Thursday, September 29, 2011

Workout videos: motivating or offensive?

As I've mentioned before, I do workout videos fairly regularly. I get them from my cable ondemand and free is always good! Unfortunately, I have to take what I can get and they usually consist of whatever is trendy at the moment by the popular workout gurus. For example, I did one this morning by Denise Austin.

Don't get me wrong, I like Denise. She can be a little annoying with her energy level but I typically enjoy her workouts. However, this morning's video really struck me. Here are a few of things she said:

"No more jiggle when you wave goodbye!"
"This will help that bra overhang!"
"You'll look great from behind!"
"You'll look good in a few weeks!"

I'll stop there. Only once in the entire workout did she mention anything about health or strength, and it was tagged on to the end of a statement about appearance. Maybe it's just me being more sensitive but I was really disappointed that there wasn't more focus on health and strength during what I thought was a pretty good workout routine. Denise is not in the minority, either. Most of the workouts focus on improving appearance versus health.

I understand that this is the reason why a lot of people exercise, but I would love to see the instructors focus more on how their routine is improving my strength and health versus how much better my arm jiggle will look. Leslie Sansone seems to be one of the few that really focuses on health through exercise. I am sure there are others that I am not aware of but will be keeping an eye out!

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