The Charge

Get in the ultimate shape of your life.

The Case

Hey, weakling. You want to eliminate fat and shape muscle? (Their words.) Six muscle-bound freaks of nature from a failing game show beckon you to whip your pathetic behind into something even remotely resembling the human body. And they have just the workouts to make you scream for mercy.

Seriously, if these blocks of granite with hair are wheezing during these routines, there's an excellent chance you'll be finishing the workout in the ICU. Fine, I'll be finishing the workout in the ICU.

The program is broken up into three routines:

• Muscle Madness Strength 1
Titan, Phoenix and Wolf lead a grueling workout, utilizing free weights and targeting the quads, biceps, back and abs. Each Gladiator takes a turn as the point person, with the other two in support. The exercises are intense, as remarked endlessly by the Gladiators.

• Muscle Makeover Strength 2
The punishment continues with Toa, Crush and Jet up next, rocking the next round of free weight-centric exercises. These are just as intensive and judging by the amount of exertion our leaders putting out, your muscles should be ripped in no time. Take that however you want to. The muscles worked: triceps, chest, glutes, and abs.

• Cardio Crusade
The last routine features five Gladiators powering through a cardio workout with kickboxing, jacks and a variety of mixed martial arts combinations.

When starting up the disc you can choose which programs you want to add—go either one or two or all three, depending on how much trauma you want to apply to your soft tissue. The workouts are well-staged and the Gladiators are amiable, though the choreography isn't the most precise you'll see—most of the time the backups are out of sync with the lead. The back-and-forth banter can be corny, which might be the reason Lionsgate threw in a somewhat awkward option to go through all the routines with only the music audible. Bottom line: you get a lot of bang for your fitness buck.

The 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is clean and the 2.0 stereo blasts out that nondescript accompaniment music. Three bonus workouts are included on the disc: Glute Gauntlets, Ab Quake and Arm Assault.

Not guilty.

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