Saundra

MMA Mashup is the bonus workout that comes with the Core de Force (CdF) workout system.  It clocks in at 25:40. MMA Mashup takes rounds from the other Core de Force workouts. So throughout this workout you are doing a mix of body weight, power, plyo and MMA training. You can think of it as a compilation style workout. There are six rounds but the rounds in MMA Mashup do not follow the same pattern throughout as they take on the characteristics of the CdF workout it was based on. All rounds are 3-minutes in length. The workout does include a warm up and cool down.  Joel and Jericho alternate teaching the different rounds. 4 stars

Core de Force Disc 2 contains 4 workouts.  Workout 1 is MMA Shred . This workout clocks in at just under 37 minutes. It is Muay Thai inspired.  It features nine 3-minute rounds, with a 30 second rest between rounds.  Like the other workouts, Joel and Jericho alternate teaching a round. Before each exercise Joel or Jericho explains what you are doing.  For MMA Shred, you do a combo for about 60-seconds and then you will do what they call a "spike" for about 30 seconds. And then you repeat both exercises before moving on. I didn't mention this before, but for most of the Core de Force workouts, you work was is called dominant side.  There are a few exercise where they will have you work both your dominant side and non-dominate side, but for the most part you are working just the dominant side. Because of the way the workouts are organize (you are almost always doing each combo twice) I would switch sides even though Joel and Jericho did not. Power Sculpt ...

Disc 1 Core de Force contains four workouts.  During each of the workouts Jericho and Joel alternating teaching a part - usually a round -of the workouts.  The first workout is MMA Speed . It contains six rounds and is around 26 minutes long.   Each round is 3-minutes in length.  There are two exercises per round that you repeat once before moving on to the next round.  In MMA Speed one of the exercises in each round is consider a "spike" that is designed to get your heart rate up. MMA Speed has a "Learn It & Work It" option that breaks down the moves. The second workout is Dynamic Strength.   This workout is your body weight functional strength workout.  The workout includes upper and lower body moves. There is also a lot of going down to floor and getting up.  There are 12 rounds that are 3 minutes each.  There are three exercises per round. Starting with round 7, Joel and Jericho make the moves harder by adding an extra c...

Les Mills On Demand is now adding longer workouts to the On Demand channel. At first most of the workouts were shorten to be just 30 minutes in length. Now for some of the workouts, you have the option of doing  a shorter 30 minute workout or the longer original version of the workout. Les Mills On Demand Body Combat #66 clocks at around the 55 minute mark. Dan and Rachael are the presenters. The different segments and approximate times are below.   The segments are: 1a.  Upper Body Warm up - 4:20 1b.  Lower Body Warmup - 4:15 2.  Combat 1 - 5:22 3.  Power Training 1 - 6:49 4.  Combat 2 - 5:54 5.  Power Training 2 - 6:08 6.  Combat 3 - 4:11 7.  Muay Thai - 4:52 8.  Power Training 3 - 7:25 9.  Conditioning Core - 2:57 10.  Cool Down 3:11 Now while the Power Training Segments are long, and they are long; Dan and Rachael do give you breaks within those training blocks. You get a break when you are ready to ...

Cardio Karate Week 1 featured only one workout. Disc 1, Cardio Circuits is led by Amy Bento Ross. The workout is approximately 63 minutes in length. Along with Amy, there are two background exercisers, Jill and Uchenna. Modifications are not shown. All the ladies do the same moves. The moves are simple and basic enough so modifications really are not needed. The workout roughly breaks down as follows : Warm up Combinations Core/Abs Cool Down While the workout does not contain a chapter menu, you can skip through the workout using your remote chapter button. The main part of the workout, the combinations contain 4 pods (mini combinations). Each pod consist of 4 moves. Amy teaches each pod using the layer approach. You learn one side by adding moves, you do all moves back to back before moving to the other side to repeat the sequence. When you have learn both sides, you do the whole pod (both sides) before moving on the the next combination. After you have learned all four pods...

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...

Cardio & Flexibility is a 30 minute workout. The first 10 minutes is the warm up, the next 10 minutes features a MMA combo, and the last 10 minutes is stretching. Mmmmmm. I don't know what to say about this workout. The workout felt very very basic to me. I was almost bored with it. The workout felt longer than what is was. It was repetitive without being interesting. Some positives of the workout are you do get a decent stretch and Guillermo cues well. The workout is also very easy to follow. Even so, I don't think I am going to be doing this workout too much in the future. I give it 2 stars out of 5 stars.

Strikezone is approximately a 60 minute workouts and features Tracey Staehle and Josef Matthews as the leads. The workout features twelve strikes - see table of contents to the left. Each strike takes you through a series of kickboxing martial arts inspired moves. In the first two strikes (warm it up and warm it down), Tracey takes you through the "UP" section and here you are warming up your upper body - mostly with punches. Josef leads the "down" section and you are warming up your lower body - mostly with kicks. Overall, I like this workout. It is a workout where you can really work on your precision. My favorite strikes are 5, 6 & 8. In strike 7, I felt that Tracey forgot to cue the first 1/2 of the combination. Other than that I didn't really notice any cuing problems. There was one strike I did bypass and that was strike 9 (Spiderwebs). The spider webs were fun but the pushups that came with them were not. Between each strike, the workout comes t...

MMA Fusion . I did not think I was going to like this workout, but I did. It is definitely different from the standard Kickbox type of workout. In fact, many of the moves I found awkward, but not in an annoying way. I found the moves to be challenging but requiring practice to do them effectively. I thought the pace of this workout to be much slower than the other two MMA workouts but I felt that this was required due to the MMA moves being performed. The pace allowed you to be more precise and to work on form. There were 3 combos followed by 3 drills. The drills weren't that intense in the cardio sense but I they did require concentration to get the most out of the moves. The combos and drills were followed by core conditioning exercises which were my favorite part of this workout; and that is saying something, because working the abs/core is not my favorite. Approximate workout time is 50 minutes. Equipment used - Mat 4 stars out of 5.

MMA Kickbox - 53 minute workout. There was a time when I wouldn't even touch a kickboxing workout; wouldn't even look at one. Now, these are some of my favorite type of workouts to do. So needless to say, I really like this workout. I liked the combos more than the drills. I think that is because the drills left me feeling awkward and fatigue. They were done mostly using the strength of one leg. For the most part during the drill I kept switching between making the move low impact and making it high impact. Now the combos were some of my favorite combos of all the combos Cathe has come up with in her various Kickbox workouts. They were easy to pick up with familiar moves that were combined in a unique way. Often when I hear instructors say that, I wonder "Really, How Unique Can it Be?"; but I thought these combos were. My only griped about the combos was that the 3rd combo was much shorter or didn't have as much content as the first two. The workout contai...

MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) Boxing is a Shock Cardio workout. This workout clocks in at 49 minutes. It consist of boxing combinations that work the upper body and cardio drill sets that workout the lower body. I really enjoyed the boxing combinations even though they were a bit on the repetitive side. There were a total of 3 boxing combinations and each combinations work one side and then the other. So really there were 6 boxing combination sets. Cathe used the tubing as a mark and guide during the lower body cardio drills. These were easy to follow but intense. During this portion I was above my targeted heart rate zone continuously. The workout concluded with an ab/core set and a stretch. In the core work, Cathe used dumbbells to increase the intensity. Funny thing was, I thought the hardest core move came when she put the dumbbells down. I like the simplicity of this workout and give it 4 star.