Saundra

Mmmmmm. I have been so good so far in 2010. I have not bought one new workout. I did received a new workout - FitbyTracey's Cardio Kickbox Challenge, but I ordered that back in November or December, so I don't count that. Briefly, I was leaning towards purchase Shawn T's Insanity , but decided against it. I might cave one day and go ahead and purchase this system. I really haven't been tempted by any of the new workouts or workout systems that have come out so far this year. Now, however, I am starting to get tempted..... I have my eye on a few (yes a few) workouts that have yet to be produced. Let's see. Amy Bento is returning with Advance Step Challenge 4 that she is set to film in May. Also filming in May is Kelly Coffey Meyer. Kelly is planning two workouts tentatively titled 30 Minutes to Fitness Interval s and 30 Minutes to Fitness Power Sculpt. Also potentially filming in May is Tracey Staehle featuring Josef Matthews in 3 workouts. - Fight Cir...

A Cathe Favorite. Kick, Punch, & Crunch is a high energy kickboxing blast workout. This workout has lots of reps so you can work each move. In fact, endurance may be a factor on some of the moves. I know I felt fatigue in several of the exercises towards the end of each move. You calves certainly get a good workout. After the warm up, the workout goes into medium intensity drills, and that is followed by high intensity drills. After the drills, Cathe takes you through 3 combination routines. This is followed by a brief cool down before you go into Stability Ball Ab work and then a final stretch. My favorite part of the workout were the 3 combinations. I think I like the speed of the combination which allowed you to execute each move without being rushed. I really like the music except the music used during the Abdominal/core sections. The music there seemed out of place. 4 1/2 stars out of 5

Do to being sick, I only did the warm up and the 4 combo routines, which I think came to about 35 minutes of workout out. Cathe also has a tough nonstop blast section in this workout that I was intending to do but was whipped. I like Kick Max , but it had to grow on me. It was my favorite the first few times I did the workout. For her latter kickboxing workouts, Cathe has been using a three person cast, which I like. Along with herself, the workout features Lorraine and Jai as her background exercisers and the three of them are just great. There is just a no-nonsense vibe to this workout that is just cool. Now, the combos start simple but do get more intricate as Cathe goes from the 1st combo to the 4th combo. Cathe starts by teaching you the arm movement, she then adds the legs moves to the combo and then she combines the arm and leg movement into one combo routine before moving to repeat the pattern on the opposite side. Between each combo, Cathe adds a series of jumping jacks t...

Well I was able to get a few of workouts in. One of my workouts this week was CIA 2204 Step Till You Drop - Advance Stepping with Mark Hendricks. Advance Stepping is but one part of Step Till You Drop. The actual workout is over 2 hours. Along with Mark, Melissa Cantillo and Laura Downing also lead the workout. I only ever do Mark's section which including the warm up (which he also leads) is about 40 minutes in length. Mark has flair and he is all about the DRAMA and presentation. His section is really dance base. I love to dance and I love dance fitness workouts. So I was really able to have fun with him. Mark may not be every one's cup of tea. Some of his comments might seem risque but I don't think any of it was too outlandish. To me the workout is fun. The choreography is slightly complex but certainly doable. There is only one part that I found awkward and that is in the beginning of his combination when he had you step forward and step backward over the st...

DARN. DARN. DARN. I caught a cold. It is so inconvient. I missed two of my workouts this week as a result of being sick and only made it through 1/2 of what I was planning to do in another workout. Sluggish. That is what I feel. And it is so annoying when your nose is running and you have a coughing attack; and even more irritating when your SO ask "Are you sure it was a good idea to workout?" "No, I am not sure!" I just hate when my rotation gets thrown out of whack.

CIA's Cardio Camp is an interval workout. I wouldn't exactly call it hi-low. The intervals are a combination of aerobics and kickboxing sets. There are three aerobics sections and three kickboxing sections. The aerobics sections are very basic and I do mean very. I was almost bored. The kick-boxing sections was a little more complex but equally repetitive. Kimberly Spreen leads the workout and she has this move called "Jab, Cross, Slit, Step, Step, Roundhouse, Step, Shin block, Shin block". I mentioned it because this same move also appears in Absolute Kickboxing and we did it a lot there and we do it a lot in Cardio-Camp. It took me awhile to get my heart rate up. You really have to create you own intensity which is actually easy to do because the workout is so simple. Kimberly alternates cardio aerobics, with cardio kickboxing. There are three combinations of each. Then at the end she combines all the cardio combos, throws in a couple of intensity blast, a...

The FIRM Boomers aka Complete Aerobic Weight Training - Volume 6 of the "Classics" series. This workout features Jayne Poteet and is only 52 minutes long but the tempo of the workout makes the workout seem a lot longer. Except for a couple of the sections, things seem to move in slow motion. To that end, you can go heavy in this workout. What might prevent you from doing so is the compound nature of many of the exercises. There is quite a bit of stepping in this workout. Very basic stepping -your traditional basic step, step knee raise and leg lift/sweep type of moves. Most of the variations come in the form of arm movements. Most of the workout is done standing. There is a floor section but it is not as lengthy as some of the other FIRM workouts. My favorite section of the workout are the shoulder shrugs and shoulder pinches. You don't see that move very often in workout DVDs. I think this is a good workout for beginners wanting to advance to the intermediate sta...

CIA's Absolute Kick-Boxing is a combat interval kick-boxing workout and it is led by Kimberly Spreen. There are three distinct sections of this workout. One is kickboxing, one is the combat interval using a body bar, and the last section is abdominal toning using weights. The whole workout is 93 minutes. I never do the whole workout. I only ever do the kickboxing portion and that portion including warm up and cool down clocks in at 46 minutes. In general, I like Kimberly's Kickboxing workouts. While they don't have the high energy of an Amy Bento or the high intensity of a Cathe, they are still very good workouts. Kimberly does a lot of layering; and there are plenty of reps to do within each combination. The combinations are very basic and easy to pick up. This is the type of workout that doesn't require a lot of thinking. There is a lot of repetition so you are able to work the move instead of trying to remember what comes next. And to that end, Kimberly cues...

Volume 5 of the "Classic" series is the 45 minute Abs, Hip, & Thigh Workout featuring Lareine Chabut. This is probably my least favorite of the "Classic" series of workouts. Although, I like the individual sections as they appear in the various compilation workouts that have been produce; here in there own workout, there didn't seem to be enough content. Like most of the "Classics", it has a standing and a floor section. The standing section consist of 4 limb aerobics using a small to mid step and light dumbbells. There is also a series of "leg presses" and "squats". The floor section was the dominate part of this workout, commencing with a 9 minute abdominal sections and then moving into lower body leg exercises. The workout concludes with a stretch. There is a double rewind function on this workouts that lets you repeat the cardio segment. I have nevered used this feature. This is the only workout of the classic seri...

Body Max 2 Step Routine only- includes bonus cardio and ending stretch (approximately 40 minutes). I kind of made my own premix here. Cathe does include a Timesaver Cardio Only Premix but I don't really like that premix. I have done the whole 97 minute workout several times but this go around I was just looking for cardio. The warm up for this workout is way too long and therefore repetitive. It is a 9 1/2 minute workout and it felt longer than that to me. I know Cathe likes to give you a long and thorough warm up when you have a super long workout like this, but by the time we were going through the combo for the third time, I was getting bored. Once you get pass the warmup, the rest of the step combos are okay. Right when I was thinking "Okay, we are not going to repeat this again, are we?", we were moving on. The music Cathe used was pretty catchy, mostly 80s. I happen to like 80s music so I was okay with the selection. One of the things I notice about the w...

The FIRM Super Sculpting is a 48 minute workout and it features Jennifer Carman, Nancy Tucker, Dale Brabham, and Carissa Fosters as leads. Jennifer and Dale focus primarily on the upper body and Nancy and Carissa focus primarily on the lower body. While this workout gets the job done, it is not my favorite FIRM total body workout. Normally, I only include this workout when I am looking for a fifth total body workout from the "Benson" era to add to my rotation. It usually comes down to between Super Sculpting and Bust & Butt; and I like Bust&Butt even less than I like Super Sculpting. It is hard to pinpoint what exactly I don't like about. I didn't care for the music very much. The sequence of the exercises seemed repetitive. I included the exercise break down for this workout, but truthfully the workout moves too quickly to record your weight and rep count. The workout almost moves too quickly to change out your weights on some of the exercises. There is...

The FIRM Time Crunch with Susan Harris and Kai Soremekum is a 42 minute total body workout and is Volume 4 in the "Classic" series. The 45 to 50 minute mark is a perfect workout length for me. So this workout gets high marks for that. I have always like this workout, although it has certainly become easier, less challenging to do as years have gone by. With that said, there is this one section I just don't like and have never like and after doing the workout yesterday realized I still don't like it. This is the section were Kai is leading and we are alternating box climbs in this bizarre pattern using dumbbells to work the upper body. I don't know why this section bugs me, but it does. There is like this "Uuh" feeling that comes across me when it is time to do this section. There rest of the workout, Love it. It doesn't feature hi-impact so it is great for days when you want a little less intensity and of course if it becomes super easy you can in...

Strikezone is approximately a 60 minute workouts and features Tracey Staehle and Josef Matthews as the leads. The workout features twelve strikes - see table of contents to the left. Each strike takes you through a series of kickboxing martial arts inspired moves. In the first two strikes (warm it up and warm it down), Tracey takes you through the "UP" section and here you are warming up your upper body - mostly with punches. Josef leads the "down" section and you are warming up your lower body - mostly with kicks. Overall, I like this workout. It is a workout where you can really work on your precision. My favorite strikes are 5, 6 & 8. In strike 7, I felt that Tracey forgot to cue the first 1/2 of the combination. Other than that I didn't really notice any cuing problems. There was one strike I did bypass and that was strike 9 (Spiderwebs). The spider webs were fun but the pushups that came with them were not. Between each strike, the workout comes t...

The FIRM's Aerobic Workout with Weights aka Aerobic Interval Training. I truly dislike when the makers or whoever changes the name of a workout. This workout is lead b Sandahl Bergman. It is Volume 3 of the "Classic Series", taught in the "Live Class" format and is 60 minutes long. Okay. It is not that I didn't or don't like this workout. Maybe it was all the alternating between the standing and floor work. First we were standing then going to floor and then standing again and back to the floor. All of that just made it seem like this workout was never ending. Of course I could have been having an impatient workout day, but boy did this workout seem long. And I like the workout. The only thing that I could really say I didn't care for was the sequencing of the workout and that only had to do with the "one arm french press". We do the right arm about 10 minutes into the workout and then some 40 minutes later, Sandahl does the left ...

Step Moves . Mmmmmm. Not completely sold on it yet. This is my second time doing the workout. So I will start telling you what I like about it. I like the length, in fact I love the length. It clocks in at 44 minutes and that works well for my schedule. I like the music as well. I know I read a lot of people did not, but I think the music is okay. I also liked the combos. The combos (there are three of them) featured moves we are used to thrown in in a different way. One of the moves was the "over-facing-over". I am so use to exiting off the back, I kept having to remind myself to exit of the side. This workout is more complex than Athletic Step, but even so, I didn't find the routine hard to pick up at all. I didn't feel that this workout was all that dancy though, even though it had some "ball changes" "cha-chas" and "mambos". What I didn't like about the workout were the "knee" fillers. For a shorter workout th...

Tough Tape 2 is a 45 minute compilation workout. The workout is compiled with segments from the following FIRM workouts - StrongBody aka FIRM Cardio, StrongHeart aka FIRM Strength, Better Body & Buns, and Maximum Body Shaping, This is one of my favorite compilation and total body workouts. The workout flows really well but it moves fast. ( Click on the worksheet to left for a larger view of the exercises included in the workout). Because the workout moves quickly from one exercise to the next, you are getting an aerobic benefit as well. You can go heavy with certain exercises. Within each segment there are various tempo changes. All exercises are performed to the beat of the music. This workout it taught in the "Live Class" format. There isn't much that I don't like about this workout. Equipment used: dumbbells, tall step, dowel, and 2X4. 4 1/2 out of 5 stars.

The FIRM Low Impact Aerobics is a approximately 65 minute workout featuring light-to-mid weight training and aerobic intervals. It is volume 2 of the "Classic" series and it features Janet Jones as the lead. The workout is roughly divided into two section - a standing section and a floor section; each of which are about 30 minutes long. I actually like the floor section is this workout better than the floor section in Body Sculpting Basic. In BSB the floor section seemed endless. In LIA, the sequence of the floor sections makes it more endurable. Exercises included in the floor section are pushups, core, leg biceps, shootouts, pec fly, rib-cage pullovers, and lat rows. Standing sections 4 limbs sets, high impact aerobics, biceps-triceps-shoulder work, lunges, squats and lots of high kicks or waist kicks (if you can only click that high). One thing to note about this workouts are the individual segments whether they be floor or standing are long. The workout is taugh...

Aaahhh Nostalgia. Body Sculpting Basics , the very first FIRM workout ever produce clocks in at 60 minutes. It has probably been a couple of years now since I have done this workout. I am so happy to have a Chapter DVD version of the workout because it is truly a classic. The work was made in the late 80s; of course, the leotards and (as someone pointed out to me) the hair are dated, it is still a challenging workout - especially the floor section. Now for the workout itself, the only thing I didn't care for and found the moves to be dated was the warm up. There was more stretching, albeit active stretching, than actual warm up movement (i.e. side step, marching). The rest of the workout is very good. My favorite part occurs right after the warm up, but before the floor section. This section of the workout - the standing - section is a good 25 minute aerobic sculpting workout. The second half of the workout is killer. It is about 30 minutes long and all floor. The majority...

Still not in love with this workout, although I do think it is one that will grow on me. In its favor in a huge way is the length of the workout. It clocks in at 47 minutes. The workout does pack a punch. I worked up quite a sweat while doing the workout. The combos were simple, short and easy to follow. My biggest wish for the workout would be for it to have a louder music option. I know there were a lot of complaints about the lack of cool down, but that didn't bother me at all. Still a 3 1/2 star out of 5 stars workout.