10 Minute Solutions - General Review

      This is my favourite make of workout DVD. I bought my first one - Blast Off Belly Fat - at the end of 2011 for £3 in HMV. I thought it was cheap enough to take a chance on, because I wanted an exercise DVD, but I didn't really know where to look. The title was all I needed.

   Well, this DVD focused on toning and muscle work, and I felt it wasn't quite what I wanted, so after a month or so of using it, I went online to see if there were any others. There were loads. Their website shows a large range, but it's not very up-to-date at all. I had a search on Amazon and found all of the DVDs shown on their page, and more.

   They had a nice range of danceDVDs - about 6 or 7. I ended up buying almost all of them over the course of the next two and a half years.

 
   10 Minute Solutions is great. Each DVD is made up of five 10 minute segments, and each DVD gives you the option to choose your workout from the list, or rearrange them to your desire. What I usually do is line up about 3 or 4 of the same workout when it's one I'm unfamiliar with. This gives me a good chance to learn the moves so that the next day I'm more efficient.

   There are a lot of negative reviews of workout DVDs on Amazon, particularly 10 Minute Solutions dance DVDs. This is because people are either expecting too much from the DVD, or themselves. Because each section is only 10 minutes long, and each segment has a different routine from the rest, the instructor can't take too long showing you how to do each move, otherwise, once you're familiar with it, you won't have the chance to do it at a good pace, you'll be stuck doing it half-time. And no exercise DVD has ever been designed for only a single use. You are supposed to use them many times, which means, after a few run-throughs, you will have grasped the routine and will do a more efficient job, losing more weight from it. This is why I line up the same segment several times when I'm first trying it, because it cuts down the number of days it takes for me to learn it. When I first began, it took about 4 or 5 runs to learn a single section, but after a few years, I know my way around dance and my body well enough to only need one or two runs to pick it all up properly. With my most recent DVD, I was able to learn two different sections in half an hour.

   While it's the dance DVDs I love the most, there are many, many other different workout types by 10 Minute Solutions, each of which has instructors who are experts in the field. There are simple yoga DVDs, which don't appeal to me at all due to the slow pace. There are toning DVDs, which I've not bought because I want to lose the fat first. There are pilates and pregnancy exercise DVDs. Then there are much more exciting things like kick boxing and fighting. I still prefer the dance, because I'm allowed to pay more attention to the music, but once I've toned my arms, I do intend to get some kick boxing and fight DVDs, just for a laugh. Why not, eh?

   10 Minute Solutions are also wonderfully affordable. I've not seen one for more than £6, and that was the last one I bought. The prices do go up and down, usually depending on the time of year - the prices are more likely to be higher on the run up to summer while ladies are trying to get ready for the beach than they will after the summer and Christmas is coming. Either way, they're not too pricey at any point of the year for how amazing they are. You can ask Seeg, because I frequently tell him that these DVDs are worth far, far more than they're being sold for. They're so much fun, and given that each DVD is split into five 10 minute routines and the instructors change their clothes in between, it's easier to work for longer since it doesn't quite seem that there's an end to the DVD, like there are for other workout DVDs like Urban Workout.

   All in all, if you're looking to get fit and lose weight at home, these DVDs are fabulous. I honestly and absolutely swear by them, and I'll be reviewing all of the individual DVDs I have one at a time shortly.

   The dance DVDs don't require any equipment, but the yoga ones probably require a yoga mat, and some kick boxing and other toning DVDs might require some dumbbells or weighted gloves, but you can generally find this out before buying the DVD. Just about each of these DVDs has a small preview video on Youtube. I often rely on these previews to find out if the DVD I'm looking at is any good for me, and so far there's only been one dance DVD I've not bought based on the video, and that's because it clearly shows that this particular DVD - Dance Off Belly Fat - requires a lot more space to move around in than I have in my little living room, so I'm glad I saw that before buying it.