Cathe Pyramid Lower and Upper Body - Review

Pyramid lower & upper body is one of my favorite Cathe Strength tapes. They are no nonsense to the point workouts and if you are using the right weights they are tough. These two workouts come on one DVD. These two workouts use the full pyramid system in which you will:

- start with your lightest weight and do 12 reps
- for the next set you will increase your weight and decrease your reps to 10
- the third set has you increasing your weight again and decreasing your reps to 8
- the fourth set you repeat what you did in set 2
- the fifth set you repeat what you did in set 1
That is 5 sets!!

Pyramid Lower Body is 49.5 minutes in length and it is broken up into two sections. The standing sections uses the pyramid system and the floor section uses the stability as a prop to increase intensity. During the standing section you will do the following exercises: leg press, static lunge, squats, plie squats, and dead lifts. The floor sections focuses a lot on the hamstrings, inner and outer thigh. Much of the floor work is done utilizing the stability ball.

Pyramid Upper Body is 56.5 minutes in length. After the warm up, the exercise are presented in the following order:

• - chest (flys and chest press done back to back)
• - back (overhead pullovers and double arm rows done back to back)
• - shoulders (triset, rear delt flys, lateral raises and front raises) I'd about died during this set
• - triceps (kickbacks and french press done back to back) This was tricky because you were changing weights between the kickback and french press sections
• - biceps (hammer and traditional curls done back to back) another one where I'd about died.

Most of the exercises are done via single count. As you go up in weight, Cathe changes the count to a 2-2 count that slows the rep count down. When you start decreasing your weight again, you go back to doing a single count. Quite frankly, I found the single count to be easier to do than the 2-2 count. Mostly I think because the set was over faster.

Pyramid Upper Body concludes with an abdominal workout using the stability ball.

I give both of these workouts 5 out of 5 stars.