The video includes the instructor, Mindy Mylrea (MM), and two other exercisers. The warm-up is varied and thorough. It includes some unique moves such as one that involves rolling forward through the feet, and another where you hold one leg up and close your eyes, in order to improve balance. The warm-up lasts a little over 7 minutes, which for me is about perfect. The sculpting moves begin with a series of leg exercises. The basic idea for all of them is that one leg stays on the bench and the other leg moves in some way (e.g., lunges back or kicks away from the body). The number of reps per leg is about 30 or so. MM suggests using weights, but neither she nor any of the exercises do so. To me that's a negative feature of this video -- I think it's useful to be able to see exactly how the teacher holds the weights. At one point she says, "If you're using weights, which I'd like you to…", and I couldn't helping wondering why she wasn't using them. After 15 minutes or so of these moves, everyone does more than 5 minutes of squats. Next, the exercisers work on the upper body, starting with lat rows. Now everyone is using weights, which look to be about 3-5 lbs. Next are rows (about 48), then deltoid presses (about 40), military presses (lots; you get the idea), some calf exercises, bicep curls, forearm work, and tricep dips (using the step). Now, about 35 minutes into the workout, the exercisers move to the floor. What follows is an excellent series of push-ups -- MM uses interesting variations on the basic move and gives great pointers on form. The push-up that includes a push-forward component is really challenging -- I loved it. The final part of the workout is for the abdominals. This sequence lasts about 8 minutes and includes a couple of Keli Roberts-like moves (and that's a very good thing). Next come lower back exercises, and finally the cool-down, which is solid but not particularly relaxing.

I wanted to like this video. I've become convinced from the discussions on the Forum that it can be useful to alternate heavy-weight, low-rep days with light-weight, many-rep days. I also thought the video might be perfect for taking on trips to visit family and friends; many people I visit own a step and a pair of dumbbells but few own the total set of equipment that's needed to do one of the later FIRMs, for instance. And I did like the warm-up, the push-ups, and the abdominal sequence. But here's what I didn't like: First, I didn't enjoy doing upper-body work with such light weights. As I said, I do see the benefits of the low weight/high reps formula, but there are high reps and then there are high reps! -- 40-some exercises per side is just too many for me. Second, and this is the more serious criticism, this workout hurt my knees, and badly. The day after doing it I could hardly walk down stairs. I'm not saying this will happen to everyone, but I couldn't write a thorough review without mentioning that it happened to me. I think the trouble comes from all that legwork on the step, which requires the supporting leg to hold all one's bodyweight for 30 or more reps (my step was set at 8" and I used 4-lb dumbbells). Maybe I'm generally vulnerable to knee trouble because I run. Maybe my form was off in some way. However, aerobic step videos and FIRM workouts never hurt my knees (for the latter I use a 14" bench and 20-lb dumbbells), but this workout did. So, I won't be doing this whole tape again, but I will use the parts I like to fill out my workout on my running days.

The music is no better and no worse than on most other exercise videos. The production quality on a scale of 1-5 is about a 3 -- not as good as The FIRM, but better, say, than Cathe Friederich's Cardio Step Challenge. The only equipment you need is a bench and some light dumbbells; a strange spiky ball is used for some of the exercises but it's optional.

Emilia Henderson