review

Here’s another workout DVD review that could be added to the “videos that sort-of make me think I’m going to die, yet I love them” list.

Leah Sarago’s three-part Ballet Body series incorporates elements of ballet, Pilates, yoga, and athletic moves. As always, you need to think about proper pelvic and spinal alignment while doing the exercises, but she’s pretty good at cuing correct positioning. The videos, aside from tremendous strength-building, incorporate a lot of flexibility and balance work. I put these in when I want to work really hard but don’t want the extreme cardio of Brooklyn Bridge or one of my kickboxing DVDs. She does not include a warm-up at all, so you want to make sure to warm up your muscles before starting these.

For nearly a year in 2011, a coworker and I went through almost all of Ellen Barrett’s workout DVDs, reporting daily on what we thought and, as we used them repeatedly, whether and where our muscles were sore or if difficult moves were becoming easy. Increasingly amusing was discussing whether, in the aftermath, we found it difficult to perform mundane tasks such as walking up stairs or picking up paper that we dropped on the floor.