Denise Austin Should Not Be Allowed To Teach Yoga...

...if this video is any indication of her skills.

First up on my "pop fly" reviews is Denise Austin's "Hot Body Yoga".

I supremely, supremely dislike this video. For alot of reasons.

Firstly, I disliked that there was absolutely zero discussion of form. No demonstrating the poses before you went into them, no talking about how to modify if a pose was uncomfortable, nothing. Virtually no mention of safety what so ever. And if you're a well practiced yoga student, and are really just looking for some videos to do at home to supplement your own practice, you probably don't need a discussion on form. But virtually ignoring safety is dangerous.

There was also no flow to the video at all. All of the poses were popped into, and then popped out of. It honestly began to feel like a yoga inspired cardio workout, rather than a true yoga video. And some of the poses didn't feel particularly organic to go from one to the next anyway, much less to go from one to the next that fast.

The DVD menu is fairly straight forward - you can look at the trailers, or look at the workouts. "Level One" is called Yoga Fit. "Yoga Fit" gave me back spasms for the rest of the evening after I'd done it. There's a segment with an odd concentration on hip openers, and you go right from opening your hips, into Bow (with no time given to get from one to the other). I looked online for other people that had experienced back problems after "Yoga Fit" and found no mention, which surprised me. So I guess I stand alone. Or, at least, I'm the only person mentioning it. I spent about a third of "Yoga Fit" going "What? How do you do that? What is that?"

I just tried to do "Yoga Sculpt" today, and I had to shut it off halfway through. Because in "Yoga Sculpt", you also have no discussion of form or safety, popping in and out of poses, poses that don't seem to go together...but you add in WEIGHT! That's right, not only do you get to pop into, and then back out of, Warrior, you get to do it holding weights! I shut it off, because I just really, REALLY couldn't shake the feeling that it was completely unsafe to be doing. I tried to ignore that voice that was telling me I was doing something unsafe, and it just kept getting louder. I had to turn the video off. Ultimately, I know they couldn't put it on the market if it was outright dangerous, but at the same time, there was seemingly no attention paid to making sure that the video was safe to do. If every one of your instincts is telling you you're not OK, it's probably best to listen.

The video gives you the option of going through without Denise's instruction. Had the choreography in any fashion made sense, I'd recommend it. In the first one, she kept murmurming about "feeling the form", whatever that means, and in the second workout, I felt like she was whispering at me, which isn't necessarily weird (in fact, had this been more like a traditional workout class, whispering would probably be the safe play), but got weird because it didn't feel like it matched the tone of the rest of the workout.

I told myself I'd give this video a full week before I gave you guys my opinion on it, and I just couldn't do it. I've heard and read much more favorable reviews on a different yoga video of hers (the title is escaping me right now...), so I'm going to try that one next. Hopefully that got it's act together.

To recap;

Space Needed; If you can lunge, lay down, and comfortably raise your arm above your head, you're good.

What Do You Do?; Fairly standard yoga fare. Chair pose, plank, bow, warrior, that sort of thing.

Equipment You Need; Weights. She never made a recommendation for size, I'd recommend small ones, as you have to be able to comfortably lift them over your head. Although, if you can comfortably lift 50 pounds over your head, be my guest...

The Final Word; or, "Would I recommend this video?" If you didn't guess...no. No I would not. Like I said, I just really, really couldn't shake the feeling this video wasn't safe to be doing. And it has to be, because otherwise it wouldn't be on the market, but who wants to be doing something that you believe is unsafe?

I'm undeterred though, I started these "pop fly" reviews to get a feel for yoga, and I'll keep going. I just couldn't do this one another second. I checked this video out from my library, but if I'd paid for it, I'd be disappointed.

And I did take a before picture. Even though I'm switching up my workouts alot more often, I'll post the pictures every once in a while anyway, just to see what yoga does for a girl. :D

See you next time - hopefully I'll have better news to report!