Cardio With a Side of Salsa

Want to “Burn fat with sizzling Latin dance moves?” Crunch Cardio Salsa claims to be your tape of choice. My efforts at the tape are the latest in a quest to broaden my workout horizons through new workout videos. I’ve tried salsa tapes before and been confused or bored, but Crunch Cardio Salsa was great for me!

CRUNCH in General
This video is part of the popular CRUNCH series of tapes and gyms. Other tapes in the series include pilates, yoga, and boot camp. I have found CRUNCH to be ahead of the fitness game in jumping onto trendy new workouts. I don’t live near enough to a big city to ever attend one of their gyms, but I think their tapes are usually a lot of fun. CRUNCH attempts to make workouts fun for people of all different ages, shapes, sizes, and ability. You can go to www.crunch.com for more information about gyms and products.

The Instructor
This particular tape features Giselle Roque de Escober who is an instructor at the CRUNCH gym in Miami. According to the back of the video her favorite splurge food is peanut M & M’s, in case you were wondering. Ahh, to be able to narrow splurging down to a single food. Giselle is an adorable, teeny tiny lady with fabulous abs and a great accent. Anyway, I am quite sensitive to annoying video instructors but I loved Giselle. She is enthusiastic without being over the top and seeming fake. Most importantly, she had a great sense of rhythm and all her cues were right on target, which is a complaint I have had with other videos. Dancing with Giselle makes me feel like I am really on my way to being a fabulous Latin dancer. Hey, this denial gets me through the tape ok?

The Work-Out
The tape starts with a brief warm-up for several moments. This is a less elaborate warm-up than many videotapes I have used, so I recommend taking a few minutes before doing the tape to march in place or step side to side because the video kind of jumps right into things.

Giselle leads viewers through a series of short combinations in different styles of Latin dance. The combos include salsa, samba, and merengue steps among others. The intensity is moderate throughout, and I really started to sweat about twenty minutes into the workout. Moves range from a simple grapevine to a more elaborate turn with a samba step. Giselle does each combo in isolation, which I like. After putting the whole thing together and repeating it a couple times she moves on to the next portion. I tend to dislike tapes that spend the whole time putting together a routine because I don’t like doing the same moves over and over. This workout was in manageable little chunks of eight minutes or so which made the whole thing move by very quickly. The actual workout lasts a little over a half hour. Almost all of the moves are low impact except for a few little hops which can easily be omitted.

Many of the dance moves are very sassy and you can put some attitude into the dancing as you become more familiar with the basic moves. I liked the wrist flicks and all the hip action. Don’t worry, you can still get a good workout without the extra flare, but it makes the tape even more fun. I like to pretend that I am a talented and beautiful Latin dancer ready to make my big break into the world of competitive dance. This also adds to the repeat value because I want to get better at these dance moves.

The tape ends with a brief cool down period of about five minutes. This includes some very basic stretches, lunges, and arm circles. Like the warm-up, I don’t think there is quite enough of a cool down. I continued stretching on my own after the video ended.

How Coordinated Do I Need to Be?
I’m sure the idea of a dance video is sending some of you into convulsions. It’s true, you will probably look like a fool at first but I found the cuing and dance instruction on this video to be the best of several different Latin dance workouts I have tried. Giselle teaches well, starting out with the feet for each dance move and incorporating hands later. She names each move something different which helps with the verbal cuing if you have a good memory for the names. Since the combos were short, I was able to have some degree of success with most of them instead of flailing around like a fish trying to remember dozens of moves in a row.

That said, if you dislike most cardio classes because you have two left feet you may get frustrated with this tape. The music does move pretty fast and some amount of coordination is required to get the moves right, but of course you don’t need to get them all exactly right to still burn calories!

Setting
This tape is shot in a gym studio atmosphere, presumable a CRUNCH gym or an area resembling one. A nice gentleman on the drums adds to the sassy Latin feel. The music is upbeat and a notch above traditional exercise video tunes. I enjoyed watching the background dancers as they were not all super skinny but all seemed very confident in their dancing. Some were wearing street clothes, which I suppose one could do with this video but I don’t really feel like I am exercising without my gym clothes, and tennis shoes are a must. Although the setting is nothing spectacular I feel that this video is more professional than many of my other tapes.

Overall…
I am surprised how much I like this tape. It is the best Latin dance cardio tape I have come across. Anyone who enjoys dance-type aerobics will love it, and even if you don’t normally do these type of tapes it may be a welcome change and a fun addition to your fitness collection.


A few of my other favorite exercise tapes...
Bellydance Boogie
Tae Bo II
Denise Austin - Blast Away Ten Pounds