Tracy Anderson: Cardio Dance For Beginners

Beginner: Just starting out, very overweight or haven't exercised in over six months.

Intermediate: Active in sports, dance or any regular exercise (2 to 3 times per week).

Advanced: Very active in sports or consistently work out four or more times per week.

Lower Impact: Both feet never leave the ground at the same time. This minimizes stress on your knees.

Higher Impact: Includes movements like jumps, hops and skips. Very high-impact is called plyometrics.

Mixed Impact: This alternates or combines the above styles.

Basic: The easiest to follow. It ranges from simple walking-style marches to sports and athletic movements.

Complex: More intricate combinations and patterns. They're ideal for people who like to dance.

Moderate: More interesting than Basic, less dancy than Complex.

Details:

Tracy Anderson teaches basic to intermediate dance steps in a high/low impact format that progresses in difficulty from sections Dance 1 to Dance 4.

This DVD includes:

Dance 1:  The Basics

The first dance consists of primarily low impact basic dance routine including side scoops, steps forward with overhead arms, salsa step forward, grapevines, leg kicks, jumps in place with forward arm reaches, back leg touches, shakes, and twists. The moves all combine for one longer routine. The cool down involves various arm moves and step tap/touch patterns.    

Dance 2: Get Moving

This dance includes side steps with reaches, arm pulls with mini runs back, side squat with overhead chop, grapevines, punches, side to side moves, leg kicks. The cool down involves various arm moves and step tap/touch patterns.

Dance 3: Cardio Connection

The third dance begins with step touches, grapevines, front taps with arm hugs, jumping jacks into jumping jacks with heel taps, step touches with arm circles, single-single-double heel taps, side traveling in/out knees, punches with side leg taps. The cool down involves various arm moves and step tap/step touch patterns again.

Dance 4: Cardio Blast

The last routine includes forward step touch, kick ball change, side leaps with low kicks, cross jacks moving side to side, v-step with overhead arm pull, cross walks, arm punches with mini jumps, arm pattern with jumps in place, and jumping jacks. These moves are all combined for a lengthy combination.  The cool down involves various arm moves and step tap/touch patterns.  This portion is most challenging of the four workouts in terms of complexity of choreography and level of impact. 

Buyer’s Guide:

Tracy is an enthusiastic leader in this workout.  She keeps in constant motion, which is a plus. While her cueing is not the most accurate (and she, unfortunately, sometimes swaps “left” and “right” verbally), Tracy does enough feature repetition that it will be possible to pick up the moves. While this is definitely a beginner workout, it is assumed the exerciser will already know the basic moves. Also – the DVD doesn’t provide a warm-up segment so be certain to do that on your own prior to performing the DVD.