I am a 9-year vidiot, at an advanced fitness level for my age (over 50, which means I don?t do much high intensity high impact cardio for the sake of my knees and feet), and love doing complex choreography, but hate learning it when it's not well taught. With over 350 workouts in my collection, I rarely reach for even my favorite cardio workouts more than once every 3 months or so. Even with new workouts that I'm still learning, I rarely go back to them in less than a month. Marcus' latest Evolution workouts are the first in years that I?ve felt compelled to do again in the same week! I've done Airborne twice in the last 4 days! This workout is hi-lo as it was meant to be. (Just watching it now as I'm writing this review makes me want to get up and do it again!)

This is a long workout - cardio 71 minutes, cool-down & stretch 4 minutes, total 75 minutes. The workout consists of 6 32-count combos; there is no separate warm-up. There is TIFTTing but not a lot of it - you only TIFTT after combo 4 and after combo 6. The TIFTTing takes a split form, i.e. combo 1 right lead, combo 2 left lead, combo 3 right lead, etc. so that the final TIFTT feels like one long 192-count combo. The choreography is fairly complex (about the same level as Rob Glick or Christi Taylor) but is so well taught that it's more easily learnable because Marcus breaks it down very logically and does a good job of layering. I was able to get all the combos individually the first time, but tripped all over myself trying to keep up during the TIFTTing, especially with all the turns and twirls. (Marcus makes a remark at one point that it feels like "being in a blender".) The intensity is moderate. The impact is low to moderate. The music, new to this series, is energetic and motivating, but nothing that I recognized.

Here's a list of the moves from the DVD chapter menu, which should give you a good idea of the type of choreography: mambo reverse hitch; mambo swivel; quickie; chasse tango; kick ball change; grapevine double Elvis; 3 curl swivel; pivot mambo cha cha; freeze. The tango, ball-change, and swivel/Elvis seem to be Marcus' moves du jour.

The set is industrial looking, with concrete floors, a green backdrop, and several screens with giant floating/twirling green letter e's (the Evolution logo). There are two new female ?backup babes?, one from Germany and one from Belgium. Marcus wears white pants with a black stripe down the side and a black short-sleeved t-shirt. The babes wear white pants and white tops.

The DVD also includes previews from other videos produced by Marcus - 20 minutes from the Evolution line and 12 minutes from the Free2Be line.

Instructor Comments:
Marcus has a great personality and a good rapport with the backup babes. The charming Aussie accent adds to the attraction.

Pam L