The Best of Tamilee’s Buns, Abs & Arms, Hu-Man Element Productions, 68 minutes, DVD, $ 19. 95. Available at Amazon. com and webbworkout. com.
Longtime exercise instructor Tamilee Webb says people often want to know if they will look like her if they do her workouts. They wonder, for example, if they’ll be rewarded with an enviable Tamilee-esque toned and flat stomach.
No, she tells us in this new video. Or, at the least, not likely. She doesn’t shy away from reality, Tamilee doesn’t. The reality is that a flat stomach and washboard abdominal muscles are genetically determined physical characteristics, so if you didn’t receive a winning ticket in the DNA lottery... well, prepare to sigh, then follow up with a lot of abdominal work anyway. That’s because strong abdominal muscles are within our grasp, she assures us.
That’s what we like about Tamilee (we can’t help but refer to her familiarly by her first name; she’s just so darn personable ). It’s not merely that her fitness programs are solid and dependable and have been for 20 years; it’s that Tamilee is solid and dependable. We can count on her to provide down-to-earth advice and effective routines, and to remind us that the degree of effectiveness is up to us.
Tamilee has been around a while, having entered the fitness biz during the late 1980 s. She rocketed to fitness fame and acclaim in the early 1990 s with her trademarked Abs of Steel, Buns of Steel and Arms of Steel videos — a whopping 22 in all, a figure that doesn’t include her other productions.
Now, at a buff 49 years old, she has come to the “best of” portion of her career, as in The Best of Tamilee’s Buns, Abs & Arms, a DVD based on the original steely workouts. This isn’t a “best of” in the sense of an artist who hasn’t performed in years churning out a collection of moldy oldies to make a buck. Even if we weren’t aware of Tamilee’s recent successes, just looking at her tells us she doesn’t rest on her gluteals.
In this revisiting of the early workouts, Tamilee offers three 15-minute routines, along with a 3-minute warm-up and 2-minute cool-down. While they seemed new when they debuted, the exercises on the “best of” video are now old-hat — but still-relevant old-hat, not we-now-know-better old-hat. Moves such as the lunge never go out of style, we understand.
The routines are suitable for exercisers of all levels, with the caveat that beginners understand they may have to work up to some of the more difficult movements.
For the buns segment, we get various renditions of the lunge and squat (Tamilee calls this the “grandfather of all exercises for your buns” ), as well as kickbacks and leg extensions. Tamilee, ever efficient, doesn’t let the upper body just stand there like a lump while the lower body does all the work. Oh, no. She engages it with biceps curls and hammer curls, overhead presses and triceps extensions using 3-pound dumbbells. Let no muscle feel overlooked.
The same goes for the arms segment, for which you need a mat and dumbbells. While we’re busily curling our biceps, we’re standing on one leg to improve balance. Performing upright rows, we’re also working the legs and buns with demi-plies.
The abdominals segment is heavy on hip lifts, abdominal curl-ups and the bicycle. And it’s here that Tamilee gently informs us we may not see the abdominals of our dreams: “If you’re not genetically gifted, you might never get flat abs.” But combine abdominal-targeted movements with cardiovascular exercise and “good eating,” and the possibility of hard abdominals increases, she says. And we believe Tamilee. She’s solid, dependable.
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