Pump It Up! The Ultimate Dance Workout - Thoughts

Pump It Up! The Ultimate Dance Workout features Deanne Berry as the lead. It is approximately 75 minutes in length and the DVD contains the following workout chapters:
Heat - Warm Up Section
Dance It Out - Dance Section 1
Pump It Up - High Energy Dance Section 2
Bums & Tums - Toning Section
Chill - Cool Down Section

I did all but the Bums & Tums section.

Absolutely hands down, the workout features some of the best music I have heard in a workout video. That could be because the Pump It Up! workout series is back by Ministry of Sound, a British Record Label.
The music is definitely the best part of the workout.

Now the workout itself.
Deanne does not mirror cue. Which with this workout, even though it is "dance-based", the lack of mirror cuing wasn't a big deal. That is because you are really not doing dance combinations. Essentially you do a series of moves (side lunges, forward lunges, hip swirls, rockouts, pelvis thrust, knees pulls, jacks, salsa and cha chas) and you just repeat them over and over. All the moves are really easy to pick up and/or execute. I thought there were more athletic moves than dance moves.

While the workout was not hard to follow, I didn't think Deanne cued very well. There were times when she would say "let's go back to the beginning or take it from the top" but she didn't do that. I got to the point I would just wait to see what she was going to do, when I heard her say anything about taking it from the top.
The camera angles didn't help her cuing because it would show a close up instead of a fully body shot, just as she was calling out a different move. Also I felt the last part of Dance Section 2 was improvised. It seemed disjointed - just Deanne calling out a bunch of moves.

My favorite section of the workout was the Latin part in Dance Section 1. Overall, I thought the workout could used a bit more variety. At one point, I started adding my own variety. Just changing the moves up a little.

Again, awesome soundtrack! The DVD has lots of extra such as behind the scenes and music videos of some of the featured songs.
3 & 1/4 stars

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