When I saw the “Abs of Steel” workout listing on Comcast On Demand, I couldn’t resist. I remember growing up with commercials for Abs of Steel and Buns of Steel on the television, and I always wondered what they did to make their abs so rock-hard. Since I’ve been concentrating a lot on abs during my workouts recently, I thought this new, updated version with Leisa Hart would be the perfect addition to my armamentarium.

At least, that’s what I thought.

Once again, I was disappointed that I strayed from my Jillian Michaels/Cindy Whitmarsh training. The workout was 25 minutes, divided up into 10 minutes of standing abs work, 10 minutes of chair work, and 5 minutes of mat work, none of which were extremely effective.

The standing abs portion was a series of fairly standard combinations targeting the obliques, mostly, but the combination of movements were put together way too quickly. By the time I actually figured out the series of moves, she was on to the next combination, so I never had any time to do the moves properly. I did get my heart pumping, though, and I was sweating by the end of the 10 minutes, so good for that.

The next part was seated abs moves, for which one needs a chair. Now, I do these exercises in my living room, and the only chairs we’ve got are soft and squishy couches — definitely not conducive to good exercise. I tried my best to keep my abs tight as I did all the exercises, but my couch kept sucking me into its vortex of comfort.

The last five minutes were for crunches on the mat, and this part actually was effective, but it was only for 5 minutes! And the last minute of that was stretches, so really it was four minutes of crunches. Very disappointing. All in all, I think if I want a good abs workout, I’m sticking with Cindy Whitmarsh. She knows how to get me into shape.