Nell McAndrew's Peak Energy DVD > Reviews > Peak Energy - High Impact Work Out

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Loved it
Educational Value	Good
How good are the presenters?	Good
How good is the content?	Excellent
Value for Money	Good

Advantages:	Very easy to follow
Disadvantages:	Not for the beginner

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I've always been a bit of a skeptic when it comes to home fitness videos and DVD's, always remembering the type my mum used to do that made no difference what so ever.

I decided to give at least something a try, as at the moment I do not get the time to visit the gym due to my daughter being home and not due to start school for a while.

There's a bit of a talk at the begining of the video by Nell herself, but she doesn't do any of the tuition through out the video, it's all done but a man. From the way he holds himself and the way he gives the instructions myself and my husband have deduced that he must be from a military back ground.

There a three parts to this dvd other than the introduction, which can be skipped. The warm up, the main routine and the cool down (or floor work).

When I first started this dvd I could only just complete the warm up, so be warned if you haven't done any exercise in a while don't expect to blast though this. It's pretty low impact to start off with, just the normal stretching, and it slowly seems to pick up in gear - be warned if your legs hurt doing squats then don't do too many in the warm up as the routine will be almost impossible. There's a bit of jogging and walking on the spot, but nothing too much, there's just no breaks which seems to make it very intensive. This is 10mins long.

Next is the main routine, everything really picks up a gear or five!! here. It's not hard to follow, infact its very easy, what it hard though is the fact that it's constant. This is 40min of work out (this bit is on a timer as well). The only way I can explain thins would be to say a mixture of high kicked running on the spot, a skiing movement, star jumps and normal jumps at a very high pace with arm moves aswell. Like I said it's not hard to follow, it's just very fast paced and there is no break between moves and it feels like sprinting for 40mins! If you didn't start to sweat in the warmup, give it 2 mins of the main routine and you will.

If you decide to give up after some of the main routine, I stil have to sometimes, make sure you do some stretching because your legs will really hurt the next day. Although the more you do the easier it becomes.

The floor work (cool down) is very low impact. It starts off with pressups, then bum lifts (I'm not sure of the real name), tummy crunches, then legs lifts and stretching. The only annoying thing here is that the instructor will keep saying "8 more, last set" - and it's not, he then makes you do another set!! It is very good though. If I was at home on my own I would probably do 20 situps and then give up, but with someone giving you instructions you feel the need to keep going. These movements are not hard at all, but because of the amount the you do, it certainly works the areas that are being exercised!

My warning to all would be, the title is Peak Energy. It certainly requires a lot of hard work, but after a week of doing this I found that I had more energy late into the night and after the initial pain had subsided I feel great after doing this because I know its worked my body. If I feel that I can't do the whole routine one day then I will just do the floor work, so I feel like I have done something.

My husband was taking the micky for a bit and would not even come in the room when I was doing this (he's a gym goer and sports man), he said he wasn't doing any womans fitness video. But I got him to have a go, and he took it all back after, the sweat was pooring off! He called it high impact aerobics, which I think is a very good classification of this.

Last thing, the music in the back ground is dance, if you like dance great, turn up the volume and enjoy it. If you don't then you could turn it down and still do the routine as the instructor doesn't really say that much in terms of the moves he just counts the reps.