Saundra

Welcome to July 2012 !!! 1/2 the year is gone. I think I have come up with a good mix of workouts for this month. I am pulling out my FIRM Classic workouts for some back to basic fitness and Michelle Dozois workouts for metabolic conditioning. New workouts this month will come from Guillermo Gomez and Christi Taylor. Rotation Breakdown Sunday - FIRM Classics Monday - Kickboxing - Guillermo Gomez Tuesday - FIRM Classics Wednesday - Cardio (Christi Taylor and Tracey Staehle) Thursday - Michelle Dozois Cardio Strength workouts Friday - Michelle Dozois Cardio workouts Saturday - Rest

Solid Gold Cardio - this is my fourth Christi Taylor workout that I have done and it is definitely my favorite. The music and combos really came together in this workout. Both suited each other. Solid Gold Cardio has 8 mini combos. Combos 1 -4 are taught first, then combos 5-8. A brief perceived exertion test separate the combos. There is a warm up , much of which is used as part of the first combo. The cool down is the same cool down Christi used in Solid Gold Step which appear to be the cast member from both the Solid Gold Step and Solid Gold Cardio workouts. There are a lot of cast members in the cool down. In the Solid Gold Cardio, there are a total of seven cast members. Christi and two others do the advance and more complex moves. The remaining cast members do the modify or more basic moves. A couple of the combos were tough for me to pick up right away. The cardio is either hi or low impact. Christi makes the moves high impact by adding a bounce to the moves, but you ca...

Jari Love's Get Extremely Ripped 1000 . This one was not my favorite. I really didn't care for the cardio segments too much and the weight segments were just okay. This is an interval workout that alternates 3 minutes of cardio with 1 minute of sculpting. You can do the workouts as two separate thirty minute workouts or as one sixty minute workout. That time does not include the warm up and cool down. The warm up is additional 5 minutes and the cool down is about 6 minutes. The warm up uses a set of weights right from the start. Bicep curls, squats, lunges, lateral raises, shoulder press are some of the warm up exercises Jari performs with light weight. All the strength exercises are compound in nature - lower and upper body working together. Sometimes the format was 30 seconds on each side. Sometimes the format was the whole minute on one side - go to cardio - come back and do a minute on the other side. Cardio - with the exception of a couple of exercises, I tho...

Flat Abs Solutions is led by Rebekah Sturkie. The DVD contains five workouts. Four are 10 minutes in length and the fifth workout is 20 minutes in length. There is also a bonus 10 minute downloadable workout. The workouts are : Core Toner - 10 minutes. This workout is floor based. You are either lying or seated on the floor as you perform each move. It uses a dumbbell for added resistance. Boat, chops, bicycle, and modified push ups are some of the exercises performed. Firm and Flat Abs - 10 minutes. This workout features floor and standing moves. Most of the exercises are based in functional fitness - lots of lunge reaches. A pair of dumbbells are used for added resistances. Boot Camp Burn - Also 10 minutes in length and it also uses a pair of dumbbells. And there are burpees. It has been awhile since I have done a workout with a burpee. So it didn't bother me and I jumped right in. Other exercises are spider man planks and knee pulls Flat Belly Sculptor - 10 minutes. ...

Solid Gold Step features as whopping 8 mini combinations. Four of the combos are done with the step in the traditional horizontal position and four of the combos are perform with the step in the vertical position. A perceive exertion test separate the two segments. There are seven cast members in this workout and they are divided into two groups - the modifier group and the advance group. Everyone starts out in the modifier group and as Christi layers on, she and two others do the more advance and complex move while the other four members stay with the basic or modified version of the routine The combinations were fun - even doing them in the most basic configuration. However, I was not as big of a fan with some of the music selections. It was hit or miss with me. Either I really like the tune or thought some of the song selection were just plain blah and I didn't feel the energy. Lots and Lots of content on this DVD. Several menus have sub-menus. Some of the extra content: M...

Get ready for lots of sets and lots of reps within those sets with Jari Love's Get Extremely Ripped! 1000 Hardcore. The DVD gives you lots of options. If you choose the complete workout option, you are working out for about 74 minutes. The Warm up is about 7 minutes. The cool down is about 6 minutes. Jari alternates compound sculpting moves (mostly doing both an upper and lower body exercise) - with cardio intensity sets. The back of the DVD cover states that the cardio segments are 5 minutes each and the sculpting segments are 3 minutes each. I was not exaggerating when I say she does a lot of sets. For the compound sculpting work, you are doing 3 sets per side with a minimum of 16 reps of each variation. The cardio sets, you are doing 5 sets of three cycles. The three cycles are variations on a basic move. Jari shows you the basic move first during cycle 1, then she adds to it to make it more challenging for cycle 2 and for cycle 3, she makes it even more challenging. She the...

Dance it Off Ballroom features Kristina Milova as the lead and it is about 42 minutes in length. The sections of the workout are: Warm Up Cha Cha Samba Jive Cool Down There is also an Intro segment and a Step Guide segment. While I like the workout, it is not a very cardio intensive dance workout. This workout would be great for lite or active recovery days - days you would want to move but not work to strenuously. The dances are very easy to follow. I did not use the step guide and had no problem picking up the steps. There is a fair amount of repetition. Kristina cues well and is very pleasant. The music - I thought a bit blah. The set is okay. Along with Kristina, there are two other cast members. 3 & 1/4 stars

Another 50 minute aerobic workout from Christi Taylor, Totally Hot Cardio features 7 mini combo routines. Christi teaches the first three, then gives you a perceived exertion test. She then teaches the next three. Christi tacks on one more mini combo before moving on to the cool down. Lots of modifications and variations shown in the workout. Christi starts with a basic move in which the whole cast does, as she start to add-on, two of the cast members continue to do the basic moves throughout and the other two cast members and Christi do the more complex moves. There were some challenging parts but I didn't think her combinations were terribly difficult to execute. The DVD has lots of contents . Some of which are: Bonus Warm up into Workout Move Master (breaks down the step) Behind the Scenes Bonus Abs Bonus Cardio The music has vocals. A lot of the tunes I didn't care for. I didn't think the music selection fit the high/low of the workout. It was hard for me to get ...

Jari's Love Get Extremely Ripped! Body Rock is about 72 minutes in length and it contains the following sections: Introductions Complete Workout High/Low Workout Dance Workout Weight & Abs Ripped Tips If you do the complete workout, there is a warm up, followed by the aerobics sections where you alternate dance with high/low aerobics. Then comes the Weights and Abs section followed by a cool down. Jari leads the warm up by herself. The aerobics sections features three minute dance sections and two minute high/low sections. The dance and high/low sections each have their own cast. Aerobic segments Salsa - Dance Alternating Knee and Heel - High/low Latin - Dance Jacks - High/low Jazz - Dance Guitar Knee - High/low Disco - Dance Heel Kicks - High/low Funky -Dance Knees up - High/low Hip Hop - Dance Heel up - Cool down for the Aerobic Sections Weights & Abs - This section features lots of reps using light weight. Squats & Hamstrings (Dead lifts) Chest & Triceps Ba...

My first Christi Taylor workout - Totally Cool Step is about 50 minutes in length. It features 6 mini combo routines. Combos 1 through 3 are taught first. Christi gives you a perceived exertion test and then teaches combos 4 through 6. Along with Christi, there are 6 other cast members. Two of the cast members are performing the advance moves with Christi and the other four are always doing the modification moves. Christi teaches in the layer approach, often starting with the basic move before she makes it more complicated. You have the option to stay with the basic move or do the more advance move. I didn't find the advance moves too terribly complicated. Mostly it is a lot of turning and direction changes that make the moves complex. The music is decent. It is mostly older music - A lot of recognize tunes with vocals and a good beat. The set is one of the older CIA Video sets. The DVD contains lots of content. Along with the workout, there is also: Bonus Abs Bonus Cardio Bo...

A few months ago, a friend of mine gave me about 6, maybe 7 Jari's Love workouts. At one time, I did own a few of Jari's first group of workouts but when I was scaling back my workout collection, she went by the wayside. Clips of her newer workouts never appeal to me so I would always bypass them. When I received the workouts from my friend, I did preview them and I thought many of them look much better than how they came across in the clip. So four months later, I am adding some of them into the rotation. Starting with Get Extremely Ripped! Boot Camp - this is about a 75 minutes long workout if you do the entire workout. I did the whole workout. You can also break the workout into two 30-minute workouts or six 10 minute workouts. Along with a warm up and cool down, there are six rounds and each of the rounds contains some type of core work, strength work, and cardio work. Before each exercise, Jari offers a Ripped! Tip about that exercise. The tip is usually some typ...