Kathy Smith:Rules of Fat Burni

First of all for those of you who have Personal Trainer already there is some overlap between these two DVD's.
This DVD contains the long-slow cardio from Time Saver: Cardio Fat Burner and the upper body segment from Lift Weights to Lose Weight. Both of these same segments are also on Personal Trainer. I know that there is more than one cardio on Cardio Fat Burner and more than one upper body workout on Lift Weights to Lose Weight so I wish they would have used other workouts. Thankfully the lower body workout is different between the two and is actually 20 minutes instead of 10 as on Personal Trainer.

Secondly as other reviewers have mentioned there is no warm up or cool down on this DVD which I really miss. I use the ones from Personal Trainer when I use this DVD but I really think that is negligent to ignore that here as this could be the only workout video a person might buy and they are always telling us how important a warm up and cool down is. I know you can do your own but I don't recall her even mentioning on here to make sure you do your own and there is not mention at the beginning of the workouts of it either (like in print on the screen or anything). The interval cardio on here is pretty intense by my standards and you need to have warmed up so you don't hurt yourself.

Other than those grievances I do like the cardio on this DVD. I mainly use it for the interval cardio as I have Personal Trainer and Kickboxing already. The jump rope segment from Aerobox looks to hard to even attempt in the next six months as I have only gotten back into fitness after about a 10 year hiatus. You don't have to have a jump rope to do it and they actually recommend not using one if you are a beginner. There are three parts to it and Kathy Smith doesn't even participate in the last part so I am not sure if it was too hard for her or what. The other interval cardio really gets my heart rate up but I have definitely decided that I like long-slow better. When I do interval I am really glad when it is over - I don't feel that way as much with long-slow.

At the beginning of this DVD she gives a talk about the Rules of Fat Burning which is interesting and I did learn something. The only thing here (which is a petty female thing) is what is up with Kathy's eyebrows?? She looks like the has had a face lift. Her eyebrows look totally pulled back.

The best thing about this DVD is the ability to customize your workout. You can go to that menu and pick the segments you want to do in the order you want to do them then click start and it plays in the order you chose. You can even choose to do a segment more than once if you wanted to. I love this feature.

Overall I gave this DVD three stars because I like the cardio workouts on it but like mentioned earlier there is too much overlap with Personal Trainer (which came out 2 years earlier) and there is no warm up or cool down. I would not have bought it had I realized those two things.