Crunch: Fat Blaster

Jennifer Mills Palmer
Year Released: 1995

Categories: Floor Aerobics/Hi-Lo/Dance



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I don't even remember where I bought this video, or how long I've had it, but I pulled it out of my video cabinet one day when I was in need of some variety from my other tapes I use. At first some moves were hard to follow, and the video does seem short. BUT, it is THE most effective tape I have as far as intensity! The moves, now that I've done it for two weeks, are easy to follow and they get you working hard. I agree that the whooping is very annoying in the background, and you can hardly hear any music at all. But this video is a great workout for me. I give it an A!

Instructor Comments:
The instructor took some getting used to but she is VERY good in this video, despite her hoarse voice. She should do a little more cueing for us, but once I did the video 4 or so times I was fine with it.

Amy Taracido

03/24/2005

This is a decent, although short, high/low floor workout. The aerobics part is about 20 minutes, and there are a warmup and cooldown as well, bringing the total to about 30 minutes. The aerobic section is broken into 3 different routines. The first two (especially the second)are repeated way too many times. She needs to either add more choreography to each of the routines, so you don't feel like you're doing the same thing over and over, or else shorten these two and add a fourth. The choreography is intermediate level. You might have trouble following her the first couple of times, because she doesn't waste time explaining the moves in any detail. That's good, because if she did, it would take up the whole 20 minutes. Intensity is also at an intermediate level. I was afraid that because it was only 20 minutes, it wouldn't be very intense, but that wasn't the case.

Overall, I give this a B. If not for the first two routines being repeated so much, it would get an A or A-.

Instructor Comments:
Jennifer Mills is a good instructor. Her voice, however, gets on my nerves for about the first 15 minutes or so. After that, I'm able to tune it out.

Annie S.

08/18/1997

Fitness Level: intermediate
Breakdown: 5-minute warm-up; 20 minute mixed level workout; 5-minute cool-down.
Impact: mixed
Choreography: moderate, but hard to follow due to inadequate cuing
Music: Can't remember--it was overshadowed most of the time by those wild and crazy "whooping walls"
Production quality: fair. Grainy looking photography
Setting: studio
I bought this one on impulse before our website here was on-line. The packaging talks about Crunch being a place where you can work out without feeling insecure about how your body looks. At the time, I was seven months post-partum, still breastfeeding, so it was a weak moment for me! This workout, like Donna-Mite (which is distributed by the same company, and Donna, of course, co-hosts Crunch's TV show), includes a variety of body types. Jillian from Donna-Mite and 4-Day Rotation is here, too--and I'm built almost exactly like her. The opening credits even made me giggle a little bit--"nice place you've got here" and other cute comments. So here we have this friendly group of people, and motivational/fun comments on the screen between segments and combos, and we're all having just a great time. But alas, it's a few leis short of Hawaii. The aerobics is only 20 minutes long--that's usually when I get my second wind and want to do MORE! The choreography is not any more complex than that in Donna-Mite, most of which I could follow the first and second time around, but Jennifer isn't as good at cuing in this tape as Donna is in hers. It could just be inexperience, though, or maybe the producers were going for a "just have fun with it" approach rather than focusing on instruction. But the real sin here is in the sound. Whoever thought of adding a "whoop track" to the Crunch tapes ought to be condemned to 50 years of living in this studio with the walls rigged so you can't turn them off. As we say in Kentucky, that'll "learn 'em!" It's encouraging to read that Jennifer's Double Crunch tape is getting good reviews here at VF. This particular tape isn't worth the $10 I paid for it, but I really like her and wish her well in her future endeavors.
Grade: A for Jennifer
C for this tape

Instructor Comments:
Jennifer is in the crew for Donna Richardson's Donna-Mite and also her 4-Day Rotation tape. She looks like she's having a great time in both of them--I guess hanging around Donna will do that to you :) Her Double Crunch workout has gotten good reviews, so I think that the tape I'm reviewing just isn't showing her skills off to their best advantage.

Melissa Cooper

05/23/1997

I'm not sure who this short floor aerobics tapeis intended for. The aerobics section is about19-20 minutes, with about 4-5 minutes eachfor warm up and cooldown. So it's tooshort for anyone beyond a beginner level.But the instructor doesn't do enough to explain proper form--there are a seriesof quick forward lunges at the end that asomeone who didn't know proper lunge form might strain their knees doing, perhaps, for example. The class is annoyingly perky--lots of whoops and yells,etc. The choreography isn't difficult to follow, and it's pretty much low-impact--grapvines, knee lifts, shasays, etc.

Elaine C.

03/11/1997