The FIRM Burn & Shape - Review

Burn & Shape is a 40 minute cardio sculpt workout led by Emily Welsh. It uses the same plain, uninspiring and disappointing set as Total Body Time-Crunch. This is another workout that I haven't done in quite some time.

I would consider this workout to be low intermediate in terms of intensity but you do need to pay attention because the choreography is at the medium intermediate level in terms of complexity and it moves fast.

I liked the moves in this workout. The choreography, especially in the cardio sets, has attitude. There is a dance feel to the choreography. My only beef was that the steps in the later combinations tended to repeat themselves a lot.

The sculpting sets were okay. They were compound in nature so choosing an appropriate weight

became the challenge there.

Emily is fun and encouraging. Equipment used is dumbbells.

I went and found an old review that I did of this workout. Here is what I said on 2/27/2008.

"

This is a workout that you need to be mentally present as well physically. It contains a lot of intricate compounded moves in both the cardio and sculpting sections. Emily does not spend a lot of time breaking down the workout. I personally like this because it keeps me engaged in the exercise that she is demonstrating. Because of that, it does require more time to learn the workout and it may take you a few time through to really get all the combinations down. It took me three times before I really felt comfortable with workout

My one complaint would be the sculpting section. Emily combines multiple exercises right after one another or rather in combination using the same weight. One such exercise has you combining double arms rows with tricep kickbacks. Tricep kickback require a much lighter weight than double arm rows. So if I used the lighter kickback weight, I feel nothing when doing the double arm row, if I go with a heavier weight to focus on the double arm row, I can barely do the kickback. And going with a mid-weight is no better. It's as if I can work only one of the exercises to its true limit. Other than that, love this workout."

Then I gave the workout 4 stars. Today I would give it 3 1/2 stars.