Bollywood Burn with Hemalayaa burns 198 calories in 31 minutes, with 2446 steps.

It’s important to note that that includes Workout 2 & 3. Workout 1 is a very slow warm up that barely burns any calories.

The Pros:

198 calories is a good calorie burn for so short a time. So that’s definitely something worth mentioning. The workout DVD is easy to follow, and you get to dance Bollywood style the whole time without stopping for time consuming instruction (something I really appreciate).

What is Bollywood style dancing? Hmm…not sure how to explain this appropriately. Bollywood is kind of slang for India’s Hollywood. Their films often include musical numbers, with choreographed, large-scale, dance numbers. If you’ve ever seen dancers from India, you should have a pretty good idea of what Bollywood dancing looks like.

That being said, Bollywood dancing is a little cheesy, seeing as how the American equivalent would probably be something like a Follies Dancing DVD, or a Broadway Show Tunes Workout. However, that makes it fun too, if you can let yourself go and enjoy the music.

The Cons:

If you can’t hop or do jumping jacks, you probably won’t get much out of this workout. Hemalayaa is all about the hopping. That’s really important to note if you’ve got knee or ankle issues but still want to get a good workout in. I’d recommend trying something else.

This is really a matter of opinion, but I find Hemalayaa’s voice, vocal tones, and most especially, her forced laugh, very annoying. There is a nice feature where you can turn the voice over instruction off, leaving you with the music only. But while the music is very Indian, it’s not the fast paced, happy Bollywood music you’d expect. It’s slower and a bit dull.

Also, during Workout 3, there are a series of jumping jacks and a surprising amount of running in place. While I’ll acknowledge that this adds to the workout in terms of results, I really didn’t like it. There were just too many jumping jacks, and they really hurt. And if I want to run, I’ll go running. I pop in dance workout DVDs to dance.

Conclusion:

I enjoyed working out to this, but it’s certainly not a workout I’d like to do every day. It’s more like the kind of workout DVD I like to throw into the mix every now and then just to shake things up and dance a little differently.