Review: Trudie Styler’s Cardio Dance Flow DVD

Posted on May 24th, 2010 in DVD, Exercise, Review

Trudie Styler’s Cardio Dance Flow is one of 3 new DVD’s from Gaiam designed to help improve balance, endurance and help tone your body.

With music from Trudie Styler’s husband Sting, this is a good beginners home fitness DVD. The routines performed and narrated by James D’Silva are repetitive and along with a footwork tutorial easy to master the moves. You don’t feel intimidated by Trudie as in spite of her ballet and yoga background, never looks like she is pushing herself and the flowing dance movements look like she is taking part in some expressive dance class rather than a challenging exercise workout. It definitely looks like they are having fun even if you just want to laugh at them and the voice over.

One problem with the DVD that I found was that it was very impersonal and there is no encouragement or personal interaction. The warm up routine just begins with a voice saying ‘..And prance and prance and second position, first position…’ without an introduction or description of what second position entails. I also found it strange having a narrator to the routine rather than an instructor talking you through as they or the class do the workout. I thought this was because French and Greek languages were offered at the start but actually that is just for the menu, the rest of the DVD is only in English. Trudie gives a one sentence introduction to the cardio workout and James the stretch workout but I missed someone to keep telling me to keep going as the routine intensified.

The 25 minute core stretch workout is only with D’Silva and again the unique voice over. This is described as a workout that ‘isolates and works every muscle in the body whilst elongating and aligning the skeletal system’. I would love to have discovered if this was true but the entire work out requires a foam roller, something that is not indicated by the accompanying literature. Unlike other workout videos where substitutions can be made if you don’t have the correct hand weights or step, there is no advice given how to modify the routine if you don’t have a foam roller and I can’t think of what could be used as a suitable substitute.

There is also an 11 minute Express workout which contains much of the extended cardio routine but is much more cardio specific with a lot of the slower moves and stretching missed out. As an added bonus there is music from Stings Album ‘Songs from the Labyrinth’, interviews with Trudi, Sting and James and behind the scenes footage.

Whilst I agree with the DVD claims that ‘it allows you to dance, stretch and improve balance through fun and energetic dance routines’, I’m unsure if the word Cardio should be included in the title. The 22 minute cardio dance segment is not what I would consider fast paced as it contains a lot of yoga stretches and positions.

I wore my heart rate monitor during this segment as you can see here, although my heart rate briefly reached 149bpm (74% of max HR) it averaged at 126 bpm (63% of max HR). It is generally accepted that 60-70% develops your endurance and is considered the fat burning zone whilst 70-80% is the aerobic zone, which will develop the cardiovascular system improving the delivery of oxygen to the working muscles. So I would consider this may suit someone looking for a fat burning rather than cardio workout.

Overall

If you are a beginner to exercising this is a fun gently introduction and I recommend using the footwork tutorial first to learn the moves. However whilst it is fine as a low intensity fat burning workout I doubt it would get many people into what would be classed as a cardio/aerobic zone. The stretch moves are also described well and repeated slowly so beginners can understand and follow although you would need the added expense of a foam roller whilst the more advanced exerciser who already own one may find the routine too simplified.

Available from Sainsbury’s, LoveFilm.com, Play.com, Amazon.co.uk and other retailers.

Release Date: 14th June 2010
Running Time: 1Hr 18Mins

Also read our reviews of other recent fitness DVD releases:

The FIRM: Power Half Hour designed to produce maximum results in a minimum amount of time

5 Day Fit Weight Loss designed to add variety to your routine with 5 different fat burning workouts