All Rise...

"Crunch" is a word Judge David Johnson is very familiar with when reviewing these fitness DVDs. He eats Nestle Crunch bars while watching them.

The Charge

"Listen to your soul and your dreams will come true."
—Instructor Lizbeth Garcia's fitness philosophy

The Case

I'm going to be honest with you: these fitness DVDs are starting to gel together and form a paste in my mind made up of spandex and canned synthesizer music. The only things I try to convey in these reviews are my impressions of the workout, the presentation of the routines and the user-friendliness of the discs. Workout DVDs are strictly utilitarian pieces of digital production, needing only to put forward an easy-to-follow program with chapter selection. Who cares about extras? Or anamorphic widescreen? Or surround sound? If you're buying workout DVDs I presume you just want to get to burning calories and not interested in the creative decisions that went into laying down the fake marquee floors.

Okay, lengthy tangent finished. Here now is the latest disc vying for your sweaty brow: Crunch: Fat Burning Blast. From my exhaustive exposure to all species of fitness discs, the Crunch series ranks pretty high. Production is clean and easy-to-follow and the leaders are dynamic and, well, pleasant to look at. Fat Burning Blast continues the tradition with a 50 minute program incorporating multiple types of cardio. Here's the breakdown for the full workout:

• Warm-Up
• Latin Grooves 1
• Latin Grooves 2
• Cardio Tai Box 1
• Cardio Tai Box 2
• Sweatshop 1
• Sweatshop 2
• Cool-Down
• Abs

There you go, a nice cross-section of aerobic types (though "sweatshop" doesn't conjure up pleasant visuals). Navigating through these varieties (labeled as Kickboxing, Dance and something called Kick-Butt) is Lizbeth Garcia, a lithe, happy choreographer whose outfit appears to have been painted on by an auto body shop.

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