Personal Training with Chris Freytag

The best thing about this video is that it tells you what to do every day. 

The DVD contains a lot of different little segments -- two 13-minute aerobics sessions, one 10-minute full-body strength training session, several 5-minute toning sessions focusing on specific body parts, and a warm up and cool down.

What you do is select your goal -- losing weight, or being healthy or toning, etc -- and then the DVD automatically programs a sequence of exercises for you for the whole week.  You click on the current day of the week, and you're off.

I like this because while I know what I should be doing, ideally, for excercise, I rarely keep to a schedule.  This sets up the schedule for you automatically.

For example, if you choose losing weight as your goal, you get a 6-day program (you're supposed to take 1 day a week off) that alternates full-body toning plus one aerobics segment one day with both aerobics segments the next day.  One day per week you do all three.  

Every program has a 5-minute warm-up and a 5-minute yoga-inspired stretch at the end.  

The level is beginner to intermediate, but now that I'm middle-aged, I'm not very energetic and I found some of it too hard and had to modify it even more than the demonstrator doing the modified version did.  I also used lighter weights than they suggested. 

There are a lot of squats and lunges, in both the aerobics and the toning portions of the video, so if you have problems with your knees, you shouldn't do this video.

You'll need a mat and a set of weights (they say two sets, but I think you can get by with one).

I recommend taking your shoes off during the cool-down stretch (they keep theirs on).

I got the video out of the library, but am considering buying it.  I think I may take it out once more to see if I get tired of it, and then decide.