Saundra

October 2011. I am still training for my 10K which will be October 30th. Monday - Thursday I have double workouts planned. Mornings will be cardio and evenings will be strength training. Morning Sundays will be a 6.2 mile run on either the treadmill or outdoors. This will be followed by 15 to 20 stretch workout. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, I will be doing some of my favorite cardio workouts. Only one workout will be new to me and that is Rockin Cardio Jam. Wednesday's will be 3.1 (5K) on the treadmill and I might follow this with some ab work. I will have to go through my workouts and see what short (no more than 10 minutes) ab workouts I have. Evenings - I will be doing STS Mesocycle 3. Monday - Chest & Back Tuesday - Plyo Legs Wednesday - Shoulder, Biceps, Triceps Thursday - Squat Rack Legs The majority of the STS workouts are over an hour. I will be cutting them down so that they are under an hour. Hopefully, I can do this just by going from 4 sets to 3 sets of...

Burn & Build is a kettlebell workout featuring Paul Katami. This workout uses a high step which Paul often refers to as "the board". Along with Paul, there are three cast members. One cast member is modifying the moves and this person uses a dumbbell instead of a kettlebell. The workout contains a warm up, seven exercise blocks and an ending stretch. At about 70 minutes, I thought the workout long. Like KettleBell Drills and KettleBell Kombos each exercise is timed. However in this workout the timed exercise are for 90 and 60 seconds. For instance the first two warm up exercises start off with a 90 second timed leg drill. The first two warm up exercises, you do not used the bell or the high step. The warm up is about 10 minutes. Each of the seven blocks has a particular theme or focus. Cardio focus, core focus, strength & power focus are the predominate themes. You are doing each exercise in each block for 60 seconds. Each block is roughly 7 to 8 minutes. The b...

Clocking in right at 60 minutes is Seasun Zieger's Z-Fit Super Step workout. The workout consist of a warm up, 3 step combinations, the combinations spliced together, cool-down, core work and a stretch. With Seasun's workouts, I like to learn them a combo at a time. Actually, this is only my second step workout with Seasun and I found Super Step much easier to learn than her CIA 2903 Stepping Up workout. That is not to say that there isn't a lot of complexity with this workout. There is. You are doing a lot of turns, pivots, and moves with your back toward the television. What makes Seasun difficult is that she cues in chunks. What I mean by that is that she will tell you a head of time what you will do. And what you will do might be 4 moves back to back. That is what I mean by chunk. She throws a chunk at you instead of teaching 1st move, then 2nd, then the 3rd etc. Also, what she does that a lot of advance step instructors do is she spends a lot of time (in terms o...

Kettlebell Kombos is a 41 minute workout featuring Paul Katami. In this workout, Paul combines a series of moves together creating mini combinations. He does each set of moves for 30 or 60 seconds. Depending on how elaborate the combo is, you may go through two complete cycles in a 30 second period. In that case, Paul often repeats the combo for another 30 seconds. We are talking per side. Almost all the combos have a right and left lead. There are some combos that alternate the lead and most of the combos are 60 seconds long. There are approximately 3, maybe 4 - what I call Practice Breaks - where Paul has you practice the move before starting the clock. I kind of think this was unnecessary for him to do because he already demonstrates the move before he sets the clock. Other than the practice breaks and the constant stopping to check form, (that is just his style of training - at least that is what I gather) I like this workout. The music is just okay. The set is a warehouse. At...

From the first FIRM Body Sculpting System is Lower Body Sculpt 1 featuring Lisa Kay. The workout is just over 30 minutes long. There is a modifier and the workout uses the fanny lifter. This is a standing lower body workout. The warm up is about 5 1/2 minutes long. In main part of the workout, you are doing a series of plie squats, traditional squats, lunges, dips, and of course, leg press. Roughly, you are doing about 3 sets of each. In between the sets are cardio break. One break uses the 6 in step and the other cardio break is done on the floor. Both cardio breaks focuses on the lower body. There is a 3 minute or so stretch at the end. This is a nice workout. Lisa does a good job. The music could be louder. The thing that irritates me the most about the workout is that the DVD is not chaptered. So you have to wait for the FBI warning to come and go. Also, Lisa introductions is about 2 minutes long, but at least you are able to fast forward through that. All in all - n...

Kettlebell Drills is about 36 minutes in length and features Paul Katami. The music is minimal, mostly background and the set is a warehouse. The DVD contains three separate workouts. There is a Clinic or Tutorial. That is a little over 30 minutes. There is the Drills workout and there is a Core specific workouts. The core workout is about 18 minutes. This review is just of the Drills workout. So, along with Paul, there are two other cast members (Toby and Sarah). Sarah is your modifier. Paul likes to stop and point out form. He does this quite a bit. It's annoying because it is not natural. It appears to be very scripted. The workout starts off with a warm up and the warm up uses the kettlebell. I was okay with this. Normally, I get annoyed with using weights in a warm up, but this didn't bother me. Now, I did use my lightest kettlebell for the warm up. Because the warm up exercises are timed as well, there is really no distinction of when the warm up ends and the actua...

Savage is a workout featuring Michael Olijade Jr. It clocks in at about 55 minutes. The workout consist of boxing drills, jump rope drills and squat drills. Each round features these three disciplines and there are four rounds. The warm up is about 3 minutes and as warm ups go, I didn't care for it. Michael does tell you if you are not warmed up enough to do more. The Savage workout does not have a cool down. There is a second workout on this disc called Serene (reviewed July 11, 2010) that you can do for your cool down if you like but it is a 30 minute workout. The set is a boxing ring that has a chair in corner, a water bottle on the floor and it's dark. At one point, in one of the rounds or at the end of the round, Michael tells you to keep moving but he goes and sits in the chair that is in the corner. I thought that comical. The music, I think is pretty good. The workout is choreograph pretty precisely with the music. When Michael does the boxing speed drills, the...

This really isn't a premix. However, Body Max's Upper Body is a distinct section within the Body Max workout. The Body Max workout is the third workout on the Power Hour DVD. This DVD is chaptered very well and it is easy to pull out just the Upper Body section in the Body Max workout and do it as a standalone workout. This part of the workout clocks in at over 30 minutes and it is an endurance workout for the upper body. You need to have you weights handy because you are moving pretty rapidly from one exercise to the next. Within each set of exercises, Cathe may give you a 5 to 10 second break before you are back at it. You are working chest, back, shoulders, biceps and triceps (in that order) and you are doing any where from 3 to 4 exercises per muscle group. Because the DVD is so well chapter it is easy to tack on the warm up (which is about 8 minutes) and an ending stretch (which is about 4 minutes). This is how I do the workout. So my whole workout time ends up being a...

Cathe Legs & Glutes is probably my favorite Cathe Lower Body Workout. It clocks in at about 51 minutes. It uses the high steps, dumbbells, barbell (but just for balance - I used my dowel), and ankle weights. It also uses no weights or your own body weight for several exercises. Many of the exercises have a cardio factor to them. I was thinking the workout could be called Legs & Cardio or maybe Cardio Legs. I know my heart rate got up there on several exercises. There is a little bit of everything in this workout. You are hitting the legs from all angles - quads, hamstrings, outer thigh, inner thigh, calves, and glutes. There is standing work and floor work. Toning, sculpting, and power moves are included as well. The workout moves quickly. You don't get a lot of rest in between the sets or even between the exercises. I think Cathe is going more for endurance than strength with this workout. What I probably like best about the workout ---- is the soundtrack. There are m...

Cushion Tile also known as Arobitile is an interlocking portable flooring system that can be used in a variety of ways. One of those ways is as gym flooring. They come if a variety of colors - Yellow, black, deep blue, medium blue, red, green, white, dark and light gray. The tiles are 1 foot by 1 foot and approximately 1/2 inch thick. You can also purchase borders and corners for a nicer, finish look. They are relatively cheap compared to other flooring systems but the price can still skyrocket depending on how many you purchase.When I bought these for my town home basement, initially I was looking at creating an 8 X 8 area, so I ordered 64 cushion tiles plus the borders and corners to go with it, I later decided that it wasn't big enough and went back and ordered 40 more tiles plus the borders. With that I was able to create at 10 X 10 area. This was back in 2008. I paid $506.80 for the materials, which include (104 tiles, 4 corners, & 44 borders) + $156.6 for shipping. Now ...

Kathy Smith Aerobox Workout features Michael Olajide Jr and is approximately 50 minutes long. The workout is really led by Michael, with Kathy offering a tip here and there. This workout originally came out in 1999 on VHS. I have the workout on DVD and the DVD is chaptered very nicely. The DVD Menu is as follows : Kathy's Intro Warm Up (7 mins) Stationary Boxing (10 mins) Stick and Move 1 (5 mins) Jump Rope 1 & Stick and Move 2 (6 mins) Jump Rope 2 & Stick and Move 3 (6 mins) Jump Rope 3 (4 mins) Aerobic Cool Down (6 mins) Stretches (4 mins) Kathy's Intro is very good. She and Michael spend some time going over the moves and talking about why you take a certain stance as well as they go over the punches. I found Michael's instructions very informative with some great tips. Out of the Boxing sections, the boxing in the Aerobic Cool Down section is my favorite. The Stationary Boxing section is good also but at times I thought the punches were super fast. Kathy do...

Pyramid Lower Body and Pyramid Upper Body . I reviewed both of these workouts on July 28, 2009. I still love both and still give them 5 stars. This entry is just so I can add the worksheets for the workouts.

Cardio-Dance Step is one of the segments on CIA 2404 Step Till You Drop 2. CIA 2404 features Laura Downing, Melissa Cantillo and Mark Hendricks as the leads. The whole workout is over 2 hours long and breaks down as follows: Warm-up (Laura) 7:30 Strong Step (Laura) 35:00 (Athletic Step) Intervelocity Step (Melissa) 30:00 (Step segments mix with weight segments) Cardio-Dance Step (Mark) 32:00 Smooth Cool-Down (Mark) 4:00 Core Conditioning & Stretch (Melissa) 14:00. Now, I have had this workout for a while and I have done the different parts of the workout at different times. The section of the workout that I gravitate towards the most is Mark's section because I like his section the best. In fact, I no longer do Laura's and Melissa segments and I only kept this DVD because I like Mark's step routine so much. So Cardio-Dance Step is really just one long dance combo step routine that is taught in that Take It From The Top layered approach. There are som...

On the 30 Minutes to Fitness Bootcamp DVD, is a Bonus Stretch segment. This is a review of that. Kelly also includes this as one of her premixes on the disc. If you do the premix version, called Stretch Session, you get the warm up along with the bonus stretch. This premix is 22 minutes. I did this stretch after a treadmill run, so I didn't do the premix version. The bonus stretch section by itself if approximately 18 minutes. This stretch is more lower body than upper body stretching. It reminded me of old-school stretching. The kind of stretching I did in PE class in high school. Because the emphasis is more on the lower body, I found it excellent to do after my run. Kelly starts with standing stretches and then moves to the floor for lying and seated stretching. Kelly uses a towel on several of the exercise to get a deeper stretch. She does what she calls "ballistic" stretching, (I call it pulsing) but she gives you the option not to do it and just t...