Special Interest > Educational & Instructional Special Interest

Advantages: Great questions, can be bought very cheap
Disadvantages: Shoddy quality DVD, very slow gameplay ruins tension

For my housemate's 21st birthday, we decided to buy a few board games. We've already got 4 'Scene It?''s and we're big fans of DVD board games. Looking on Amazon.co.uk we came across 'Fingers on Buzzers' for just £3.15 and after seeing rave reviews of it we thought why not? The game arrived this morning, and we were both very impressed with the packaging. It's in a Video casette type case, which holds the buzzers as well as the DVD itself. There ...
...As a whole the game is small in size so it's great for kids to take to their grandparents' or to a friends' house. Also very easy to store. SETTING UP This was relatively easy. You have to establish a connection between the buzzer box and your remote control for the game to work and this involves holding down buttons and pressing the remote control at the right time while they're facing each other. Easy enough, although one of the LED's on the ... Read review

Advantages: fun, relatively cheap and easy, gets results.
Disadvantages: air of American cheesiness

...that the instructor was called Billy Blanks and after a little research learned that he was a martial artist who had combined Tae Kwon Do (a Korean martial art) and dance moves and had unintentionally hit upon the idea of Tae Bo. I also learned that he's not as formidable as he looks, either, but encourages the people on the video and the people at home in an energetic and unpatronising way. The Tae Bo workouts are high energy, but are far from ...
...to doing constant repitions of sit-ups or some other boring exercise, but when I was doing the Tae Bo workouts, I was so distracted by perfecting my kicking and punching that I forgot I was exercising half the time! I was knackered afterwards and really felt like I'd burned off a fair few calories by the time I'd finished! The video I use is called Tae Bo Active and has a basic workout and an advanced work out. I also had a Tae Bo Advanced video ... Read review

Advantages: Fun, variable, tones and burns fat, good music
Disadvantages: The annoying Lucy!

...I bought another one - Rosemary Conley's Brand New You workout DVD. I usually can't stand Rosemary Conley - there's something about her that makes me want to scream at the TV! However, this one features Coleen Nolan, who I love watching in Loose Women and have followed her progress as she has lost weight recently. So I decided to risk it and bought the DVD from Amazon. The cover has a very unflattering photo of a size 18 Coleen on the front, next ...
...There is an introduction from Rosemary Conley at first, which is worth watching once, but is easy to skip past afterwards. Then the hard work comes! The first section is a 7-minute long warm up, which does what you'd expect - it stretches your muscles, warms you up and gets you ready for the more strenuous sections to follow. Section 2 is ten minutes of fat-burning aerobics, which is quite fast-paced and you can feel it working quite quickly! Sections ... Read review

Advantages: The different sections break it up nicely
Disadvantages: None

...Not a huge fan of Davina as she usually goes a bit OTT when on the TV but I found her to be quite inspiring as she just gets on with it and looks genuinely puffed out. Being instructed by two personal trainers is great as it gives an easier alternative to the exercises in parts when you are starting to feel the strain. The warm up gets you in the mood for the exercise and the cool down is very relaxing. A great DVD, I could start to see results after ... Read review

Advantages: You burn some calories whilst having fun!
Disadvantages: None

What is it?: The Cardio Dance Slim Down is a 40-minute low-impact cardio dance workout with no weights or resistance exercises. Although there is a choreography to follow it's not that difficult and you should be able to learn the moves after 2 maybe 3 times. I strongly suggest to watch the DVD a couple of times before starting, it's not something you can do straight away. Structure: The workout is well-structured. It starts with a ...
...so whilst you go through the routine you add on one step at a time although quite quickly. The music is ok, I would say it's very basic nothing cool and not much different from other fitness DVDs that I have purchased in the past. The instructor, Allie DelRio Pointer, is really cute and funny, easy to follow and not annoying! And she is actually sweating during the workout which is more realistic than other DVDs where celebrities have their hair ... Read review