LITTLE ROCK — Walk at Home: Walk Your Belly Flat, Anchor Bay Entertainment, 53 minutes, DVD, $14.95. Available at Amazon.com, www.walkathome.com and other retailers.
Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness.
- Soren Kierkegaard, philosopher and theologian
We don't know if Leslie Sansone is familiar with Kierkegaard, but we do know that she's familiar with walking. More than familiar given that she's been successfully making and selling fitness walking workout videos since 1987.
Sansone, creator of the Walk at Home workout program, offers another in her long line of videos, this one promoted as focusing solely on belly fat. Like Sansone's other walking workouts - in which you exercise without leaving the house - Walk Your Belly Flat provides a solid, practical, easy-to follow routine. The only issue with this video is that it's too much like her others, but perhaps there's only so much an exercise instructor can do to jazz up walking.
What's unique about Walk Your Belly Flat is the "walk clock" in one corner of the screen that counts down the minutes as you progress through each routine.
Some exercisers find that watching the seconds go by can make the exercise period pass more quickly.
The video contains three one mile workouts (12 to 14 minutes each, which means you're walking at a pace of 4 to 5 miles per hour) that are supposed to be done consecutively. However, exercisers do have the freedom to walk just one or two miles at a time. Or you could repeat all the routines for a six-mile workout.
All three routines contain the same basic walking moves, but with each mile the pace quickens and the steps become a little more challenging. The first mile features walking in place, side steps, small forward kicks and knee lifts. As the workout progresses, Sansone encourages you to swing your arms like a power walker, lift your legs a little higher and add a few kickbacks.
Sansone explains that there's no magic exercise or trick to losing weight around the middle. A daily regimen of crunches won't give a person a flat stomach: "You have to burn the fat away." To do that, a person must move. And walking is a good way to start.
The second and third miles of the workout add double sidesteps and a grapevine step. The knee lifts are higher, the kicks more kicky, the arm movements more dramatic. Everything is faster. During the third mile,there are 60 seconds of jogging - or "boost walking" as Sansone calls it.
Walk Your Belly Flat is basic low-impact aerobics, suitable for people just starting an exercise program and for those who are trying to get back in the groove after some time off. Sansone is an encouraging instructor who provides helpful, reasoned advice and information about health and fitness throughout the workout. In this one, she explains that the "visceral fat," the fat between the organs inside the belly (not the surface flab), is what may be detrimental to a person's physical well-being. Losing that fat flattens the tummy, plus improves health, Sansone says.
At the end of the last routine, Sansone demonstrates her favorite belly-firming exercise: the bicycle. This constitutes the only portion of the video that seems to specifically target the belly. But, as she says, burning calories benefits the whole body - that includes the stomach area.
Fans of Sansone may want to add Walk Your Belly Flat to their video collection. If you've never tried one of her workouts, this is as good as the others to introduce you to the program. It contains all the basics, as well as Sansone's matter-of-fact instruction and encouragement. But, above all, it makes walking in place a pleasant way to exercise and pass the time.
ActiveStyle, Pages 23, 28 on 08/24/2009