Search - Gilad: Total Body Sculpt Workout, Vol. 2 on DVD

Should have re-edited for DVD viewers

Rita Gunther McGrath | New York, NY | 01/11/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I am a huge Gilad fan, and was delighted to find a whole series of short but effective exercises on these DVDs.

My major complaint is that the DVD's are clearly taken from TV shows, in which presumably people are supposed to continue the moves while commercials are playing. On the DVD, however, the program just cuts to the next sequence, with the result that you could do 3 sets of exercises one one side and nothing on the other while the DVD moves on to the next segment. This is a problem with all 9 of the short segments on all 3 of the DVD series. To get the full workout on both sides with all the moves, you either have to stop the DVD, do the missing exercises and start it up again, or rewind it and repeat the exercises from the missing portion.

It's very annoying, particularly given that Gilad and crew have been making exercise videos for 20 years - you would think they would know better than to do something so amateurish. Is it really that hard to put in the missing pieces in a video designed for the home market???

My other gripe is that they take FOREVER to play the TV series theme music at the beginning of each video and I can't figure out how to skip past it. On his previous DVD's (such as the Quickfit series) you can go straight to a menu and right to the exercises. Given that these are short, it would be nice to have the same functionality here, too.

That much being said, the exercises are great. I will probably use these when I'm short on time, but if I have time for a full workout, I prefer his "Ultimate Body Sculpt" and "Quickfit" series because they are made for DVD users, not TV watchers."

Great program, TERRIBLE DVD

jazz spazz | San Francisco | 08/16/2009

(2 out of 5 stars)

"It's very simple. You're getting 3 episodes from the TV show, with nothing extra whatsoever. That's OK, I can live with that - I just wanted a DVD copy of the show so I don't always have to wake up early to do my Gilad workouts. But whoever was responsible for this DVD should be fired, because their bright idea was to remove commercial interruptions by SIMPLY CUTTING PARTS OF THE WORKOUT so that you get jarring cuts to the next set.

Like Gilad will be telling you one moment to work on the right side, and a split-second later, everybody on the screen's done and are now moving on to another exercise, so you have to scramble to catch up with them. Really, YOU CAN DO MUCH BETTER BY SIMPLY COPYING THE SHOWS FROM YOUR TV. So what exactly are you getting by shelling out your hard-earned money?

At the very least, they could have replaced the commercials with added scenes of the exercises. That way, the viewers could follow along without having to pause the DVD, finish the exercise, and then un-pause it again. I mean, that's just awkward. If they didn't have footage for those missing scenes, they could just do quick re-shoots (simple close-ups, etc., would make it easy to blend any new scenes to the old footage. It's not like they couldn't get studio time - they work out on a beach in Hawaii). They didn't. Whether they were cheap or just ignorant, I can't say. But this DVD is a dud.

I like Gilad's workouts, but because of this DVD's basic, major problem, I find myself buying and using workout DVD's from other people, like Sharon Mann (great DVD where you can mix-and-match your workouts) and Cathe Friedrich (she's got some tough workouts, so hers is one DVD where I'm glad there's the pause button!). I wish I had any assurance that the other DVD's in the series are any better, but I don't, so I don't intend to buy them. Too bad, because the workouts themselves are great (hence the 2 stars; if this DVD were really usable, I'd give it 5)."