Crunch: Fat-Burning AB Attack
Anchor Bay, 2005

List Price: $14.98
Amazon Price: $8.97

Review by Sheri Ackerman

Rating: 3 Boxing Gloves

In Crunch's Fat-Burning AB Attack, Instructor Catherine Chiarelli takes you through a warm-up, a standing cardio workout and a mat AB workout that felt to me, in places, like Tae-bo Lite. Not in that it features kickboxing, but in the moves she uses to work the abs from a standing position, several of which Tae-Bo fans will recognize. Following is a glimpse of each segment:

Warm-Up: A standard, relatively easy-to-follow cardio warm-up featuring marching in place, step-touch to the side, kickback, V-step, mambo and stretches. The only thing I found awkward was the mambo step. I've done a mambo step in several other workouts and always found it one of my favorites... until now.

Standing Abdominal Work: Cat focuses on abs at a moderate cardio pace with squats, oblique twists, plies, boxer twists, side lunges, standing side crunches, and upper body twists. If you've done Tae-Bo, you will recognize several of these moves. Like Tae-Bo, you need excellent balance for this. The intensity was enough to get my breathing elevated and I did sweat some, but not as much as I usually would during a cardio workout. I really didn't feel my abs being worked as much as I would expect in an AB-focused workout. I'm not sold on the benefits of this segment.

Mat Abdominal Work: Down on the floor, you'll do several variations of crunches, side planks, oblique work, Superman variations, and stretches. It's a silly thing, I suppose, but I really didn't like doing the mat work after I was sweaty from doing a cardio workout. The repetitions here are higher than other AB workouts I've done and, as a result, I found this section tough. I could do the various crunches for 8 or 10 reps but she does 15 reps and I couldn't "hang in there" for the last several reps of each crunch. This was especially true because she does a LOT of crunches with the legs in the air and one right after the other with no opportunity to rest.

All in all, certainly not a bad workout, but this DVD is not real high on my list of recommends either. The standing section was easier than expected and the mat section was harder than expected... so it's hard to know who to recommend this workout to. People who could handle the tough mat section would find the standing section too easy and people who would find the standing section just right would find the mat section too hard..