Rosemary Conley (DVD)

...one.

The Rosemary Conley Fitness Triple pack is produced by '2 Entertain' and cost me £9.99. The three DVD's are packed in a box slip pack, which is blue and has a picture of Rosemary on the front. Inside this they are then in there own individual plastic DVD cases. The three DVD's in this package are; The Ultimate Whole Body Workout, Fat Attack Workout and Five Day Fat Burner


ULTIMATE WHOLE BODY WORKOUT
...
...the last fitness DVD that Rosemary is going to do. The disc starts by giving warnings about when you should not exercise.

The disc is made up of three different workouts, which you can either do individually, or play them all together, giving yourself a big workout. The different sections are;

1. Fat burning workout.
2. Whole body toning.
3. Chair work

Fat burning workout starts of with gentle ... more

After having my son almost three years ago, I put on over a stone and a half in weight. After almost two years of healthy eating, I'd managed to lose a stone. After having my daughter three and a half months ago, I put most of the weight back on. This time I decided that I couldn't wait a couple of years to lose the weight again and decided to buy myself an exercise DVD to do, in the hope that I would lose the weight a little bit sooner (and not have a wardrobe full of nothing to wear!!).

After searching the internet and reading about lots of different DVD's, I decided on this one.

The Rosemary Conley Fitness Triple pack is produced by '2 Entertain' and cost me £9.99. The three DVD's are packed in a box slip pack, which is blue and has a picture of Rosemary on the front. Inside this they are then in there own individual plastic DVD cases. The three DVD's in this package are; The Ultimate Whole Body Workout, Fat Attack Workout and Five Day Fat Burner

ULTIMATE WHOLE BODY WORKOUT

The Ultimate Whole Body Workout is the first one I tried out of the pack and it has a running time of 79 minutes. Apparently this is the last fitness DVD that Rosemary is going to do. The disc starts by giving warnings about when you should not exercise.

The disc is made up of three different workouts, which you can either do individually, or play them all together, giving yourself a big workout. The different sections are;

1. Fat burning workout.
2. Whole body toning.
3. Chair work

Fat burning workout starts of with gentle marching exercises to warm you up, then into the workout and finally cooling down at the end. I found it quite a fast paced workout, but the good part is that there are other people doing the workout with Rosemary and if her pace is too fast you can follow one of her assistant's (there are four assistants in total.) and if you want to push yourself you can follow the other two (the remaining assistant works with Rosemary at an intermediate level.). Some of the moves included were half or full jacks (a half jack is where you bring your arms to shoulder height and kick one leg out. A full jack is jumping with legs apart and raising the arms above your head), kick backs (kicking your one leg behind you), knee lifts (this is where you lift your one knee up and bring the opposite hand over to touch it) and squats (bending down with legs apart and keeping your back straight.), to name only a few.

Another good part is that at the bottom left hand side of the screen is a clock which counts down, letting you know how long you have left.

The whole body toning workout starts with stretching to warm up, then moves onto toning exercises using weights and some floor work, then finally onto cooling down. Some of the toning up exercises included doing press up with knees bent and abdominal curls (lying on the floor with knees bent, arms behind your head and bringing the head up).

Chair workout is designed for people in wheelchairs, or people with poor mobility and also pregnant women. This is again a good workout with lots of stretching exercises.

The final part of this DVD is success stories, which introduces you to the assistants and tells you how much weight they have lost.

Overall I found this a good DVD as it included an all over workout, toning, stretching, weights and floor work. I also liked that there were other people in the DVD which you could follow if the pace became too fast or too slow for you. It was also good that they included the chair work section for pregnant women and people with poor mobility, as these can sometimes get forgotten about in fitness videos.

The only problem I found was trying to do the floor exercises and needing to keep my head looking down at the floor, but needing to watch the television to find out what to do!!

Some of the music included on this DVD was 'Moving on up' by M People, 'Celebration' by Kool and the Gang, 'Dance the night away' by The Mavericks, 'The only way is up' by Yazz and 'S Club Party' by S Club 7, so the music was varied.

The DVD cover was plain and simple - a white cover with a picture of Rosemary on, and was released as an individual DVD in 2003.

FAT ATTACK WORKOUT

The second DVD I tried was 'Fat Attack Workout'. This is a high intensity aerobic fat burning workout, and runs for 76 minutes. As with the previous DVD, you get the health warnings at the beginning and you can chose to do the whole thing or one of the sections. The sections were;

1. Warm up.
2. Fat attack workout.
3. Abdominal and upper body workout.
4. Cool down stretch
5. Circuit training warm up.

In this DVD there are six assistants (five women and one man) who work with Rosemary at the different levels of beginner, intermediate and advanced, and you chose who to follow. Again you get the clock with the countdown.

The moves are similar to the previous DVD, but because of the different music you don't notice it too much so it doesn't matter.

This again starts with the gentle warm up exercises and then progresses to the faced paced workout.

There is again floor work involved for the abdominal and upper body workout.

The cooling down stretches were nice and relaxing. The music combined with the stretches make you feel really good.

In the circuit training workout you needed a rope and some weights or water bottles. This time Rosemary is joined by three men and one woman, again all working at different levels. This sections starts with a warm up. Next is 45 seconds of press ups, working to what level you can - either full press ups or with knees bent. Then onto 45 seconds of half jacks or full jacks (a half jack is where you bring your arms to shoulder height and kick one leg out. A full jack is jumping with legs apart and raising the arms above your head.). The next bit is 45 seconds of abdominal curls (lying on the floor with knees bent, arms behind your head and bringing the head up). After this you need to place a length of rope along the ground and jump over it for 45 seconds. Next you need to lie on your font and lift your head and chest off the floor and lower, again this was for 45 seconds. Then onto 45 seconds of marching. Next was using weights, 45 seconds of lifting the arms out to the side. Finally 45 seconds of back kicks (kicking your one leg behind you). It then goes back to cooling down exercises.

At the end of this DVD we again see before and after pictures and how much weight they have lost.

The music on this DVD was really good and included 'I just died in your arms' by The Cutting Crew, 'Love rendezvous' by M People, 'Let's go round again' by Louise and 'You sexy thing' by Hot Chocolate.

The cover of this is plain and simple - yellow with a picture of Rosemary on, but because of the bright colour it jumps out at you. This was released as an individual DVD in 1999.

Overall I found this DVD to be an excellent workout as it is fast paced and made you work. Plus the circuit training at the end gives you that little bit extra.

FIVE DAY FAT BURNER

The final DVD I tried was the Five Day Fat Burner and this runs for 84 minutes. Again with this one you get the health warnings at the beginning and you can either do the whole thing as a long workout or each section individually. The sections are broken down as follows;

1. Workout 1 - Warm up fat burner.
2. Workout 2 - Fat burner.
3. Workout 3 - Fat burner cool down.
4. Workout 4 - Toning: hips and thighs and more.
5. Workout 5 - Toning: abdominal and more.
6. Workout 6 - Relaxation stretch.
7. Menu planner.

The fat burner is done by six assistants (five women and one man) and Rosemary. Again the levels the assistants work to are varied so you can follow who you wish. Rosemary alternates between the three levels. Again the clock is back at the bottom left hand side of the screen.

To be honest the moves in this DVD were more or less the same as the previous, but were done in different routines to different music so it didn't bother me. To be quite fair there are only a certain number of aerobics exercises you can put on a DVD so it is obvious that some of them will get duplicated and the DVDs were brought out over a couple of years when released individually.

Again it starts with gentle warm up exercises and then into the workout. In the toning section you need weights plus a chair for support. I found some of these exercises quite difficult, but it was really good as you could feel your muscles working.

There is another toning section where you do some floor work. Again if you work at the advanced level it can be quite difficult because you need to use a chair and lie on the floor with you feet up on the chair.

The relaxation part was very nice. Again as with the previous ones the music and stretching made you feel nice and relaxed (plus after the difficult toning section seeing there was only five minutes left on the clock made me feel even better!!)

The seven day menu planner and the recipe cards that were with this DVD if you bought it individually were not in the triple pack (at least they weren't in mine.). The meals that were on the cards had been cooked so you could see what they actually looked like.

Rosemary goes onto explain the basics of losing weight insomuch that we need to eat less calories than we need each day, so our bodies will use up what stores we have and then don't eat anything fatty, so that the stores don't build back up.

This section was very interesting and I picked up a few tips with regards to low fat cooking - for example when you have been cooking mince, wait until it's browned off, put it into a sieve or colander and just wait for all the fat to drain out. It was surprising to see how much fat there was in the mince.

I also picked up a few ideas for meals - for example mixing a natural yogurt with muesli for breakfast instead of milk and jacket potato with cottage cheese mixed with sweet corn for lunch.

At the end of this DVD, as with the others you are introduced to the assistants from the DVD and told their before and after weights.

The music on this DVD included 'Naked' by Louise, 'Everything Changes' by Take That, 'Angel Street' by M People, 'Bag it up' by Geri Halliwell and 'Stayin Alive' by N Trance. There is a good variety of music to keep everyone happy.

The cover again is plain and simple - a blue background with a picture of Rosemary on the front. This was released individually in 2000.

Overall I enjoyed this DVD but did find using the chair in the toning section quite difficult and was willing the clock to count down faster!!

I enjoyed all three DVD's and found them really good. If I had to pick one as a favourite it would be 'Fat Attack' as there were lots to do and it made me work hard. Also I think that this one had the most up beat music, in my opinion.

Even though some of the moves and exercises are similar on all three, I would still recommend the triple pack as it only cost £9.99. You could go out and buy them separately at a cost of £7.99 each, but for the extra £2 you get an additional two DVD's so you can work out to a great variety of music, plus each DVD had their own individual part that was not on any of the others, be it the chair workout for people with poor mobility, the circuit training and lastly floor work using chairs.

I also found it motivating to see that all the assistants had lost a couple of stone each - it gives you the will to carry on with the healthy eating and exercise.

I would definitely recommend this as it is excellent value for money.
 

...less