Seven Day Solution

Tracy York, Michelle Dozois
Year Released: 2002

Categories: Floor Aerobics/Hi-Lo/Dance , Total Body Workouts


"Short but surpisingly intense"
I just got this tape - Playcentric.com was having a sale: $3 off all VHS tapes so it cost $6.51 plus $4 S&H, what a deal. It arrived yesterday, took about a week.

I did the tape this AM and I was pleasantly surprised that the cardio section was actually fairly intense - although it's only (sigh) 22min long (plus 5min warm-up, 4min cooldown).

I would say the cardio section is a high-intermediate level with impact and style very comparable to Mindy's Action Packed hi-lo except not quite as high-impact. Definitely a bouncy tape that would be hard to modify down to low-impact. But I liked it a lot! Some of the kicks were definitely "kickboxing-inspired".

The music was rock instrumental with some vocals and I wished it had been more like the Top 40 hits or at least a teensy bit louder.
Tracy & Michelle have great rapport and the routines are pretty moderate choreography yet intense, good for a day where you're short on time or don't want to drag out all your equipment.

The set is a wide-open New York-style warehouse with brick walls, stylized parquet tiles and an entire wall of bright well-lit windows.

The sculpting section is done with one set of dumbbells and using a chair and mat. Although the routines (2 or more sets each exercise) were simple they varied the tempo & reps for variety and the pace definitely lends itself well to "heavying up".

The lower body is short, Collage says 8min but I clocked it in over 10min - squats, lunges, plie squats and I was very pleased to see deadlifts.

The upper body was classic dumbbell rows (two-arms, then one-arm single rows), long-lever side raises, dumbbell curls, concentration curls, tricep dips, different variety push-ups and a few exercises I'm forgetting about. It clocked in at 11min.

The ab work was 8min long and I liked it a lot - straightforward ab work with some fairly intense lower body lifts and oblique crunches (which left me groaning & gasping for air). It also included some side-lying plank work and lying & "on all fours" back hyperextension work. Definitely "Pilates-inspired".

The weight workout was very beginner-intermed, the cardio was high-intermed. Very refreshing workout. I'd say overall the entire tape would be a good refresher course or boost for a beginner returning to exercise who doesn't want to invest in a great deal of equipment.

Overall I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would! It's definitely a sleeper - the intensity of the cardio caught me by surprise. As an advanced exerciser, I won't use the weight training section regularly but I definitely plan to tack the cardio workout onto a strenght training day or add the ab workout to the end of my workouts.

Worth $11 if you ask me!

Dawn P

05/14/2002