's Sweatin' 5 DVD - Personal Opinions

[Guest guest]

This arrived in the mail the other day and I'm watching it for the first time today. In fact, it's only about 15 minutes into the 55 minute workout right now.

I'm a little bit disappointed.

The sound is mixed weirdly and I can hear loud and clear, but to hear the music I really have to pump up the volume, making it too loud for me to play at my usual exercise time of 5am. For those of you who already have this one, is the sound the same on yours or is mine defective? It's not my bad ears, either. I called my son in to listen and he said the same thing. I have a few Sansone videos that are like this, too. Frustrating.

He does here one of the things I hate from all his other Sweatin' videos - he starts with a really fast song, one that really belongs around the middle of the workout, and *then* does a slow one. What's so wrong with starting the workout slow?

It's crowded. He has about 20 people doing the workout at a time, with at least another 20 hanging around the background, either following along in a half-hearted way or just walking around, talking to each other.

The exercisers are obviously following the directions of someone off-stage, and a good thing, too, for many times the whole gang is doing a movement one way and is doing it differently. He also doesn't do moves to the beat of the music at times. I've seen this on a few other of 's videos.

Like many of his videos, you need a lot of room to do some of these steps. He has you walking and kicking and flailing arms 4 or more steps off to either side, front and back. I've kicked many a bookcase, wall and lamp doing his videos in my cramped apartment living rooms over the decades, and it looks like it's going to happen again with this one unless I greatly modify some of the moves.

Those shorts! Will ever grow up and wear shorts that don't show what he owns when he kicks his legs up? LOL

The workout (so far) looks like it'll be okay for beginners if they take it song by song and modify the steps or just stop when they get tired and then just chapter-skip to the cool down. The moves aren't as confusing, elaborate or fast as they've been in some of the other videos, like the 60's and 80's BlastOff ones.

Nice set. This one is set at an urban park or a college quad, and in the background is a neat wall-sized mural reminiscent of Max paintings and other mod styles of the 60's and early 1970's.

It *is* a nice choice of songs, if you can hear them. It's 34 minutes in now and I really had to raise the volume loud to hear "Hit the Road Jack" faintly. . . (a break to take phone calls and cook the kid's lunch) . . .Now at the cool-down I can hear "What the World Needs Now" nice and clear, so maybe someone in the control room saw there was a problem and tweaked the settings but didn't go back to remix the whole disc. Hmm, also, only 16 of the exercisers did the Walk of Fame (Elijah is back and a few pounds heavier than the last time I saw him in a video). The rest just stood in the background again. No extras at the end - no bloopers or interviews.

But all in all, it looks to be a nice addition to the Sweatin' series of workouts and I'm glad I bought it for those days I get bored with Sansone and treadmill workouts.

Link to the DVD:

<http://www.richardsimmons.com/j15/index.php?page=shop.product_details & flypage=flypage.tpl & product_id=154 & category_id=2 & option=com_virtuemart & Itemid=81 & vmcchk=1 & Itemid=81>

or try:

http://tinyurl.com/yzad5hb

if the link is broken.

Now to wait for the mailman to deliver the new Sansone set, the one she's selling on QVC. That should be delivered any day now.

Sue in NJ