Monkeys Love Me

And, all feces throwing aside, who doesn’t love monkeys? You all know how I feel about the Monkey Bar Gym. Any workout that gives me permission to do handstands and swing upside down from the chin-up bar while yodeling like Tarzan (ok, the yodeling was just my idea), gets two thumbs up in my book. Three thumbs up if it works me out good too. Four if it causes everyone in the gym to stare and then shake their heads in bewilderment. Yes I know that is too many thumbs. But that’s why I palm a basketball so well and am beloved by circuses everywhere.

Pushing, Pulling, Jumping, Running
No that’s not the censored version of Kanye’s West’s ubiquitous song (Dear radio conglomerates, please stop playing this song on every station every five minutes. It gets stuck in my head like warm Double Bubble. Plus it makes me crave Klondike bars and if I’m going to eat ice cream it for sure isn’t going to be a Klondike – their chocolate tastes like wax. Thank you.), it’s the title of Jon Hinds, owner and founder of the MBG, new DVD collection.

And I got to review it. That’s right, baby, my first official piece of swag! Because no, I’m not counting Propel.

The whole idea behind the MBG is to work out how kids play. Because have you ever seen a fat kid? Oh wait. Apparently we need to get kids playing like kids too, which our society has collectively forgotten how to do. Thus, Hinds & Co. (Hi Sarah!!) have come out with an instructional set of four DVDs to help you learn the basic moves and make sure you have good form.

So this weekend Gym Buddy Candice and I sat on my nasty couch (nicknamed the poo couch for reasons only other parents of multiple itty bitty kidlets can understand) and pulled up a bowl of Greek yogurt and watched them all. Because that’s what we do for fun on weekends. Shut up.

My Favorite Parts (warning: spoiler alert!!!)
1. You get to see uber-buff man Hinds do both amazing things, like a body row whilst hanging under a basketball hoop, and amazingly funny things like when he shows you the wrong way to do a push-up. Ahhh, gym humor:)

2. He shows you how to make the moves progressively harder, which while you can figure it out from their website, it is not as easy and the video is much, much smaller. Plus you miss you out on the display of mad Photoshop Skillz on the cover art;)

3. He talks you through each step in such detail that I, for one, would feel comfortable then telling someone else how to do it. Although if you’ve been reading this site for any amount of time you already know that I tell people what to do all the time, whether or not I have any real knowledge of the subject (see Workout, Ballerina).

4. Included on the DVD are some sample workouts – kind of like a highlight reel of their best and hardest.

5. The videos show exactly how adaptable the workout is. It uses very little equipment and can be done almost entirely on – you knew this was coming – monkey bars. (Well, playground equipment anyhow.) What the videos didn’t show was all the other kids laughing at you. But then that probably just happens to me.

What I Didn’t Like
1. Hinds repeats himself for 20 minutes at the beginning of each video. Because I am not so much with the AV technology, it took me sitting through his spiel three times before I remembered why fast forward buttons are invented. And then Candice and I were treated to an entertaining little dance while Hinds hopped around like a real monkey. Really, everyone should watch all their movies on fast forward. Funny! Or maybe we were just starved for humor. We don’t get out a lot.

2. The videos didn’t show all the moves. I realize that this would be hard, seeing how many moves the MBG uses but there are still some I haven’t figured out how to do as they are not explained on the site nor in the videos. The net result is that I make something up based on my extensive knowledge of exercise physiology *cough cough* and what the title is and then make all the Gym Buddies do it.

3. Yoga form. While the man does a squat so beautiful songs should be written about it (Kanye?), his yoga form is lacking. Which isn’t too much of a problem because most of the moves do not require an understanding of yoga – it was more of an aesthetic issue for Candice and I, both Yoga devotees. But please, for the love of single nostril breathing, somebody help his Down Dog!!

4. There are no women demonstrating the moves. Hinds does all the demos himself, which is amazing to watch, but I would have liked to see a woman (we of the lesser upper body strength and lower center of gravity) do the moves. Or at least someone who was more of a novice and fell down sometimes. Like I always do.

5. There is no gag reel. I mean, come on, for the amount of crazy-fun moves in this workout there had to be some awesome bloopers! Share the love guys, share the love!

PS> Jon, you know I love you, really I do, but you talk like a stoner. Either that or I haven’t gotten used to the Midwestern accent yet.

Conclusions
These videos are a great help if you don’t have access to a MBG-gym and especially if you are doing the workouts at home or are interested in becoming an affiliated trainer. Although for a workout that I first fell in love with because it was free, the 69.95$ price tag seems a bit steep. I couldn’t tell for sure from the website but I’m pretty sure that price is per video. Or as my son would say, “Mom, they’re called DVDs now, which stands for Dee Vee Dee.” Thanks son.