Brief fitness routines for spot toning

Whether you're someone who likes using videos to guide your exercise workouts, or a belly dancer who wants to use conditioning exercises to improve your dance technique, you may enjoy Daily Quickies.

Rania, the instructor, is a certified personal trainer who also belly dances. On this video, she offers a collection of five different 10-minute exercise routines designed to spot-tone various body parts. Each routine is built from exercises which are quite appropriate to the intended purpose.

The five workouts included are:

1. Dancer's Legs & Butt
2. Waist Sculpting
3. Arms, Chest, & Back
4. Abs Only
5. Flexibility Training

Some of the five workouts, such as Waist Sculpting, rely heavily on belly dance moves to exercise the appropriate body parts. Others, such as Flexibility Training, are built primarily from standard ballet/modern dance exercises and gym exercises, although they may incorporate a couple of belly dance moves.

The part of the title that says, "Weight Loss" is a bit misleading, because none of these workouts are likely to drive your heart rate into the cardio zone needed to achieve weight loss benefits. However, this video definitely has merit for sculpting and toning, so it's worth a look for that purpose.

Although you could probably complete these workouts without prior training in belly dance, it's probably a good idea to complete an elementary belly dance video or class first before trying this one because Rania assumes some prior experience with fundamental belly dance moves such as figure 8's. Good choices could be "Bellydance Fitness for Beginners: Basic Moves" by Veena & Neena (which is fitness-oriented), or "Bellydance! Magical Motion" by Atea (which is instruction in dance technique, not workout-oriented).

There are no warm-ups included on this video. Before performing any of these workouts, it would be a very good idea to do a warm-up such as 5 minutes of walking on your own.

Because they're short, these workouts are well designed to mix and match with other exercise routines that you may be doing. For example, if you're doing the Veena & Neena "Arms & Abs" video, you could insert Rania's "Abs Only" workout to lengthen the total exercise period, or use it as a replacement for the arms part of Veena & Neena's workout to put more focus on abs toning. They're also useful as conditioning (strength & flexibility training) which can be added to the end of your own belly dance practice session to help build muscles used in belly dancing.

All instructions are delivered using voiceover, while Rania demonstrates. Her on-screen presence feels a bit remote, detached, impersonal. Her facial expressions are pleasant, but her thoughts appear to be elsewhere. It's okay with me, because I don't feel the need to make a connection with the video instructor, but people who prefer a warm on-screen personality may be put off by this video. Rania is the only person leading these workouts - there are no assistants helping her demonstrate them.

There are no performance segments on this video.

The video's production quality is excellent. It's well lit, uses a couple of camera angles for variety, and has clear sound. The set is attractive, but not too fussy. The camera always shows what it should, but is a bit too restless. It wanders incessantly, leaving me wishing that sometimes it would just linger a while to let me absorb what I'm seeing. This isn't a huge problem, but it does annoy me a little.

If you already happen to own the DVD versions of Rania's 4-video series titled "Bellydance Fitness for Weight Loss", you'll find that you already have four of the five workouts offered on this video. The fifth appears on the DVD version of Veena & Neena's "Bellydance Fitness for Beginners: Slim Down" video. So, if you already have all five of these DVD's, there's no reason for you to buy Daily Quickies, because you already have everything it contains. If you have the VHS version of Rania's 4-part series and like it, then you'll probably enjoy this video too.

If you're a belly dancer already, you can use this video to help you develop the kind of strength, control, and flexibility that will improve your technique. If you're not a belly dancer, but you'd be interested in toning and sculpting exercises that use some belly dance moves as a change of pace, then you'll probably like Daily Quickies.