Saundra

March 2023 Monthly Rotation I am finishing recovery week of Block 2.  Then I move into three weeks of endurance strength and HiiT workouts. This will be followed by another week of recovery. Sunday - Cardio Coach/5K Treadmill Workout Monday - Cathe/Jari Love Strength Tuesday - Cathe HiiT Wednesday - Cathe/Jari Love Strength Thursday - Cathe HiiT Friday - Cathe/Jari Love Strength Saturday - Active rest (i.e. Vibration Platform, Inversion Table, Mobility, Stretch). Start of month recovery week: Suzanne Barre Flat Belly Barre workouts and Guillermo Gomez Kickboxing workouts. End of month recovery week:  The FIRM BSS3 & Cardio Karate workouts.  

April 2022 Monthly Rotation Sunday - Treadmill runs. Moving mileage up to 4 miles. Monday - FIRM Total Body Sculpting Tuesday - FIRM Cardio parts Wednesday - Cathe Metabolic Workouts Thursday - Cardio Karate Friday - Essentrics Total Body Saturday - Vibration platform and extended stretching. I will also be doing nightly stretching and some of Kelly Coffey-Meyer 30-Minute to Fitness Abs & Core workouts. Happy Exercising and Happy Health to you all.  

  Monthly Rotation for October Starting off with two Cardio Karate workouts: Metabolic Intervals and Plyo Intervals. Next Three Weeks Sunday - Cardio Coach Monday - Cathe Sculpting  Tuesday - Cathe HiiT Wednesday - Cathe Sculpting Thursday - Cathe HiiT Friday - The FIRM Sculpting Saturday - Rest Last week will be Cathe new workouts from Perfect 30 Series.

Happy August 2013 to you all. This month I start training for a 10K I have coming up in October. So along with a regular treadmill run,  I am doing Cardio Karate, Cardio Coach, and 10 Minute Solution workouts.

February 2013 Monthly Rotation Sunday - Treadmill Monday - Sculpt/Weight Tuesday - Les Mills Combat and Turbo Fire Wednesday - Les Mills Body Pump Thursday - Les Mills Body Combat Friday - Cardio Karate Saturday - Rest

Disc 12 is definitely my favorite of the Cardio Karate series. I just wish I knew what to call the workout. JB introduces the workout as Martial Arts Interval . The name on the disc is Martial Cardio Curcuit . The workout booklet that comes with the system calls this disc Martial Cardio Complexes. So. Um. Yeah... This workout is lead by Steve Feinberg. Along with Steve, there are two cast members. Steve (first time have worked out with him) is a bit of a chatterbox., slightly goofy and fun. However, his instruction is good. He often called out the moves or would count in Chinese. I really like the Martial Arts that Steve included in the workout. The workout booklet states that "the workout draws its influence from two styles of Kung Fu - choi lei faht (Chinese) and lama pai (Tibetan)". Like most workouts, Steve teaches you a move and then adds on. When he puts everything together, you get a flowing sequencing of moves. It was fun to do. The workout does end with som...

Cardio Complexes features Amy Bento Ross as the lead and it is about 57 minutes long. The workout really is very basic. It is divided up into what Amy calls complexes (a mini routine or set of moves). Intensity is added as you repeat the complex. Amy does three iterations of each complex. First time through, no weights. Second time through, add light weights. I added my 1lb sand weights. Third time through, increase the weight. I grabbed 2lb dumbbells as I only have 1lb sand weights. Amy and cast used sand weights for the whole workout. They had 1 lb, 2lbs, and 3 lb sand weights. As you go up in weight, Amy slows down the pace of the move, allowing for proper execution. Not including core work, there was only one time that you went down to the floor for a plank move. And that was in complex 4. This workout had a somewhat different flair to it when comparing it to some of the other Cardio Karate workouts. It was a nice change up. 3 3/4 stars

Approximately 64 minutes in length, Cardio Metabolic Intervals is Disc 10 in the Cardio Karate set and it features Gay Gasper as the lead. Backing up Gay are three cast members. One cast member shows modifications during the pull up exercises. Pull ups do show up in all five pods; and they are followed by a set of push ups. Like the other two workouts that used the center mount pull up bar, so does this one. However, Cardio Metabolic Intervals was much easier to follow than Extreme Martial Conditioning 1 and 2. This mostly had to do with the fact that Gay and Cast were not jumping up to the pull up bar and jumping out of it into horse stance. In Cardio Metabolic Intervals, there were boxes position to the side. When it came time to do the pull up, the cast would go and get the boxes and position them under the pull up bars, hop up and do the pull ups. When they were done, they would put the boxes away before proceeding on to do push ups. I think the pull ups were tough for Gay. S...

Disc 9 Cardio Plyo Intervals is approximately 54 minutes in length and features Keli Roberts as the lead. In addition to Keli, there are two other cast members. I love the construction of this workout. There are about 7 pods and Keli teaches all the pods back to back. She gives you a chance to catch your breath - telling you " that is one time through and if you are keeping it short you can stop here or you continue on to do the full program ". She then goes back to the beginning and runs through all the pods a second time before moving to work the core. During the pod sections, there is not a lot of getting down to the floor in this workout which is a nice departure from some of the other Cardio Karate workouts. Keli did not do a lot of cuing or better put there were times she got really quiet. It didn't bother me. Just something I noticed. Definitely one of my favorites. 4 1/4 stars

Disc 8 Extreme Martial Conditioning 2 features Gregg Cook as the lead. Besides Gregg, there is one other cast member. Extreme Martial Conditioning 2 is set up exactly the same way as Extreme Martial Conditioning (EMC) 1. Therefore, I found this workout just as awkward to do as the first EMC workout. The warm up starts with plank work and then goes into a series of balance moves. Once you get into the Pods, you get a heavy dose of pull ups. In fact, each pods starts off with pulls ups, then goes into horse stance, then some type of total body move using dumbbells, then some other type of core and/or total body move using the sand weights. You repeat each pod twice before moving on. Also, there are a lot of moves where you are getting down on the floor - either via a burpee or a single leg roll back - lots of up and down. Gregg did a good job leading the workout. He did stop once to point out some form with Robert (the cast member). However, as I stated when reviewing EMC1, unless ...

Disc 7 Cardio Kata is approximately 57:22 in length and features Gay Gasper as the lead. There are three additional cast member in this workout besides Gay, for a total of 4. I think 4 is too many. There is this big support beam on the floor that one of the cast members kept having to work around depending on the move he was performing. The format for Cardio Kata is slightly different. There are 4 pods and within each pod there is an Intensity round. So it is kind of like a Hi Lo workout or if you do Cathe workouts, similar to when when she does a "blast"after one of her combos. For that reason, this workout definitely could have benefited from a few pre-mixes. One premix would be just the Pods sans the intensity round. Second premix would be just the Intensity Rounds without the Pod combos. Third premix would be all the pods combined plus warm up and cool down. I know. I know. Wishful thinking. I am surprise JB Berns (the creator) didn't think of this. I love the...

Interval Core is disc 6 in the Cardio Karate System. This workout features Greg Sims. and is just under 58 minutes in length. Along with Greg, there are two other cast members. Besides the part where Greg leaves off a whole pod when taking it from the top (this happens towards the end of the workout), I thought he did a overall good job in leading the workout. However, with that said, I didn't particularly like this workout. The combos or pods just didn't come together for me. This workout seemed to lack some of the unique moves found in the other workouts. The workout is easy and simple to follow. Greg pretty much calls out the move and you go into. There is a lot of repetition for each move. There is "taking it from the top". Planks and push ups do show up. The cool down is roughly the last 10 minutes of the workout and Greg tells you and the cast behind him "just to follow him". After doing Cardio Intense with Amy who forgot a section of the wor...

Cardio Intense is a long workout. It clocks in at 1 hour and 17 minutes. The last 15 or so minutes are ab work and the stretch cool down. This workout features Amy Bento Ross as the lead. There are two background exercisers, Jill and Uchenna. I will say that most of the time I really enjoy Amy but in these workouts, she has been annoying the heck out of me. She stops in the middle of an exercise to give "tips" that seem very haphazard. She is constantly talking, I think yelling, at Jill and Uchenna. At one point in the workout, I was like "Amy, please leave Uchenna and Jill alone. They know the workout. You are the one that needs to focus on the workout". In the first Pod, while going through the combos on the right side, she left out a whole set of moves. That completely through me off because I was expecting to go into that. She did remember when she went to the other side. During the core section, Amy was trying to demonstrate a move using Uchenna, that...

Disc 4 Flexible Strength Conditioning is just over 50 minutes and features Keli Roberts as the lead. Along with Keli, there are two cast members. This workout is primarily a strength workout. Keli and cast use the sand weights but she tells you that you can use dumbbells. Keli calls the various sections Sequences instead of Pods and there are 8 Sequences plus a Core section. This workout has a nice series of moves that require balance and control. If you look at the worksheet, you will see quite a few of the sequences are done on the right and then left side. There are couple of sequences where the count or numbers of reps are not the same for both sides. Keli gets confuse a bit of where she is at in the workout. Also, it seems as if she and the other cast members are struggling with some of the moves. Although, it could have been just a bad balance day for them. The only sequence I didn't care for was Sequence 1 and that was because of all the plank push up workout. It see...

Disc 3 of the Cardio Karate workouts is Extreme Cardio Interval. This workout features Gay Gasper as the lead. Along with Gay, there are three Cast Members. The workout is about 58 minutes. This workout contains a warm up, 6 pods, core and a cool down. The worksheet breaks down the moves in the pod. There is not a lot of times spent on breaking down the pods. You learn them and you move on. After you have learned all 6 pods, you get to put them altogether in a super sequence in which you run through them 4 times. This was my favorite part of the workout. I really think this workout could have benefited from a premix. It would have been awesome to have the warm up, all the combo pods, and the cool down as a mini workout to do. There is a bit of up and down in this workout - where you are going to the floor. Both Pods 3 and 6 feature a series of plank work. I felt Gay was distracting. She would stop to give form pointers. She would stop just to talk into the camera. Sometimes t...

Week 2 started off with Extreme Martial Conditioning 1 . This workout stars Gregg Cook as the lead and it is just under 60 minutes in length. Along, with Gregg, there is one other cast member and his name is Robert. This workout is Pull Up heavy. The Pull Up bar that they use in the workout is mounted in the center of the workspace from the ceiling. There is a cryptic message at the beginning of the workout saying you should not use the Portable Door Mounted Pull Up bars. My guess for that is that there are several exercises where you are hanging from the pull up bar and I can easily envision someone pulling out their trim from the door frame. This workout was cumbersome and awkward to do but only because of the Pull Ups. This workout was specifically design to the type of Pull Up Bars they have in the workout. I have the Cathe Turbo Tower. I also have bands/tubing which is an alternative method that the workout recommends. I used both methods for this workout. The problem ...

For February 2012 I will be alternating Insanity workouts with Cardio Karate . I have had the Insanity workouts since 2010 and just never got around to doing them. I would preview them and then decide I would rather do something else. I have only had the Cardio Karate workouts a little over a couple of weeks. Originally I was planning these for March, but changed my mind. I really want to see what these workouts are all about. Saturday is going to be Active Recovery day - mostly in the form of some extra stretching. I feel my body needs it. Since every workout, with the exception of Dynamic Flexibility, is going to be a new workout for me, I will be doing weekly blog post for the workouts I do that week. I don't have any evening workouts plan for February as I am looking to maximize my rest between workouts. February 2012 Wed Feb 1 - Insanity : Fit Test & Cardio Abs - 47 min Thu Feb 2 - Cardio Karate : Cardio Circuits - 63 min Fri Feb 3 - Insanity : Plyometric Car...

I received my Cardio Karate workout system. Right now, I don't plan to do the workouts until March. I did preview the workouts - something that I always do to make sure I actually received the right DVD and that the DVD plays without any problems. The 14 workouts that come with the system are : Welcome to the Dojo : Introduction to system only - 6:42 The Perfect Martial Arts Workout - 50:32 Disc 1 Cardio Circuits (Amy Bento Ross) - 63:00 Disc 2 Extreme Martial Conditioning 1 (Gregg Cook) - 60:24 Disc 3 Extreme Cardio Interval (Gay Gasper) - 57:40 Disc 4 Flexible Strength Conditioning (Keli Roberts) - 50:58 Disc 5 Cardio Intense (Amy Bento Ross) - 77:00 Disc 6 Interval Core (Greg Sims) - 57:43 Disc 7 Cardio Kata (Gay Gasper) - 57:22, Disc 8 Extreme Martial Conditioning 2 (Gregg Cook) - 64 minutes Disc 9 Cardio Plyo Intervals (Keli Roberts) - 53:45 Disc 10 Cardio Metabolic Interval s (Gay Gasper) - 64:00, Disc 11 Cardio Complexes (Amy Bento Ross) 56:15, Disc 12 Marti...

Even though I won't get to these workouts until March, I decided to go ahead and take the plunge and order Cardio Karate. I really like the clips and hope at least 1/2 the DVDs live up to my expectations. I ordered online. Typical of ordering online (and I am sure on the phone as well) is that you are offered a lot of add ons. When you click "Order Now" the first page is where you put in all your information (name, address, and credit card). I deselected the check box that mention something to the affect of authorizing text payments for this phone. Once you "click here to order", I think it is too late to cancel. Then you get a series of offers to buy the add on equipment. The first offer is offering you the whole package, I believe the price was $79.95 + $24.95 S+H. Might be wrong on the shipping. In this package comes the pull up bar, three pair of sand weights, and weighted gloves. I said no thanks. And then one by one, pages came up offering the product...