Saundra

July 2014 For July, I will start off with doing PIYO by Chalene Johnson. Then I will add workouts from Cathe's Xtrain and 2013 series. Sprinkled in I have a couple of Anna Benson Live workouts and Figure 8 Fitness featuring Jaana Kunitz. CRT 2014 is Cathe's Road Trip.

  Lower Body Sculpt and Upper Body Sculpt are DVDs eight and nine respectively in the Figure 8 Fitness System.  They both clock in at under 30 minutes and they both have a modifier to show a simpler version of the move. Lower Body Sculpt uses your own body weight to get the job done. It features two tempos - the paso doble and the jive.  In the paso doble segments your are sculpting the muscle with squats, lunges, plies, and calf raises.  Of course Jaana adds her dance flair to each move.  In the Jive segments you are getting the heart rate up with cardio. So essentially Jaana is alternating the paso doble tempo (sculpt) with the jive tempo (cardio) for a cardio leg workout.  Love this workout. Upper Body Sculpt uses a band (tubing) to add resistance for the upper body. After the warm up, Jaana takes you through a series of moves that work the five muscle groups of the upper body. The exercises are: Double Arm Rows (Single for modification)...

Broadway Body Burn is probably going to be my favorite of the bunch.  It is 25 minutes in length and features the music of Lindy and Jive Lindy is up tempo like Jive and has a lot of elements of swing. Similar to some of the other Figure 8 workouts, Jaana teaches a series of moves that you repeat.  She starts off teaching the moves half time and then she picks up the tempo.  As you move through the workout, Jaana layers the moves to create a combo. The workout is fast paste and full of energy.  Really like this one. 4 & 1/4 stars

Dance Max Drills is 45 minutes in length. In the introduction Jaana states the workout is about "maximizing core power and dancing skills". The workout includes a warm up, 5 dance drills, and a cool down. In drills you do a dance move giving it variation and you will do this  for several sets before moving on to the next move with variation. In some of the dances, Jaana starts the drill off half tempo before moving to full tempo This workout has the Set Up option but not the One On One.  I used the Set Up option to set the music louder, but the "loudness" only lasted for the first two tempos. It was as if they didn't apply that option for the whole workout.  This was disappointing because in parts of the workout, Jaana is quite a bit louder than the music. 3 & 1/2 stars

Core Cardio Blast is DVD four in the Figure 8 Fitness System. Like several of the other workouts, the DVD gives you the following menu options: Core Cardio Blast - Play workout One On One - Allow you to follow Jaana from behind Set Up -  Allows you to choose softer or louder music Core Cardio Blast clocks in at just under 52 minutes. It the advance workout in the Figure 8 Fitness system. It features the five dances of merengue, samba, salsa, pose doble and jive. The energy is higher, the impact is more intense and the drills are longer. Like "Learn: and "Burn", "Blast" has home-base moves that you come back to in each of the drills. Home-base gives you a chance to catch your breath before the next drill or moving on to the next tempo. This workout does feature a modifier that shows how to do a move with less impact and/or intensity. It is repetitive but I am liking the workouts. 3 & 3/4 stars

 Dance Plyo 1 and Dance Plyo 2 are DVDs five and six respectively and both clock in at just under 20 minutes. You can think of these workouts as Figure 8 Fitness version of a HiiT workout. Jaana states that it is based on true competition dancing. After the warm up, Jaana takes you through a series of two minute high intensity dance intervals of the five dances she mainly focuses on in the series. There is merengue, samba, salsa, paso doble and jive.  Between each dance Jaana gives you a 30 second break. The format for Dance Plyo 1 and Dance Plyo 2 is the same.  Jaana just presents different choreography from one workout to the next. The DVD does give you the option to Learn the Moves .  Jaana has a class member demonstrate each Plyo dance so you know exactly what you are doing in the workout. Also during each 30 second break, Jaana takes the opportunity to review the moves briefly for the upcoming dance. Burpees, plank twist, and even push ups do appe...

DVD 13 in the Figure 8 Fitness System is Stretch & Flex .  The workout is about 26 and 1/2 minutes long.  Jaana is working barefoot and you will need a mat for this workout. The first half of the workout is performed from the standing position.  Jaana stretches the body with fluid motion. It is very dancer like.  Expect some balance work. The rhythm for this workout is the Bolero. There is a bit of yoga, lots of figure 8 action, spine rocks, bridge rolls, rondes, and several stretches for the legs. 3 & 1/2 stars

Core Cardio Burn is DVD three in the Figure 8 Fitness System.  Jaana describes the workout as intermediate cardio.  The workout clocks in at over 46 minutes. With Core Cardio Burn, you are doing the same dances you did in Core Cardio Learn.  The dances are:  Merengue, Samba, Salsa, Paso Doble and Jive.  However, in Burn you are working just a little bit longer by doing an extra set for the drills and working with slightly more intensity. The home base moves that Jaana introduce in Learn also show up in Burn.  In Burn, Jaana dances them a little bit more. These DVDs also feature a one on one option that you can choose in which you can work directly behind Jaana. So far, I am liking these Figure 8 Fitness workouts. 3 & 3/4 stars.

Sexy Abs Extreme is disc 12 in the Figure 8 Fitness system.  It clocks in at just under 15 minutes.  And while the other abs video (Sexy Abs) is standing abs, this workout is floor abs. In this workout you are doing a lot of isolation holds which make this workout challenging.  V-sits, core rotations, plank rotations, bicycles, pilates pump, scissor kicks are all exercises that show up in this workout. This DVD does feature the music louder option.  However, the workout is not chaptered. Of the two ab workouts, I like this one more than the other. 3 & 1/2 stars

 Figure 8 Fitness DVD One Get Started is a 55 minute instructional introduction to the dance moves that you will be performing throughout the series.  You are working one on one with Jaana.  Even though this is instructional, you are getting quite a workout as you work with Jaana drilling and repeating each of the moves.  This DVD is broken down into: Play All or you can select the individual rhythms/sections which are: Intro Merengue Samba Salsa Paso Doble Jive Rhumba Bolermo You are not working out or performing the moves to music in this DVD. You are simply going by the count that Jaana gives you as she demonstrates the move.  I found the DVD very beneficial. Sexy Abs is a 10 minutes standing ab work.  All the main workouts in this system include a count down clock in the lower right counter. The workout actually starts with 9:10 on the timer. So this is a standing workout that is roughly divided into two chunks. The first chunk you...

Figure 8 Fitness is workout system that was created by champion ballroom dancer Jaana Kunitz.  Jaana Kunitz is the co-creator of the Core Rhythms system that can out a few years ago. Jaana describes Figure 8 Fitness as Fitness Meets Dance. It is based on the competitive Latin dance training. This system comes with an in depth training guide title Extreme Dance Fitness.  This guide gives a description of the workouts, breakdown 15 Signature Moves of the Figure 8, Fitness System, gives you a menu with recipes, includes the workout calendar and testemonials. The other items that come with the kit are: The 7-Day Belly Fat Meltdown guide. This is your Kick Start Guide;  A separate workout wall calendar is included. It is the same calendar that is in the Extreme Dance Fitness Guide; a tape measure and a body measurement card for before and after results.  And of course you get the workouts which come in a disc size booklet .  The workouts are: D...

Happy December Everyone. Practically every single workout in December will be new for me so I will review them in chunks. Essentially I will be doing Jillian Michael's Body Revolution workouts and Jaana Kunitz's Figure 8 Fitness workouts. As most of the Body Revolution workouts are short, I do have a few add ons I am planning to do.  I have also added my two favorite workouts from The FIRM's ZipTrainer workout system.

I snuck these workouts in these week and overall it is not a bad series. Xtreme Cardio Dance is led by Janna Kunitz of Core Rhythms. I really enjoyed Jaana in the Core Rhythm series so I was very happy to see that she had put on more dance exercise workouts. Exercise - repetition through movement (repetitiously move your muscles). This is what Jaana says exercise is. I point this out because there is a lot of repetition in these workouts, a lot of taking it from the top. Features that all the workouts have in common. There is a clock up for each section of the workout. The clock counts down for each section and then resets itself at the beginning of the next section. There is also a progress bar at the bottom of the workouts that I guess is there to show you how much of the workout you have completed. Each workouts has a modifier and the warm up is the same in all the workouts except for Sexy Sculpt. The are four cast members in each of the workouts. The Workouts Latin -is approxi...

from purchasing any more workouts for the rest of the year - minus the ones I already got on pre-order, (Cathe, Ilaria, and AmyB), I just found out that Jaana Kunitz of Core Rhythms has 4 new workouts out. Her program is called Xtreme Cardio Dance . So not a fan of the name, but I am a fan of Jaana and love her Core Rhythm set and her instruction style. The program comes with 4 workouts (3 plus a bonus). They are Latin Dance, Hip Hop, Disco and Sexy Sculpt. I am not sure how long the workout are, but you can get a mini preview of the content from the infomercial on the website. Target normally carries the Core Rhythm workouts so I am wondering if they will be carrying these. I am annoyed because the website doesn't tell you how much shipping is going to be without you putting in all of your information and hitting submit.

Short but tough!. This lower body sculpt program is 24 minutes in length and it is led by Jaana Kunitz. Jaana uses the Paso Doble rhythm to sculpt your lower body. Specifically she does a series of squats, dips, side leg raises, calf raises, lunges and back leg raises - all with a dance flair. Most of the exercises were done twice through and well before the end of the second set, I was feeling the burn. I give this workout 4 out of 5 stars.