Power YogaFit

I haven't done many power yoga tapes, only Yoga Zone's and Buns Of Steel, so I can't compare this power yoga to what is popular now. To me, it seemed like a harder yoga practice at a swift pace. A few of the poses I found challenging for me. Some of the more advanced poses were backwards triangle, upward facing bow pose (she called it something else), plow, and the others were just hard for me with short arms.

The video starts out with what she calls a sunflower salutation where you have your legs apart and come up with open arms. Then you go down to cat pose. I felt it gave my back a good warm up. I love the music in this section and the 2nd song beginning the work. These 2 songs are the same in her YogaFit YogaButt workout. The rest of the music is different.

The rest of the workout consists of difficult poses inbetween sun salutations. The sun salutations were very fast. Towards the end, she starts to do poses that get you closer to the floor. These feel good & get you really stretched out. She does a dead bug pose, a sitting spinal twist, an upward facing inner thigh stretch, fish pose, and a few others. Afterwards, I could feel that my quads, hamstrings and upper body had felt worked. I liked the tape & will buy others from her again. grade A

The first time I tried to do this tape I ripped it out of the VCR after the first 5 minutes. After arranging to trade it, I went ahead and did it one more time, this time making it all the way through. I am not sorry I am trading it away.

The set is ok, although I kept waiting for all that gauzy fabric they draped in front of the banks of candles to catch on fire. A tad bit distracting. Beth's yoga mat is oriented sideways, which is not the norm in yoga videos. I found it somewhat problematic, because I had to keep turning my head to the side to see what she was doing on screen. And I had to do that a *lot* because the cuing was practically non-existent (and when not non-existent, it's unclear, or even wrong a couple of times.) The moves didn't flow particularly well, went too fast in some parts, and included odd things like this super speedy plank-updog-plank-pushup-updog-downdog series that made my back hurt just watching her. If you're looking for a short power yoga video, Baron Baptiste's Unlocking Athletic Power is, in my opinion, a much better tape.

While this is a nice enough workout for what it is, it is definitely not what you would think it would be by reading the box. It tells you to expect "tough cardiovascular exercise" and that you'll sweat. What you really get is a lower-intermediate-level that is not all that challenging (unless you're a beginner), and there was certainly no sweating on my part. To its credit, it's a very pleasant, flowing workout, but it's not what I was looking for. I would recommend it for beginners, but don't buy it expecting anything more than that. Grade D (because of the mis-description).