Dancing With the Stars - Cardio Dance
The best thing about "Dancing with the Stars Cardio Dance" DVD is that your teachers have familiar faces. The instructors are Ashley, Kym and Maksim from the television show "Dancing with the Stars". The DVD contains five different dance workouts: Paso Doble by Maksim, Cha-Cha by Ashley, Samba by Kym, Jive done jointly by all three of them and the final challenge workout, also by all three. Each dance workout is about 10 minutes, plus they provide shorter sets of warm-up and cool down exercises.
It is easier to follow the instructors if you know basic steps for these dances. The challenge workout is really targeted for advanced dancers.
I might be biased, but I think that Maksim is the most elegant dancer out of the three instructors, and you can guess that my favorite dance on this DVD is Paso Doble.
The extra plus of this DVD is that if you get tired of their jokes, you can remove their voices and listen to the music only. The extra minus is that because the instructors wear black pants, on rare occasions it is difficult to see which leg is in front.
Quickfix - Cardio Hip-Hop Workout
The DVD is conveniently divided into four 10-minute workouts. Starting a 10-minute workout feels non-threatening and it is easier to find the time. Very often I start working out planning to do one workout and end up doing two. I also like that during the workout it shows how many minutes are left until the end.
The workouts are very packed with different moves — you never repeat moves. And many moves contain different stylings for the arms. This is both a strength and a weakness of the program. On one hand, it is very difficult to learn the routines. I am an extremely fast learner and yet after many repeats I still can't follow the routines easily. On the other hand, I enjoy learning so many different moves packed into ten minutes. I think it would be very cool to learn all of these hip-hop moves one day and show them off at a party. Unfortunately it is not in my character to devote many days in a row to the same DVD. I do not know when, if ever, I will be able to learn all these moves.