Wednesday 14 July 2010

DVD #1 - Martine McCutcheon's Dance Body

I'm cheating here slightly - I own this DVD. My excuse? It was recommended by a friend. A friend who is very tiny and pretty slim already.

Now, I love Martine. I really do. She comes across in everything that she does as such a lovely person, and I honestly think that if I met her in real life she would be a great best mate. To be fair I think she would be everyone's best mate. And she is absolutely gorgeous to boot.

Martine did have one of those bigger to smaller transformations, and she lost a fair bit of weight, but in my opinion, I don't think she was that big to start with, and she certainly hasn't become one of the super skinny celebs that everyone worries about having eating problems.

In this DVD, she looks really happy and healthy, and, as the other half pointed out, she still has great boobs. Bonus points for Martine!

The DVD starts with an introduction to Martine and how she sees exercise, in short, the same reasons as to why people buy fitness DVD's and not gym memberships! Her workout is based on dance and pilates movement, and she has a choreographer alongside her who has helped her to create all of the moves.

So the workout gets going. And I have to say, the warm up and the cardio is pretty intense going for the first 15-20 minutes. Martine says after five minutes of cardio that of this is your first time, you should take a break there. Bloody hell I was grateful for that!

After the cardio, she moves onto upper and lower body toning, then stretching based on pilates, but at an accelerated pace. Ouch. Then, when you think that she can't possibly inflict any more pain, she does abs, right at the end. I did approximately 64 sit ups in less than 3 minutes. INSANE.

Martine does have several backing dancers/fit people and one of them does the easy moves, so if you are not as flexible as her then there is another way! Some of the stretches are crazily hard and if this is your first workout DVD then I wouldn't recommend going all the way with them.*

What I found slightly surprising was that Martine took a back seat and let her choreographer do all the instructing, whilst she sweated alongsside, clearly working just as hard as me at home. She looked fab and flexible, but you could clearly see some pain on her face at times, which I actually found heartening. I know I am slightly biased when it comes to Martine, but it is good to see a celeb in pain too!

The DVD also has nutritional advice in it, also from her choreographer. He advises that you can eat almost anything you want, as long as you either eat it at certain times of the day, or you only eat certain food groups together. For example, you can eat as much fruit as you like, but only before midday. and you can eat loads of carbs, but not with protein, as your stomach takes longer to break food group mixtures down and it slows metabolism. Whilst I can see where he is coming from, and I'm fairly sure it could potentially work, I also fail to see how it can possibly work in practice.

In Summary: Martine looks great, and is great in this DVD. There isn't as much dancing as you might like, but it is fast paced and you will feel the burn! Possibly not for first time DVDer's, and the nutrition advice is a little hard to follow, but I'm certain that if you did follow it 3 times a week like she advises, and even if you got creative and added weights to some of the stretches, you will see results!

Score: 3.5 out of 5

*I will be including pictures of me doing these workouts, however the ones from this workout were definitely NSFW.

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