THE LATEST KICK IN MARTIAL ARTS.

Byline: Lisa Lytle Orange County Register

There is no visible opponent.

Yet actor Sinbad could have been kicking a villain as he jerked his right leg sideways over and over, matching his cadence to the hard and steady beat of dance-club music.

``Eight ... seven ... six ... five ...'' counts off instructor Bill Blanks.

Kick. Block. Punch. Jab. Shuffle.

Welcome to the brave new face of aerobics, toughened by martial arts and self-defense movements.

It's so intense, Sinbad and about 100 other people work up enough heat and sweat to steam up mirrors and windows of the workout studio at the Billy Blanks World Training Center in Sherman Oaks one night. But it's also a lot of fun if you like aerobics or grooving to music.

Popular in select studios in Los Angeles, this new form of aerobics recently arrived in Orange County via venues such as the Linda Evans Fitness Center in San Juan Capistrano.

A calorie-burning hybrid exercise, it merges basic kickboxing or self-defense movements with aerobic routines. It goes by names such as Billy Blanks' tae bo aerobics, Kathy Smith's AeroBox, cardio karate or cardiocombatives.

Its predecessors are the Jean-Claude Van Damme-inspired kickboxing or boxing classes that are now mainstays at studios such as the U.S. Taekwondo Center in Laguna Niguel and L.A. Boxing in Costa Mesa.

Unlike classic kickboxing and boxing classes, however, you don't have to wear gloves or hit punching bags. Unlike traditional martial arts classes, there is virtually no contact with an opponent - except if you accidentally kick the person next to you.

You don't have to know how to dance. But you have to listen and move to the music in counts of eight. Think of aerobics, except that your movements are sharper and choppier. Instead of doing a grapevine, you might be shuffling from side to side or kicking backward. Instead of repeatedly raising your arms up and down or forward and backward, as in step or high-impact aerobics, you're throwing a series of right hooks or crosses timed to the beat.

You can increase the intensity by kicking and punching with the ferocity of a kickboxer, or you can get by with less force.

``It's the best. It's the baddest,'' said Sinbad, clad in a black T-shirt and black sweatpants, completely drenched from an hour's tae bo aerobics. He attributed his obvious recent weight loss to the workout and stationary cycling.

``It's a different vibe,'' Sinbad said of Blanks' exercise. ``I started at the end of July, early August, and I've been doing it every day. I'm working to get my waist from a 38 to between a 34 and a 30, and I'm getting there.

``When I began this, I couldn't get my leg 12 inches off the ground,'' he said. ``Now I'm doing all the up-and-down stuff.''

Even pro athletes get into it.

Boxing champ Sugar Ray Leonard, also a devotee of tae bo aerobics, has been taking classes for six to seven months. Every now and then, Leonard will get on the studio platform in the middle of class, at Blanks' invitation, and demonstrate to Blanks' students some boxing moves to music.

``I'm in tremendous shape now, and I attribute it to tae bo aerobics,'' Leonard said in a phone interview. ``It's one of the most intense exercise programs. It makes me more flexible and builds endurance and stamina. It entails some tae kwon do and boxing, and that makes it a total body workout.''

Leonard said he takes tae bo aerobics five to six times a week.

Some forms of martial arts/aerobics hybrids have even gone on to include step. Collage Video, a Minneapolis-based catalog company specializing in exercise videos, lists at least two new step videos that incorporate martial arts moves along with other martial arts aerobics videos such as Kathy Smith's Aerobox.

In ``Kung Fu Step,'' instructor Dorri Li starts with the basic knee up, knee out on a step and progresses to kicks, then combines a mix of strikes, blocks and punches. She finishes with a tai chi meditation. In ``Power Punch Step and Kick,'' Tamara Talarico blends upper-body karate and boxing moves, kicks and shuffles with a step aerobic routine. It has a yoga-style cool-down toward the end and finishes with a demonstration of how to apply some of the moves to an attack situation.

``Cardiocombatives have become more popular in the last year and a half because people are getting tired of step - they're looking for an alternative,'' said Dianne McCaughey, who teaches Thai aerobics and martial-arts aerobics incorporating circuit training in Stuart, Fla.

``They like it because it's a different release of the aggression,'' she said. ``You do pick up self-defense tools. I've taught martial arts for 17 years, and most people who come up to me always want to do martial arts but they say, `I don't have the time to go to a traditional dojo two to four times a week.' They're already busy working out three to four nights a week on other fitness programs. This exercise combines the two.''

It's for people who don't want to do the ``bowing,'' the vocal sounds and the full contact that comes in classic martial arts, said Ivan Kravitz, who teaches cardio karate at the U.S. Taekwondo Center.

Women like it because it feels empowering, and men like it because they don't have to learn how to dance, said Jill Ross, director of customer service at Collage Video.

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Photo

Photo: Bill Morton and Caren Kravitz perform aerobic kickbo xing at the Billy Blanks World Training Center in Sherman Oaks.

Nadia Borowski/Orange County Register