Better Burn…Better Buns is one of the initial four videos offered via Tracie Long’s last venture, Tracie Long Training. Tracie herself leads this workout, which is mainly cardio with a lower body toning emphasis; also, because it is functional fitness in nature, you’ll be working your core throughout. Equipment used includes a medicine ball (2-5 lbs.), a dowel or stick, and something to use under your feet for gliding work (e.g., rags for hardwood floors, paper plates on carpet). Tracie is joined by Sherry, who shows easier modifications, and Stephanie, who displays more advanced versions, including some higher impact.

The DVD menu offers only two options, play or preview. Although there are no chapter menus, the workout is broken up into 18 chapters, so you can skip around as needed. The workout begins with a warm-up using the medicine ball with simple moves such as heel life, chest press, “rocking horse,” knee lifts, twists, and squats. Setting down the ball, Tracie then moves into a series dynamic stretches; the hips, glutes, and legs receive special attention here, and Tracie notes that the moves are great for runners (the warm-up/stretch segment is about 7.5 minutes total). To continue preparing the body for cardio, plank work comes next (3 minutes). You use the stick here, moving back and forth over it first with your hands, then with your legs. Tracie then moves into cardio with the ball: you’ll do lunges with rotations, optional jacks, squats with rotations, optional jumps, and standing supermans to work on balance (3.5 minutes). Then, without the ball (using the stick for balance if needed), you’ll work the hips/glutes with standing side leg pushes. After transitioning with additional superman balances, you’ll further tone this area with gliding work: with your rag/plate under one foot, you move your leg in and out and then around while remaining in a low squat. After doing one leg only, Tracie offers some quick stretches and then goes back to cardio with standing side crunches. This segment includes front lunges and rear dips while weaving the ball through the legs plus a fast side-to-side squat (think Turbo Jam Cardio Party 1). Next comes a sort of agility drill segment where you’ll do fast side-to-side toe taps moving to leg swings and ending with in and out hops and quick runs. This long series (12 minutes) ends by repeating the toning work on the other leg (the non-dominant one: I wish Tracie had started with this leg first, because my legs were pretty exhausted by this point).

Tracie continues with additional medicine ball cardio. There are some more traditional moves here, such as speed skaters, glute lifts, and squats (with optional jumps; the few higher impact moves in this workout are very easily modified). However, Tracie adds functional work with twists plus a “stir the pot” move with the arms that you will really feel in your core (4.5 minutes). Additional toning/balance work follows: you’ll do standing side leg lifts and more gliding work, this time sliding the rag/plate in and out of a back lunge and then in a diagonal fashion—my glutes were really fried by the end of this work! Again, Tracie goes into a cardio segment before moving on to the other leg. Here you’ll do “hurdles,” first taking a wide leg step over an imaginary hurdle and then squatting to duck under one; Tracie adds push-ups onto this sequence and then ends this segment ends with a shuffle move. The medicine ball is used for the final cardio segment, which includes v-steps forward and back plus side lunges and knee repeaters (adding a weave with the ball through the legs); I recognized the music here from the old FitPrime Crunch Time video with Susan Harris. Following this, you complete the “standing mop” toning work on the other leg (the entire series is 12 minutes long).

Next it’s down to the floor for abs work. Lying supine with your arms overhead, you’ll crunch up, moving your hands to touch your feet (first same side, then twisting). Then you’ll keep your feet in the air and touch the ball to your toes; finally, you’ll weave the ball through your ankles in a figure 8. Following this, you’ll need two rags/plates for bridge work: keeping your hips elevated, you’ll slide one foot in and out. More crunch work follows, this time using the stick. Tracie starts with her knees bent, stick under her feet, then she brings the stick up, around her feet, and overhead. I simply could NOT reach far enough to do this (I want to believe that my arms are too short, but it seems more likely that my flexibility is limited), so I had to follow the modifier. The 8.5 minute core work segment ends with v-sit twists and side plank work, both of which were quite tough! The workout concludes with an excellent 6.5 minute stretch segment which particularly focus on the hips. She incorporates many moves from yoga, including cat/cow, down dog, crazy dog, lunge, double pigeon (with nice posture work), Sage twist, and forward bends—this was a perfect end to such a lower-body intensive workout. The entire workout clocked in at just under 56 minutes (all individual segment times are approximate).

The day after doing this workout for the first time, I felt a pleasant soreness in my entire leg but particularly my hamstrings. I really liked that this video provided an excellent cardio workout (according to my heart rate monitor, I was in my target zone for 30 minutes, and I expect that to go even higher as I become more familiar with the moves), while also providing a great toning workout for the lower body (just where I need it!). Plus, the moves were different and fun, and the entire workout thoroughly targeted the core as well. This is another first-rate video from Tracie’s TLT series, and I highly recommend it.

Instructor Comments:
I like Tracie: I like how she is focused on the workout, doesn’t engage in a lot of excess chatter, yet still comes across as warm and friendly. However, I do think her cueing could be better. She mirror cues and doesn’t make any mistakes with this, yet sometimes she fails to cue far enough in advance or to mention things such as “alternate legs.” Also, some of the names of exercises she uses (e.g., “side lunges”) refer to different things in different workouts. The camera angles compound this problem, as they are sometimes zoomed in too much just when you need to see exactly what Tracie is doing. However, I have found all of the above to be an issue only during my first few times doing the workout; once I become more familiar with Tracie’s moves, I have no trouble following her.

Beth C (aka toaster)