Minna does this workout in a wood-floored studio with two background exercisers, one of whom is not at all a typical hardbody though she looks quite fit. The music is unremarkable, but it does the job. The tape is divided into two intermediate level workouts, each complete with warmup and cooldown, a 25 minute aerobic dance workout and a 30 minute toning workout. You could easily choose to do them on separate days.

The dance workout starts slowly, but does get the heartrate up by the middle as the impact increases. Minna uses a mix of mambos and salsa moves with more traditional athletic moves like squats, grapevines and jumping jacks to produce a dancy workout that feels doable for this choreo-phobe, though after doing it twice I'm still struggling with a few of the moves. It would be a good learning video for someone who would like to try more dancy combinations. She builds four or five combinations and does each several times before moving on to the next one, so there's very little TIFTTing.

The toning workout is made up of mostly compound moves, using 3-10 lb weights. For the lower body, while holding the weights in her hands and sometimes doing upper body work at the same time, she does a pretty standard set of dips and lunges, squats with leg variations, side leg lifts, and glute raises. I was surprised that she didn't do anything for the inner thighs, and the workout seems a bit light on the hamstrings as well. For the upper body, she does some back work, tricep kickbacks and dips (on the floor with buttocks lifted), she's a little light on the bicep curls, but she has quite a selection of shoulder delt work, including two different back delt flyes that I don't have on most of my other toning tapes. Keep a mat handy if you work out on a hard floor, because you'll need it when you ground a knee on the floor for the lat rowes and also if you do pushups on your knees, even though she doesn't tell you so just then. She also does crunches (with weights resting on her chest) and reverse crunches -- but no obliques -- chest flyes, and back raises. While I did the workout with 5 lb weights, she goes slowly enough that you could probably do a fair bit more than that, though the compound moves mean that your heartrate will certainly be elevated long before you reach failure.

This is a good intermediate level workout, and gives you cardio and total body toning with a decent stretch, all in 55 minutes. A fun workout on an easy day for more advanced, a challenge for a beginner to add a different style into their choreography.

Instructor Comments:
Encouraging without being too perky. She cues well and breaks down the moves quite well.

Heather Fraser