Anchor Bay Fitness DVD Review and Giveaway!
You may recall that when I last reviewed two DVDs from Anchor Bay Fitness‘s Element Yoga collection, I did a giveaway for two new releases:
Anchor Bay was nice enough to also send me a copy of each of these two DVDs to try out and review. I have been working on doing decreasing the amount of high-intensity workouts in my week, and having a variety of workout videos has certainly helped me on that journey. My recent GI issues have also called for more low-intensity workouts. Heavy weights and cardio don’t feel great to my body when I’m feeling nauseous.
Yoga expert Tamal Dodge teaches both 30-minute workouts. As you can probably guess, one is for energy and includes poses that strengthen, tone, and stretch. The other relaxes the body through simple poses like downward dog, spinal twist, and crocodile (one of the easiest poses in yoga). I tried this DVD while I was feeling nauseous and it was nice and relaxing, though my stomach couldn’t handle poses that incorporated back bends, like camel or cobra. If you plan to do both programs, I recommend doing the energy first and the relax second. This is what I did and if I had flip-flopped, I think I would have been ready to take a nap or just meditate after the relax video and never would have made it to the energy! Tamal’s instructions are calming and the video would even be one I’d recommend to a beginning yogi. I can certainly see myself using this DVD again when I am craving some movement but not feeling 100%.
The talented and beautiful Lisa Hubbard (who sometimes likes my Instagram pics…I die) leads both workouts on this DVD – the 30-minute total body and 10-minute abs. The pink resistance band shown on the cover is indeed included inside and functions very well, although it does stick to itself (like tape) a bit! To be honest with you, I don’t know if I would call this an “accelerated” pilates routine. I was expecting something more advanced, but found the total body work to be not particularly challenging. The abs were a bit harder – a straight 10 minutes of abs usually is! But the video overall is still a good mix of total body moves that kept me interested thanks to all the variety and the use of the band, something I’m still inexperienced with. I have to admit that it pissed me off a few times when it came “unlooped” from around my foot, but I don’t think it’s anything practice won’t fix! I don’t want those not super-experienced with pilates to be discouraged by the classification of the DVD as “accelerated” because I really think a lot of folks can do this DVD and get in an enjoyable workout!
Dance Workout DVD Giveaway
I love dance workouts like Group Groove and Zumba. They’re both heart-pumping and brain-occupying, which makes the time fly! Anchor Bay has two dance workout DVDs to give away to one lucky Cait Plus Ate reader:
- Dance Off the Inches Latin Cardio Dance Party: Three dance routines (samba, reggaeton, cumbia) broken down into steps, then combinations, to help you learn the routines! The workouts total 65 minutes, so each is about 20 minutes of cardio fun.
- 10 Minute Solution Cardio Hip Hop: Five 10-minute dance routines – so easy to customize your cardio workout’s length! Even if you just have ten minutes, there’s a routine on here for you. And if you have almost an hour, do all five in a row!
Giveaway is open to continental US only and ends at 11:59PM EST on Sunday 11/4/12. To enter, you can do the following – and leave a separate comment for each:
- Comment on this post (mandatory) and tell me which you prefer – yoga or pilates?
- Follow @CaitPlusAte on Twitter, and comment with your Twitter handle saying you did.
- Follow @AnchorBayEntFit on Twitter, and comment with your Twitter handle saying you did.
- Tweet “I’m entered to win two @AnchorBayEntFit dance workout DVDs from @CaitPlusAte! #fitfluential http://wp.me/p1SfTW-1CH” and comment here with the link to the tweet.
- Repin something from Element on Pinterest and comment with the link to the repin.
- Follow CaitPlusAte on Pinterest and comment with your Pinterest name saying you did.
Though it’s not an option for giveaway entry, you can also like Anchor Bay Entertainment’s Fitness page on Facebook!
General Giveaway Rules: No Purchase Necessary. This giveaway is only open to residents of the continental United States. The email addresses that are collected for this giveaway will only be used for the purpose of contacting the winner and will never be given out to anyone nor sold. The winner will be randomly chosen and contacted via email. The winner will have 72 hours to respond. Please make sure you check your junk mail folder.
Good luck to all who enter! I received both of these DVDs from Anchor Bay to review free of charge. However, all thoughts and opinions are my own.
