I like this workout. It has become a welcome addition to my hi/lo collection. It’s the right mix of athletic and dancy hi/lo choreography for my taste, it’s short enough to be a good tape for mix‘n’matching and Harold’s personality just shines. It’s also that rare bird – a low-impact workout with choreography that manages to be interesting and fairly intense. (Gotta use the big movements to keep it intense.) I’ve been using this workout pretty frequently as an efficient, enjoyable way to work out the kinks after a tough leg workout, as a nice transition after a run or as a stand alone workout on a lower intensity day. The choreography is probably about as complex as stage 1 of Hi/Lo Heaven (you may recognize Harold from that video) and the intensity is probably intermediate/advanced. (I admit that I’m terrible at judging intensity, so your mileage may vary.)

The cardio is pretty short. The warm-up is 7 minutes, the body of the workout is 37 minutes and the cooldown is 7 minutes. You don’t need to use a lot of room with this workout, just enough to grapevine side-to-side and to walk about 4 steps forward and back.

The warm-up is a non-intimidating mix of athletic moves with a little flair. Knees, lunges, mambos, ham curls, v-steps, that kind of thing. Like most of the videos released in the last year or so, the warm-up stretch is dynamic, which suits me just fine. The warm-up music is good too, strong vocals and plenty loud enough. Then you say goodbye to the warm-up combo and never do it again. Unfortunately, you say goodbye to the music too. After that, the soundtrack is that old familiar 9905/Interval Max music. At least the songs come up in a different order, but you will recognize them, as sure as Dynamix has an 800 number.

The body of the workout is broken into 3 choreography blocks with plenty of taking it from the top. Warning! If TIFTTing is your pet peeve, this workout may not be for you. It doesn’t bother me in this video, but I tend to need a little extra time to catch on to hi/lo choreography. Harold layers artfully. He teaches the simpler version of each move, then introduces a spin or a twist. For instance, the starter version of combo 1 begins with a walk, walk, mambo, shuffle back, mambo back and then repeat; in the later version, instead of shuffling straight back, you shuffle around to face the back of the room and then pivot around to the front. There are a lot of mambos and a lot of pivots in this video, but there are also plenty of uncomplicated high knees and side leaps to keep your heart rate up. Despite the “urban” in the title, he performs the routine in a very straightforward and athletic fashion for most of the workout. I think he doesn’t really cut loose (and my, how Harold can cut loose () until after the heart rate check. That’s when he starts to add “flava” to his mambo twist. I have to admit that Harold’s flava does my heart good. No surprise that my favorite combo comes in the 3rd segment, where he teaches the most high impact move of the workout, “Charlies Angels.” I do wish there had been at least one more choreography block, but I suppose it is a good thing to leave ‘em wanting more. The cooldown gets a little funky, but the funk is limited to the arms and shoulders, so there’s no need to panic, if you are (like me) funk-impaired.

As a bonus, there is a 20-minute ab workout at the end of the video. The first 10-minutes are mostly variations of traditional crunches, with Harold using slow, impeccable and controlled form. I found myself getting tired at this point and worried that I wouldn’t be able to hack another 10 minutes. But he takes some breaks between sets and mixes in some easier and less-traditional exercises during the last 10 minutes. I’m not used to doing 20-minutes of abs, so the first couple of times I did the ab segment, my neck got pretty tired, but I was surprised at how quickly my neck strengthened and it doesn’t bother me any more.

Instructor Comments:
Harold is beautiful. His smile and energy light up the screen. I hope he does another video: I could always use a little more Harold in my workout room.

Daphne M