Note: The full title of this workout, as it appears on the DVD cover, is Focus Series, Volume 2: Kick Back.

I’m reviewing this workout after doing it once.

General workout breakdown: Denise and the other reviewers have already broken down and described this one, but I’ll add a few comments.
It’s kind of hard to categorize this workout. The back cover says this will “lean out the shoulders, back and legs” while burning calories. So this is more about shaping and firming up, with some weight training to build muscle and cardio to burn calories. This will do more for endurance than pure strength, too. (Fortunately you won’t be doing tons and tons of reps, as Nat wrote.) Also, this workout seems like it would be particularly good for maintaining your current level of fitness when you’re short on time.
No, there is no warm-up, and you almost literally jump right in. This is one DVD that calls out to be used as add-ons rather than as a straight through routine, although it worked well enough when I ran through the segments in order. As mentioned, you do get a sort of cool-down for 2 of the 3 workouts, if by cool-down you mean stretch, which seems to be an increasingly common definition these days. The 2nd segment ends in a short lower body stretch and the 3rd has a slightly longer total body stretch.
The 1st segment is about 9:45 min., the 2nd just over 9:30, and the 3rd is just over 10:00, so the total workout is a hair under 30 min.
I agree that in general Tracie moves along at a good, controlled pace, without a lot of down time. There are a few times, especially in the second segment, where she’ll pause to instruct or demo a move, however, but then there were other times when I wanted a quick break to switch out weights.

Level: I’d recommend this to experienced exercisers at the intermediate to int. / adv. level or so as shown. Tracie expects you to have some familiarity with basic kickboxing and strength training form, plus she moves through some sequences quickly, so I wouldn’t recommend this to beginners. But experienced beg. / int. to low int. exercisers can tackle this one, perhaps doing all of the kickboxing portions without weights and use light weights for the matwork.
I consider myself an int. / adv. exerciser, and I found this a nice little workout. I did this after another workout, so I had to drop down in weights for the upper body moves, but I can’t imagine being able to go much heavier than what Tracie does.

Class: Tracie alone, instructing live.

Music: upbeat instrumental stuff. It’s all right, but it is repetitive, as Nyx mentioned. I didn’t notice the looping my first time through, but the volume of the music is a little low in relation to Tracie’s voice.

Set: bright interior space (part of Tracie’s fitness studio, I believe) with a brick wall, a brightly colored painting, and exercise equipment tastefully arranged around the space. The windows are covered with white curtains with cutouts that I found somewhat distracting, but I doubt that’ll be a common issue.

Production: clear picture and sound, consistent sound levels, and helpful camera angles. Text listing the equipment needed appears at the beginning of each segment.

Equipment: For the 1st segment, you’ll use a pair of light (3 lbs., 5 lbs., or 7 lbs.) and a pair of medium (5 lbs. to 10 lbs.) dumbbells. For the 2nd, you’ll need a pair of moderately heavy dumbbells (Tracie uses 10s but says you can go heavier – as Nyx mentioned, you can’t go truly heavy, like with 25s, because the transitions are rather quick). For the 3rd, you’ll need a pair of moderately heavy dumbbells (Tracie doesn’t say what she uses, but it seems to be her 12s); you may also want a mat (depending upon your flooring). The on screen text recommends ankle weights as an option for the 3rd segment, but Tracie doesn’t mention them during the workout, and I can only see one or two moves where they would come into play.

Space Requirements: Tracie does the entire workout on 8 puzzle mats, which, if hers are the same size as mine, means she keeps this well within a space that’s 8’ long by 4’ deep. (I like it when instructors try to contain their workouts within a reasonable space for the at home exerciser.) Basically you’ll need to be able to step and kick to the front as well as take a few steps and kick to the side.

DVD Notes: A quick intro for the Focus series comes on when you pop in the DVD, but you can skip it to get right to the main menu, where you can choose your segment or play all. There appear to be no chapters within the segments.

Comments: This is one of four workouts comprising Tracie’s Focus series, each with a similar format of three approximately ten-minute segments. So far this is the only one I have of the Focus series, but I’m interesting in the others (with the possible exception of Reach Further, which strays too far into the fusion category for my personal tastes). I have all four of the workouts from the Longevity but have only done one or two while previewing the others. I also have all four of the TLTs. (I have not, however, done any of The FIRMs or similar workouts.) This one is more like the Longevity series, which backs off somewhat from the creative (some would say too creative) and functional fitness feel of the TLTs but still shows that she can’t fully shake her time with that style as well as her time with The FIRM (including the Ta-Da moment at the end of the first segment).
I wish Tracie would put all four Focus workouts on one DVD. This would allow them to be mixed and matched much more easily. I’d love to be able to do all of the cardio portions together or string together lower body-focused segments or add on one of the core / balance / stretch segments from Reach Further without having to pause and swap out DVDs. This mega Focus DVD would also eliminate the criticism of releasing such short workouts on DVDs - standard DVDs can easily hold 2 hours worth of material, so that’s not an excuse - with no frills for a price that, while not exorbitant, isn’t exactly cheap. (I got the one I have via trade; I haven’t yet bought these because the price for what one gets made me pause, especially since I wasn’t sure I’d use these a lot.) Oh, and a matrix feature allowing segments to be programmed to play in a specific order would be icing on the cake.

I kind of liked this one, mainly the first two segments. The third segment feels a bit too much like a “catch all” to me and lacks the clear focus as well as the kickboxing vibe of the other two, although I suspect in the context of all four Focus workouts it’d make more sense.
Honestly, I’m not entirely sure how best to use this DVD within my regular rotation. In part that may be because I’m not versed in the FIRM style of categorizing workouts. I suspect for the time being Kick Back will be relegated to recovery weeks, days when I need something different but not too fussy, and workout sessions where I feel I need just a little bit extra.

When I tried this out the other week, I did it after the Powersculpting routine from Kelly Coffey-Meyer’s 30 Minutes to Fitness: LIFT. I was pleasantly surprised that both ended up being somewhat similar in style and kind of complementary in that they make kickboxing moves into cardio-intensive strength work and that Kelly worked some muscles a little harder than Tracie and vice versa. Although Tracie does a lot more kickboxing, Kelly does one or two moves Tracie does not, like crescent kicks. Kelly’s is definitely a notch up in intensity, and I’m glad I did that one first, especially since she includes a warm-up.

Instructor Comments:
Tracie is rather down to business here, focused on cuing the workout. (I personally prefer that over chattiness and attempted jokes that’ll get old after a few times through.) She does a decent job of instructing, with mirror cues. I wish she could be a bit more descriptive in parts, but I found her easier to follow here than in her TLTs, where I had to watch what she was doing more closely, perhaps in part because the moves are generally more straightforward here. (As I do this workout more often any confusion will fall away.) Tracie does suggest a few modifications to make an exercise more accessible or sometimes also more challenging; I like that she presents these in a non-judgmental way, presenting them as options rather than labeling them.

KathAL79