Bellydance Fitness for Weight Loss: Cardio Shimmy

I'm taking belly dance classes and I've bought several videos to help me practice the basics. This one is quite good at drilling the shimmy. The video is not traditional bellydance and it doesn't claim to be. It uses a traditional bellydance shimmy strp. Shimmy's aren't hard to learn. Rania shows you how to drive a shimmy from your knees. It's challenging because a fast shimmy will tire your muscles quickly. There is a lot of TIFTing to review the basic sequence. It's not complex; it's just difficult to keep your booty moving for a solid half hour.

The music is less than good - not horrible, but not interesting in any way. Next time I'll put on some traditional dance music and see if it flows.

I think an advance bellydancer would be bored by this video. But it a fun, little cardio nugget if you're just learning to bellydance or have always wanted to give it a try.

Instructor Comments:
Pleasant and encouraging.

honey

Where to start....
The workout is almose exactly 30min. About 20 min into it I decided to do the laundry.
It could be a decent aerobic workout IF you know how to shimmy properly already. If you don't you won't learn how to with this video.
So...what'cha got is a workout tooooo boring for an experienced bellydancer and to complicated for a non dancer.
Did I mention the boring bit? And,oh yeah, the dancers made me want to cry. "Isolation" is apparently an alien concept.
BUT WAIT! There is something good about the DVD (sorry, is you got the VHS you are SOL)
Among the extras on the DVD there is an about 5min ab section. With some rather nice instruction for undulations, mayas and a few other thing that she may or may not have named.

Hopefully this review wasn't as bad as the workout.

workout C-
ab work B

NoraKate

Instructor Comments:
Plus: Not as bad as Janine Rabbitt
Minus: Not a particularly good dancer.

NoraKate

I really like this video! It is suitable for beg-int/adv exercisers. The video starts with a 10-15 sec mini dance of the exercisers shimmying then Rania shimmies.
The video background is a regular dance studio. The music is terrible! It is generic fitness music. In order to do this video without getting bored w/ the music, I put on a turkish bellydance cd and it actually went almost perfectly to the beats of the shimmies we did.

Rania's warmup consists of shimmies and arm movements. She starts off really slowly while teaching you then picks up the speed further into the warmup.

Then the workout consists of doing a variety of shimmies. REgular shimmies, choo-choo shimmies on toes, walk forward shimmy, walk back shimmy, shimmy while shuffling to the side, shimmy facing frong, facing the left, then facing back and facing the right. She also incorporates snake arms, wrist circles, and a lunge.

My hr got pretty high at one point, because I haven't worked out in a while. I think it might be too easy and repitious for advanced exercisers. The same combo of shimmies is done over and over and over again, that's why I stress putting on some good music, wrapping a hip scarf (or a tassel belt) around your hips and adding your own arm movements to raise the fun factor.
My hips were sore for days, and I was quite surprised because I dance all the time w/ my hips. I could barely stand at one point. So I conclude the shimmies probably will do something for your hips, it is a good way to increase muscle tone in your abs.

Instructor Comments:
Friendly, enthusiastic, and gave good instruction and cueing.

Chulisima