Shortcuts for Abs

This DVD is not chaptered and is about 30 mins long, with about 5 mins of warm up and 5 mins of stretches. The remaining 20 mins is pretty basic abs work, suitable for a beginner. Exercises include crunches, crunches with knee lift, reverse crunches, crunches with a twist, scissor legs, planks and a few exercises on your stomach.

Some of the music was familiar from Walk Away the Pounds Express. The setting is a country style kitchen/ dining area. The DVD cover talked about toning your arms, so I expected this to have some arm work as well as abs but this is not the case. It is a good entry level DVD, I often find myself discouraged with longer/ harder types of this work, so I will probably do this consistently for a while.

Instructor Comments:
Leslie explains things well but unfortunately her voice was much lower than the sound of the music and hard to hear. This is a real problem when you are lying on the floor and not able to see the screen without interrupting your exercise.

jacs

This is 30 minute routine that is mostly core work with just Leslie. It’s all floor work too, which I prefer. The set is fun, as it’s some kind of dining room with a shiny wood floor, so it looks like she’s in some nice, cozy house, lol. The music is upbeat and pretty nice, too. I wore my weighted gloves for this one, too – and used them to add resistance to the crunches when I could. Leslie does a walking warm up to start, and it lasted for longer than I expected – maybe close to 10 minutes? She also does a longer stretch than usual at the end. That being said, there was a lot more work (and more advanced work) than I expected from Leslie! I’ve done her stability ball abs workout and didn’t get much from it, as it’s pretty short so it never felt like she did enough reps per exercise. This one is a much better pace, and really gives you time to squeeze on each rep. She has a nice variety here – variations on reverse crunches, oblique crunches, double crunches – even a double crunch with your legs straight up in the air. I really felt those toward the end of the set. She also does some planks and supermans at the end. I really liked this one, and it was a really nice abs routine for when I have some extra time. A nice add-on for shorter cardio days.

Instructor Comments:
I like Leslie a lot, thought I use her workouts in spurts, since I have to be in a Leslie mood. I enjoyed her in this tougher-than-I-expected abs routine.

Sara@mybasementgym