “e” that you see on other Evolution workouts. Aerodynamics is a bit of a space hog, so there were some combos where I really couldn't give it my all. I have about 2 grapevines' width plus a tiny bit for my workout space side to side, and about the same front to back. This workout needs about twice that space as presented. I could shorten my steps and change my angles a bit to be able to get through it, but it wasn't easy on a couple of the combos.

All in all, I would dub this workout a great time, but not my favorite Marcus hi/lo. That honor belongs to Twirl, which has a higher fun factor for me. Part of it is the “space hog” aspect of Aerodynamics, and part of it is just how the choreography came together. I would still highly recommend it for choreography lovers. While it is a bit pricey, clocking in at 90 minutes means it's actually very reasonably priced compared to some other DVDs on the market, especially from newideafitness.com, which is where I purchased my copy.

Instructor Comments:
Marcus comes across as the guy next door. He has a great personality and genuinely appears to be having fun. He keeps you from wanting to "clock watch," because you get drawn into his good time.

ErinF