Almost never will a day go by and you will not see some sort of infomercial or advertisement selling you a DVD for the latest and greatest workout to get you into the best shape of you life, especially around the New Year. It’s simply overwhelming, and most of them don’t hold up to their claims. I have seen almost all of them from P90X to 6 minute abs, and had everyone from clients, friends, and family members try them, even I have dabbled in P90X, and enjoyed it. This portion of our blog is usually designated for reviewing one exercise DVD and telling you from a trainers stand point whether I think it’s worth its rocks. After some thought I came to what I think is a more helpful conclusion. I don’t like being ripped off, just ripped, so I’m going to go over 5 key components that an at home exercise DVD should have to be effective and hold up to its claim to truly get you into the best shape of your life.

1. Diet- This in my opinion is the first thing you should look at when buying one of these products. If it does not come with some sort of meal plan then it simply is going to be mediocre AT BEST. It needs to come with a diet that is not only easy, but something that has tempting enough food that you will stick to it. Without diet you will fall short of your goals. PERIOD.
2. Sufficient exercise time- I’m sorry to be the barer of bad news but you will not get fit from exercising for 6 minutes, 3x times a week. It just will not burn enough calories to make a difference. It has to make you sweat, and it has to take some time. The program needs to call for at least 30 minutes multiple times per week.
3. Weights-the program has to have some kind of resistance training. I do not like exercise programs that are solely cardio. This in my opinion will allow you to drop weight, but some or most of it will be muscle. With some resistance training you can retain muscle, strength, raise your metabolism and make faster progress.
4. Cardio-with that said it also has to have some sort of cardiovascular balance to assist in the weight loss and blast through fat. Whether this be intervals, circuits or plyometrics.
5. Progression-This might be the one that annoys me the most when I see TV exercise programs. If your body does not have a way to keep progressing it will stop making changes and you will plateau. This has to be either in the way of weights, cardiovascular stress or just overall difficulty. Look for a program that progressively gets harder as the weeks go on.

In my opinion, still to this day p90x holds the crown as the best at home exercise DVD. It includes all of the above factors and also has things like yoga and kenpo boxing. At times Tony Horton can get a little cheesy but that’s easy to look past when you start seeing results.