The Better Homemaking Network

This is a review of the Fluidity Fitness Exercise Bar and workout DVDs by Michelle Austin.

The bar itself is a very nice and extremely useful piece of equipment. I’ll be using it for some of my Yourself! Fitness( My Fitness Coach) routines to help keep my balance and to take advantage of the mat.

As far as the workouts themselves, well… honestly I can’t believe she’s split everything up into three discs. You have three people doing all of the exercises in each video – she does the intermediate versions, with the ladies in the back doing either simplified versions or more advanced versions. The moves are quite intuitive and really do what she says they do – target muscles with minimal movement. Each time you work muscles, you stretch them afterward. The idea is very sound and the workouts very good. It is the delivery that is lacking.

The beginner workout (about 30 minutes) has tons of core work, with some lower body given that most of the exercises are standing. She is very detailed in describing exactly how to do each exercise without much room for error. One could wish for a couple more descriptions of the beginner version of the exercises, but is easy to figure out after watching the video once or twice as it pans over the lady doing them. However, even the first time through, she quickly gets irritating with the way she counts / leads the exercises. After a few more times, one wants a lot less detail, since you now know how the exercises are done.

The intermediate workout (about 35 minutes) is exactly the same workout as the beginner, adding a few upper body exercises using a resistance band, which is kind of fun. However, one wonders why the disc and case were wasted.

The advanced workout (about 40 minutes) picks up the pace slightly, using all of the exercises from the other videos, but adding in more core work, and some lower body exercises. We now use the little dodge ball, but really, it didn’t look that useful. Some of the moves we learn from the first two workouts have the ball added between the knees to up the difficulty, but usually she has you put it someplace where you don’t actually touch it during the exercise. This workout is quite tough compared to the other two.

With my current fitness level, I’m going to be doing the intermediate video, with the easier versions of the exercises. After another week or two, I feel I will be comfortable enough to make a list of those exercises, then add in some of the lower body exercises from the advanced video. It will be nice when I can do them on my own without having to listen to her count to 20 while describing the exercise itself 20 times. I will review the videos when I want to increase my difficulty level.

I’ll continue to use Yourself! Fitness for my cardio in addition to the Fluidity workouts. They really are good, but being minimal movement exercises, don’t really get your heart rate up much. It will still be worth the investment, even more so when I can ditch her videos altogether and do the workout on my own.