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.  

  Happy New Year January 2021 Improvement. That is my word for 2021. Improve my workouts either in form, amount of reps I can do, or the amount of weight I can lift. Due to work commitments, I have already had several adjustments to my January 2021 rotation.  Over the new two months, I will be doing a combination of Essentrics Toning., 10 Minute Solution pilates, weight training (Cathe), Les Mill Cardio, Amy Bento Cardio. I am hoping my schedule can settle back down in March.

The latest DVD workout from Essentrics and Miranda Esmonde-White is Rebalance & Reboot Your Body . This DVD contains three under 25 minute workouts. The workouts are: Workout 1 Full Body Stretch Workout Workout 2 Posture and Spine Workout 3 Hip and Knee Strengthening Fully Body Stretching clocks in at around 22:30.  This workout uses a chair. The workout is broken down according to the approximate times. 0:00 circle warm up 3:05 cut the air, sway, back. ribs 7:30 mobility. toes, feet 10:00 plies 12:45 lunge, core 15:20 Barre work:  shin, calves, ankles 17:30 Barre work: leg swings, hip cleaners, hamstring stretch Posture and Spine clocks in at 24 minutes and the whole workout is performed standing and without props. 0:00 warm up the spine 2:00 spine stretch 4:45 more spine stretch 7:00  tail bone 10:00  leg hip isolation 13:00  arms 15:25  spine flexibility 20:00  chest and hamstrings Hip and Knee Strengthening clocks ...

Miranda Esmonde-White leads two 30-minute Essentrics Aging Backwards Connective Tissue Workouts. Workout 1 is Rebalance Your Connective Tissue . In this workout, Miranda takes your through a series of moves design to lubricate your joints and "connective tissue".  I really did not find the moves to be new.  For me, they were similar if not the same as exercises she does in her previous workouts. The workout is roughly broken up as follows: 3 minute warm up 3:35 Sway + Spine work front and back 5:50 Side Stretch 8:15 Feet 10:15 Plies + deliberate alignment 13:15 Side Rocks (Rib Focus) 16:10 Shoulder Blade Focus + Spine 20:00 Arm Wrist Fingers 23:30 Hips 26:30 Lift a feather + Little Bird 29:15 Touch The Ceiling Miranda still does not cue very well.  She doesn't tell when she is changing sides so you have to keep your eyes on the monitor so you don't miss the switch. Workout 2 is Release and Rebuild Your Fascia .  This workout clocks in at 31:20 ...

March 2019 Monthly Rotation Well my schedule has stabilize somewhat, so I am hoping to be able to complete a full monthly rotation this month. Breakdown Sunday - Treadmill Monday - Cathe Lower Body Tuesday - Cathe Upper Body Wednesday - Treadmill Thursday - Cathe Total/Metabolic Body Friday - Ilaria Kickboxing Saturday - Essentrics Aging Backwards

Essentrics Full Body Workout Volume  3 is lead by Miranda Esmonde White.  It is a 60-minute workout if you do the whole workout. You can also break the workout into different segments. The DVD offers the following menu: Play Full Workout - 60 minutes Standing - 30 minutes Floor - 15 minutes Barre - 15 minutes Feet Workshop Floor Workshop Barre Workshop This is a traditional Essentrics workout. Miranda takes you through the standard Essentric Classical Stretch exercises.  Please see worksheet for a breakdown. In the workshop, Miranda uses this time to explain and offer detail and tips about how to either use certain equipment or to talk posture and positioning. The Feet Workshop clocks in at 3:38.  The Floor Workshop has a run time of 5:44 and the Barre Workshop is a short minute and 1/2 (1:29). Full Body Workout Volume 3 - 3 & 1/2 stars

Essentrics Stretch Series Vol. 1 DVD includes three 30-minute workouts. Each of these workouts are slow moving workouts. Super slow. My biggest gripe about them is that the music in each of them is very faint. I could hear each of the instructors just fine but to hear the music I had to really increase the volume which in turn made the instructor super loud. The first workout is Tension Release and it is lead by Meg Feeney.  Meg does a lot of upper body full body range of motion movement.  She also does windmills, lunges, and plies that included shin and ankle work.  This workout uses a chair and in the chair segment, you are doing heel and calf work, as well as hamstring, quads, outer and inner thigh stretches.  This workout clocks in at 31:17. Joint Pain Relief clocks in just over 30 minutes and is lead by Gail Garceau.  In this workout, we do quite a bit of work for the back that includes standing back stretches and spine rotations.  Gail also i...

Essentrics Body Sculpting Series Vol. 2 DVD contains three total body Essentric workouts that are approximately 30 minutes each. Ultimate Inner-Thigh is lead by Gail Garceau and has a run time just over 31 minutes.  This workout contains a standing segment and a floor segment.  The standing segments features side lunges and plies.  The floor segments includes exercises for the waist, inner thigh, outer thigh and back of the leg.  The workout concludes with a stretch release. Full Body Strengthening is lead by Amanda Cyr and this workout clocks in at over 35 minutes.  This workout also contains a standing segment and a floor segment.  The standing segment includes single leg work, an arm sequence and stability work along with the lunges and plies.  The floor work features inner and out thigh work plus an extended stretch in both the seated and lying positions. Total Core, Leg, & Butt clocks in at 31:23. This workout is lead by Meg Feeney....

July 2018 Monthly Rotation This month consists of Les Mills workouts (Body Combat and Sh'Bam), Jessica Smith and Essentrics Workouts. The Breakdown Sunday - Les Mills Body Combat On-Demand Monday - Jessica Smith Tuesday - Jessica Smith Wednesday - Jessica Smith Thursday - Essentrics Friday - Les Mills Sh'Bam Saturday - Essentics

Essentrics Body Sculpting Series is lead by Sahra Esmode-White.  There are three workouts on one DVD.  Sahra states that each workout is a total body workout but each workout has a particular emphasis. The workouts are: Ultimate Leg Sculptor Ab Flattening & Waist Shaping Arm Blast & Posture Boost Ultimate Leg Sculptor workout includes standing and mat work. After the warm up, Sahra takes you through a series of Essentric trademark exercises which included lunge reaches (simulated elastic pull downs) and figure 8s. A plies series follow. This puts you at the 9 minute mark of the workout. You then move to the floor for a series of table top leg exercises.  Donkey kicks, leg lifts, hamstring curls, leg pumps and side kicks are the exercises.  There is also lying side leg work. In this section, Sahra alternates working the outer and inner thigh and glute area using traditional Essentrics lengthening exercises.  The workout concludes with seated ...

Essentrics Full Body Toning is a 57 minute workout that is divided into two segments. There is a standing segment and a floor segment.  In this workout, Sahra, who is the only cast members, offer lots of form tips throughout the workout. At times I felt there were too many tips because she would stop the movement as she was giving the tip and that would interrupt my flow.  Other than that, this is a typical Essentrics workout with shoulder blast, plies, arm series and windmills for the standing segment and in the floor segment abs and quad series.  Both workouts include a nice extended stretch.  Sahra states this workout is a favorite of all students and it is the first workout instructors learn.  There is a great soundtrack in this one and the set is big and bright with lots of windows. 4 stars

November 2017 Monthly Rotation Hello All.  Here is to a good and productive November. I have been sick and I missed a couple of workouts last month. So I am moving those workouts to this month. November will feature Classical Stretch/Essentrics, Zumba, Tracy Anderson, Fitness Favorites Live workouts and Cardio Coach workouts.

Essentrics The Ultimate Stretch Workouts Disc 1 contains two 30-minute workouts. The first workout is Muscle Activation Workout . It  clocks in at 29:12. Activation is a slow moving workout that contains three segments: a standing segment, a floor segment and a bar segment. The standing segment included shoulder and back contractions, plies, alternating lunge side reaches, hamstrings low back bend and reaches.  The standing segment is about 10-minutes.  In most of the exercises you are lengthening and strengthening at the same time. The floor segment is the shortest segment.  It contains lying side hip reaches and leg lifts, hip socket rotations, front kicks, hip/knee blast, and groin, hip and spine stretches.  The floor segment is about 7-minutes. The last segment is the barre segment.  Sahra starts the section by working on the feet, ankles, and calves.  Also included in the segment are quad, hip and hamstring stretches.  This segment ...

March 2017 Monthly Rotation I will be doing a combination of The FIRM and Michelle Dozois with a little bit of Amy Bento Ross thrown in. I may try to stick in some more Jessica Smith workouts as well as I have a few new ones that I have yet to do. The FIRM workouts are the Pink FIRMs, Zip Trainer workouts and FIRM Express Workouts. Oh I am also planning to do a couple of Essentric workouts on Saturday as Active Recovery. For Michelle, I will be doing her Pure Strength and Pure Cardio workouts.

Mobility & Bone Strengthening for Beginners is part of the Age Reversing workout series. This DVD contains the same Instruction & How To's segments as the other Age Reversing DVD,  plus two workouts. The Mobility workout clocks in at 28:53 and it is divided into two segments. A standing segment and a floor segment.  The standing segments works all the joints in the body including the pectorals, toes, ankles and hips by moving slowing but with purpose. Miranda does clock workout and windmills for the spine and sides of the body.  The standing segment is around 18 minutes. The floor segment uses a mat and optional risers and theraband.  The floor segment stretches the groin, hips, back and hamstrings.  The floor segment is around 10 minutes. Strengthen Your Bones clocks in at 33:13.  This workout is really a full body workout that moves slowly as it hits the various parts of the body. There is a standing segment and barre segment. Shoulder...

I think Essentrics Workout was the first Essentrics DVD produce.  It features Sahra Esmonde-White as the lead. This particular DVD contains two 30-minute workouts and it is a bit more advance and a good workout to do after becoming comfortable with the beginner DVD even though this workout was produced first.  First instance, it has almost the exact same exercises as the Beginner DVD but in the workouts that are on this DVD, you are doing many more reps.  The first workout is Arms, Abs, & Waist Toner.    There is a standing segment and a floor segment.  The standing segment includes a brief warm up and a challenging arm session. It is approximately 22 minutes in length. The floor segments contains traditional abs work, uses a mat and it is a little over 9 minutes in length. Sahra intermixes toning with stretching.  The second workout is Legs, Butt & Thigh Thinner . This workout contains three segments. The standing segments is 6 minutes...

Essentrics Toning for Beginners features two 30 minute workouts that are lead by Sahra Esmonde White.  Sahra is the only one in both workouts. Both workouts contain full body toning in that you are working your arms, abs (waist) and legs. Sahra methodically teaches you the basic moves used throughout many of the Essentrics workouts.  You get little snippets of the moves used in the other workouts. In most cases, you are only doing four reps per side and Sahra switches sides quite frequently. In some spots, the workout felt like it moved very slowly. And Sahra does tell you it is a "slow paced" workout. The difference between workout 1 and workout 2 is that workout 1 features a floor segment that uses a mat and block and workout 2 features a barre segment that uses a chair.  The DVD offers the following options: 1) Instructions & How To's  (10 Minutes) 2) Floor Toning (30 Minutes) 3) Barre Toning (30 Minutes) In the Instruction/How To's, Sahra goes ...

Essentrics Barre Workouts . This workout stars Sahra Esmonde-White.  Sahra is the only cast member. I found this workout to be really similar to the other Essentrics workout that I did: Class of 2012 Workout. I did the 60 minute workout which consisted of doing each of the segments. The segments are: Standing | Abs Waist Arms & Posture | 15 minutes Floor Toning | Thigh & Quad Thinning | 9 minutes Floor Stretch | Hips, Back & Hamstrings | 7 minutes Barre Tone | Legs, Butt, Triceps Toning | 15 minutes Barre Stretch | Complete Hip, Back & Lower Body Stretch | 15 minutes Again, not a big calorie burn but lots of great stretching and toning.  In the Standing segment, the arm work was the most challenging for me. I felt it in my shoulder joints. The floor toning segment featured some of the same super challenging outer thigh work as the Class of 2012 workout. The Floor Stretch was great for opening up my hips. There were seated and lying stretch exercis...

Essentrics Class of 2012 is lead by Sahra Esmond-White.   It is a toning and rebalancing workout that uses some techinques of pilates, yoga, dance, ballet to stretch and tone the body. The workout starts with a loose warm up to get the blood flowing. You are mostly standing static and there are lots of arm and torso movements.  The song used in the warm up left me un-inspired.  I thought this was going to be a long workout if I had to listen to this tempo throughout but after the first song, I quite like the rest of the music selection. After the warm up, you went into a standing segment which is about 24 minutes in length,.  I really felt the arm work in this part of the work. I kept having to take breaks during this part and relax my arms. Sahra stops to explains as she goes through or starts a different move. This slows the workout down quite a bit. You are holding a position while she is talking about it which is a bit challenging and awkward. Usuall...