Shelly’s Journal

Product: Turbo Jam Workout DVDs

Description: 2 DVD set contains 5 Turbo Workouts

• Learn and Burn
• 20 Minute Turbo Jam
• Turbo Sculpt – Workout with Weights
• Cardio Party – 45 Minute Turbo Jam
• Ab Jam – 20 minute ab routine

Available from Beachbody.

My Experience with the DVD set: I purchased this set in January off of Ebay and have tried all of the workouts – some many times and used them for about 3 months.

Summary: Fitness instructor, Chalene Johnson, developed the Turbo Jam concept – holding abs and tucking tail bone under while doing a variety of aerobic/kickboxingish moves (11 elite moves are featured in the Learn and Burn workout). Generally a high impact, aerobic workout featuring kicking, punching and aerobic activity. Two of the people working out in the group are doing lower impact modifications for beginners. While Johnson leads the segment – 7 or 8 others are participating in the workout.

Overall Review: I’ve been exercising at home with videos and DVDs for 13 years. I’d rank Turbo Jam as average in the group. It’s based on a “gimmick”, so to speak. It offers a variety of different workouts in this DVD package, but does not particularly appeal to me as a “serious workout”. It’s challenging in places and goes high intensity, but most sequences (I feel) don’t offer enough reps to really be toning anything. So I look at it as more of a calorie burn type workout. Is it possible to tone up using Turbo Jam? I’m sure that someone working out 30 minutes or more with this or any other calorie burn product can achieve the same results. I find the segments to be more of a “party” atmosphere than a serious workout, but that may just be my personal preference. I am providing comments on each of the workouts below:

Learn and Burn – This section is actually two segments – a tutorial to learn the “turbo” concept and a short workout to try them out. I viewed this segment two times upon receiving the DVD, and never looked at it again.

20 Minute Workout – A quick calorie burn. Has a few intense segments.

Turbo Sculpt – Probably the workout I enjoyed the most on this DVD set. While I’m sure that with this workout you can sculpt your body, I felt that some exercise received too many reps and others not enough to make a difference. Some of the modifications on the exercises seemed a little goofy to me in comparison with previous experience working out with weights.

Cardio Party – 45 minute cardio workout. I find Turbo Jam too much for 45 minutes. It’s not too hard. I want to say, “too boring.” But that’s not it either. While the 20 minute one didn’t seem so bad, I just felt like I was doing a 45 minute cheerleading workout rather than an exercise routine.

Ab Jam - I really wanted to like this abdominal workout. However, I felt like the standing abdominal routine was not as effective as floor workouts and overall less effective than other ab routines I’ve done. I never had sore abs as a result of doing this workout – not even the first time.

Overall, while this video series is pitched as a fun workout, it did not in general appeal to me or come across as being as effective a workout as other aerobic and kickboxing type exercise. Although I bought it on ebay for much less than what it sells for on the beachbody website, I still feel like the price was high and the workouts gimmicky.

The Thing I Liked the Most: Watching all of the other exercisers look perky and excited about working out – actually like they were really having fun. I got a good chuckle out of it.

The Thing I Liked the Least: Finishing a segment and feeling like I had plenty of workout left in me.

Note added 12/07 – Check out workout DVDs by Cathe Freidrich. I have written more about TJ vs. Cathe here.

Update 7/8/08: I tried Turbo Jam again, just because and have posted on it here.