Low Impact Comeback

On cardio work, I am an intermediate exerciser who is learning to love advanced choreography. I have been learning workouts by Christi, Andre, Marcus, and others. Well, I seem to have done what I call an “over-correction”. I’ve gone too much to the complex side, so now I am trying to find a few workouts that are less complex, but with enough intensity to give me a good workout. Hopefully, this will help balance out my combination of videos.

Anyway, someone suggested this workout to me as one that I might enjoy - and they were right (Thanks, Alta!). I would rank the choreography as high beginner until he gets into some direction changes and then I think it goes into intermediate (on the low side). The intensity for me was moderate, but that’s what I expected and wanted from this workout. If you are looking for a high-intensity workout and you want complex choreography, this video isn’t for you.

As far as the workout itself goes, here is a general breakdown:

Warm up - 13 minutes

General workout - 39 minutes with three combinations taught one after the other and then combined after each combination.

Cool down - Did my own thing, so can’t give you feedback on it

The three combinations I enjoyed to varying degrees. I did manage to follow along on all them well enough to do the entire workout the first time I did it. There were some direction changes that threw me some and I’ll plan on getting them down the next time I do this workout. The workout was not hard, it just can take me some time to “get” more intricate steps and I just need to pay closer attention to which way he turns, etc. in those parts.

Jay does this workout by himself. Some background exercisers would have been handy as they could have shown modifications. The set is simple with a wood floor in front of a wall with the IDEA logo on it. The music is basic, but helped drive the pace of the workout for me. It would have helped if it was a bit louder.

The description in Collage is pretty accurate, other than I don't feel this is an intermediate/advanced video. The moves are all very basic -- lots of v-steps, marching, walking, grapevines, hamstring curls, knee ups, mambos, etc. Jay varies the combos by changing directions, facing backwards, replacing marches with pivots, etc. I don't have the room do to a lot of the variations, and I wish there were other exercisers doing the basic moves that I could follow. It's a little bizarre to do a video with only the instructor and no class. As Collage describes, the music isn't loud but it's good. My only complaint there is that Jay says they change tapes between the workout, the cooldown and the stretch and you can tell. The music actually stops before it changes. Also, the cooldown is a tad more choreographed than I like. I feel this is a beginner/possibly intermediate video. I 'almost' got my heart rate into my training zone by the time it was over. Perhaps adding some power to the moves would help. I'll probably save this video for a very light day or for when I'm not quite feeling up to snuff. Great for beginners though.