A 51-minute workout that targets your legs from every angle imaginable. Violet Zaki instructs.

Intermediate exercisers. Even though you only use body weight for most of the moves, and the section that does use dumbbells only requires 3 to 5-pounders, this workout is surprisingly intense! Other than the dumbbells, you will also need a mat for a few minutes of floorwork and the cool down.

Never do a lower body workout from a martial arts expert and expect to be let off lightly. Violet Zaki may charm you with her Aussie accent, but the moves she puts you through are no-nonsense and tough. Not Cathe Friedrich tough (anyone who does her DVDs on a regular basis must be superhuman), but a good Firm-level tough. And Zaki manages to give it to you, for the most part, without using weights. After warming up your legs, you start off with a series of squats and lunges from various angles. Then you go through a cardio routine that demands more power than speed. Because you can't rely on momentum like you can with a lot of faster-paced routines, you wind up working harder than you expect. And you aren't anywhere near done — next up is a little over 10 minutes of compound exercises with weights (Zaki throws in a few upper body moves as you are working your legs, just 'cause). Finishing up is a floor routine for a few minutes, then — finally! — cool down and stretching. If you are not already in fairly good shape, you will feel a world of hurt the next day (count on being a little sore regardless — I was). But if you forge ahead (once you recover, of course), this is really an effective routine. A few notes/ cautions: because there are so many lunges, squats and light plyometric (jumping) moves, this probably is not a good workout if you have knee trouble of any kind. Some reviews I've read of this DVD have called the exercises here "repetitive"; I call it "fatiguing the muscles," and that's a good thing. Lastly, when Zaki tells you to "shuffle," don't for a second believe she's letting you off easy with a boxer's shuffle — she wants you to do scissor jumps. That's the kind of intense workout you're getting here.

 

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