Workout 2: Motown Moves

[Guest guest]

Yuck. I saw on VF reviews people really liked this. I like Tamilee and I love Motown music plus I really enjoy her Fit to the Hits Rock Hard Assets. I was sure I'd love this. So wrong. I didn't expect much of a calorie burn I just expected it to be fun. It was neither. There are 5 main songs and you do a combo to each one. She TIFTs in each but they are all independent. That was good because her cueing was so bad and the camera angles so weird (on people's feet or just on their heads but not often enough on full bodies) that I could not keep up with the seemingly simple choreography and just found it frustrating. When I could follow along, it was so dependent on you putting as much energy and motion in as possible to get any sort of a decent workout out of it that it was less enjoyable. I noticed that in this and others, she tends to focus heavily on arm motions to go with the music. The lower body is either stationary or not movng a lot (just lateral or forward and back side steps a lot of times but fancied up with hip sways and such) but the arms are more complicated. Because the lower body is so boring, I want to put more into the arms but I get so messed up trying to put arms and legs together that it becomes much less fun. Tamilee also sings a lot in this one, which I expected because she does some singing in Rock Hard Assets too but she's worse here (or I was just more annoyed and less forgiving). The music is good but not the original artists which makes it a little less enjoyable, plus whoever did "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" rearranged it a bit and I didn't like it a lot and that was the final song/combo so it was supposed to be big. She did do a nice little grapevine/spin combination in this one that I liked though. Very appropriate.

One thing I really did like, despite not being able to follow along well, is that she did try hard to incorporate what seemed like moves the Motown singers did in their stage appearances. I LOVED watching them and always wanted to be able to move in that awesome choreographed, everyone together style but was never able to. I obviously still can't. oh well, it was good to try anyway and pretend you were up there on stage!

I cannot end this without commenting on her outfit. OH MY! She was wearing a peach furry (or furry terry cloth looking) top that had one shoulder uncovered and her midriff showing then her pants were the same peach but plastic with some kind of texture on them. It was very "interesting" and that did make me laugh. I like Rock Hard Assets partly because I laughed a lot doing it. She encourages you to do some freestyle dancing in Motown Moves which I did do and liked and she also encourages you to rock out in Rock Hard Assets (playing air guitar and such). They're both a lot of fun in that sense. She definitely doesn't take herself seriously and encourages you to be the same way. The cheesiness works in a playful way. I just didn't have very much fun trying to follow along and that took away too much so this one, sadly, is probably going in the trade pile. The only thing that might save it is there is a bonus workout called "I Want That Body Cardio 1" (or something like that). I haven't looked at it yet but am very curious because I love the I Want That Body DVD which is all strength training. After I check that out, I'll decide what to do with this. Sigh.

Off to work but glad I got in all the exercise I wanted and intended to do today!