The Firm Total Body MAXIMUM BODY SHAPING SCULPTING Workout DVD - Full Body Toning & Fitness Training for Women at Home

Once you get over the 80s lycra-clad bodies and super-tight hot-shorts in fluoro colours, it is a really good workout. Those are really the only things that age this workout as the moves are terriffic! None would be out of place now and this DVD makes a nice change for someone who works out to Les Mills Pump as there are enough exercises with weights/dumbells to push your muscles and similar muscle groups are used.When the difficulty level rose, I also stopped being distracted by Tracie's pnumatic chest enhancements and marvelous steroid-built-looking leg muscles to concentrate on the moves which were sometimes complicated.A few times I reverted to what I thought they were doing or whatever the previous steps were because it just became to complex for a chorographically-challenged person like me. Maybe with more practice and pausing, I'll get them right. You need lots of floor space to complete this challenging hour also.I don't have much space so I had to keep pausing to rearrange equipment and when I resumed, my heart rate had obviously dropped and I had lost a bit of momentum. You really need a high step or the proper 'Fanny Lifter' to do several sections as a step platform (which is all I had) is too low. You won't be getting as much out of those sections either because the ordinary step is lower. I didn't like the terms 'medium to heavy weights/light to medium weights', I would rather have them use exact kilogram/pound amounts. I got a little confused when they swapped weights and didn't know which ones to use for what, but again that would improve with multiple playing of this DVD.The music is surprisingly OK and not irritating (with classical for the stretches at the end); the background decor is lovely (like Italianite & marble) and it looks like a lot more effort & thought went in to making these The Firm exercise series than the more recent ones.I'd definitely workout to this again. My muscles really felt the strain of using the weights towards the end of the reps and especially with the second round of reps and it seemed like ~50 minutes well spent (although I'd rather 30 minutes for a challenging weights DVD). The floor work for abs was also great, and plenty of pushups during the workout made this a well-rounded, fairly high-intensity sculpt class.The cover does say beginner to intermediate, but since I've been familiar with both gym and home DVD workouts for several years and still found this complicated, I'd hesitate to recommend it to absolute beginners.