Billy Blanks Jr - Dance With Me: Cardio Fit [DVD]

An excellent dvd, with some fun routines. Not great as they are for me as a disabled person, but not too difficult to adapt them with a little thought. The cardio "blasts" between each dance section are easily adapted too, so not a problem.The only negative part of these DVDs is Billy's wife - she's rather annoying! But if you concentrate more on the exercise, it gets easier to ignore her!!Overall, I'd definitely recommend these DVDs if you like dance of all kinds, but want some cardio too. However, if you're more into the dance side of things, there are better DVDs out there!

A bit dated very sort of 80s disco and the other dancers become annoying.

Billy Blanks Jr (the son of Tae-Bo inventor Billy Blanks) and his wife Sharon Catherine present a sampling of their trademark dance-based workouts in this enjoyable DVD. Three ten-minute dance routines (inspired by hip-hop, country and Bollywood styles) are each followed by a two-minute "cardio burst" consisting of traditional moves like star jumps, running in place, etc. There are also five-minute warm-up and cool-down segments, as well as a short tutorial in breathing technique. You can customise your workout and choose which segments you want to do in a particular session.Each dance routine is broken down step by step: you learn two steps, then put those together, then learn a third step, then do all three in sequence, and so forth until you can do the entire dance, which is then performed three times. This is really helpful to those who,like me, aren't natural dancers. The drawback is that once you've done the workouts several times, the pace at the beginning can seem a bit slow. I would have liked to have seen an advanced segment that consisted purely of doing the dances all the way through.The Blankses keep up an encouraging and positive attitude, telling viewers it doesn't matter if they make a mistake and offering modifications of some of the more challenging moves. (I appreciated this, but if you don't, there is an option to do the workouts with music alone). The message of the DVD is, "Here's a fun activity you can do that will also make you look and feel better," not "You're a fat, lazy slob who isn't good enough, and you need to do these exercises to MAKE yourself good enough." As if to reinforce this theme, the female members of the backing cast, while all in superb shape, have a variety of body types - skinny, muscular and curvy. Some workout videos make beginners feel like they have no business doing them; this isn't one of them.Having said that, I have to add that these are all strictly light-cardio workouts. I would say they take about the same effort as a moderately paced walk up a hill (though they're a lot more fun to do on a rainy day). The cardio bursts are a bit higher-intensity and will be a real challenge to those not used to strenuous exercise. However, after exercising regularly for several months, I do find the entire routine quite easy now. I still like to do one of these workouts on my "rest days" from more advanced routines. They get a light sweat going raise my heart rate mildly and help dispel the haven't-moved-from-my-desk-today funk. If the Blankses had a higher-intensity DVD available, I would certainly buy it.