Saundra

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2010 is almost upon us. I am about to embark on a 3 1/2 month fitness rotation that will mostly featured the STS Weight Workouts and the Shock Cardio workouts. Normally I try to schedule my rotation for 1 month at a time only. This is mostly because I have so many workouts and I buy so many workouts, so I always have new workout to do. For 2010, I am going to try to limit my purchases of new workouts. I've organized the cardio portion of the rotation myself. For, the STS weights portion, I am taking that from Cathe's 3 1/2 month STS sample workout. Cathe is suppose to be coming out with a rotation that combines both but it is December 31 and she has yet to do so or post it. I wanted to compare what I came up with to the suggestion she would come up with. I officially start this 3 1/2 month rotation January 3rd and will finish up April 16th. Wow, that is such a long time.

Last workout for 2009 was Tracie Long's Back Up , the fourth workout from the Longevity series. Tracie keeps it consistent in that the workout is also right around the 50 minute mark, 52 minutes to be exact. Like Staying Power this too is mostly a interval style workout. The individual segments in this workout were long and the moves repeated a lot. The cardio segments were functional fitness/sports drill related (i.e soccer, tennis, baseball). The sculpting segments were compound in nature with many exercises working the small muscle groups. Tracie used light, medium and heavy weights for sculpting and she used the medicine ball in the cardio segments. Like the other three workouts, this workout also includes push ups and a core/abs segment. Overall I like this workout. I did think Tracie's face appeared out of focus almost throughout the whole workout. just very fuzzy. The music was good and fit the exercise that Tracie was performing. 3 1/2 out of 5 stars

Step Forward is a 50 minute plus step workout and it is Volume 3 in the Longevity series that features Tracie Long. Mmmmmm. Where do I start? My first impression is that found it highly repetitious and boring. The step patterns/combinations were very basic. So there was no learning curve at all. (this is not a negative) Tracie takes you through 5 step combinations with the step in the horizontal position and 3 step combinations with the step in the vertical position. As she went through each combination, she showed you varying levels that you could use. Step Forward really works the legs. There were several times throughout the workout I felt my legs fatigue. This is mostly a result of doing the moves over and over again which for me translated into boredom. Within the combinations, there were moves in the workout that I liked, but after the 10th time doing them, I was ready to move on. The last 10 minute of the workout, Tracie took you to the floor for tricep dips, pus...

Coming in at around 52 minutes, Staying Power , the second workout from Tracie Long's Longevity series is an interval style workout. That is the first 30 minutes, after the warm up, is interval style. Then Tracie takes you to the floor for the last 15 minutes of the workout. This workout reminded me of TLT (Tracie Long Training) workouts. Although, I will say it didn't have as much functional fitness exercises as the previous series. This interval workout alternated cardio sets with sculpting sets. Many of the cardio sets used a medicine ball and the sculpting sets used light to medium weights. The only time you really needed to grab a heavy weight was during the one arm row exercise. My least favorite sections was the floor work section. This section was loosely divided into three sections, push ups/core, hips and stretch. In the push up section, Tracie takes you through a series of push up/plank exercises. The hip section consisted of doing long lever side hip raises...

Finally, we have new workouts and a new series from Tracie Long. The series is called Longevity and the first workout in the series is called Defining Shape . Defining Shape is a 50 minute sculpting/weight and balance workout. I say balance because there were lots of balance moves used in this workout. The sculpting moves are a cross between traditional exercises and functional fitness exercises. Everything flowed really well and the exercise were completed right in tune with the music. The workout itself moved fast. Before I knew it, Tracie was saying let's stretch. Before that, you had a floor section in which you work the lower body doing traditional leg floor work. Prior to going down to the floor, you had as series of standing toning sections that work the legs (i.e. squats, dead lifts and lunges) and upper body (i.e shoulder presses, bicep curls, rows etc). There were also push ups. Tracie is phenomenal. She really has to be one of the top 5 video lead instructors out ...

I like dance workouts and own quite a few. One of the things I notice about dance workouts is that they can be highly repetitive and many "take it from the top" way too much. Dance with Julianne Cardio ballroom , a 43 minute workout was no different. And while I view the repetition in a negative context, I don't think this workout itself if bad. Julianne is very good. Her enthusiasm (some might say over the top) boils over and spills onto the screen. I think she makes if fun. You can tell she is really working hard. She also does mirroring cuing which is a big plus. The workout is broken down into a warm up, 3 combos, and a cool down. The combos feature dances of the cha cha, jive, and paso. I liked all three dances very much and the music that Julianne selected is upbeat and fits perfectly with each dance. I think my favorite dance is the paso. The only negative that I have for this workout is that it is repetitive. 3 1/2 out of 5 stars