Saundra

January 2011 Monthly Rotation will feature a morning rotation and an afternoon rotation. Morning rotation: Sunday - Tracie Long Longevity workouts Monday - Amy Bento Hi Lo workouts Tuesday - Cathe sculpting emphasis strength Wednesday - Amy Bento Step Thursday - Cathe sculpting emphasis endurance Friday - Amy Bento Kickboxing Saturday - Rest Evening rotation : Sunday - Tracie Long Focus Workouts Monday - FIRM Express Cardio Sculpt Tuesday - Cardio Coach Treadmill Wednesday - FIRM Express Cardio Thursday - Victoria Johnson Dance Workouts Friday - FIRM Express Sculpt Saturday - Rest I know it looks like a lot but the longest evening workout is 45 minutes and that is one of the cardio coach workouts. All the FIRM workouts are 20 minutes and the dance and Focus workouts are 30 minutes each. I will be doing some form of sculpting back to back but much of the sculpting in the FIRM workouts are paired with cardio burst. In looking ahead, I think my most challenging day of workouts will co

2010 What can I say about 2010. The year flew by for me. I had a job change. I didn't make much progress in the weight loss front but other things came together for me. I bought way too many workouts. I hurt my foot and then my knee. I missed my yearly FIRM Believer's trip but I got to go to the Cathe Road Trip. I took a trip out to Denver Colorodo (first time I did that). I had Thanksgiving at my house for the first time in like a Gazillion years. I made it to New York for my annual Christmas day shopping and decided that this was going to be the last year I do New York in December (too cold, too crowded). And I only over spent my Holiday budget this year by $207. So all in all, it was a good if not relatively uneventful year. On the Fitness Front Favorites My Favorite Workout for 2010: Tracey Staehle's Cardio Kickbox Challenge 2nd runner up: Kelly Coffey-Meyer Circuit Burn 3rd runner up: Amy Bento Advance Step Challenge 4 4th runner up: Turbo Fire 45 EZ Workout 5th runne

Cardio Dance featuring Paula Abdul is about a 45 minute dance and sculpting workout. The first 27 minutes or so is the dance and the last 12 minutes or so is sculpting mostly for the legs follow by some stretching. The steps are bit more complicated in this workout than Paula's previous workout and even other dance workouts I have. I do think Paula did a good job of breaking down the steps. She teaches the workout similarly to her previous workout in that she teaches you the steps at half time and then gradually picks up the pace until you are at full tempo. The routine is really just one routine broken down into three parts. Each part has two sub parts. Paula layers the parts until you get to the full routine which I thought was a bit short. I would have like to see more dance content. What is there is fun and funky (kind of hip), including the warm up. 3 stars

Cardio Pump Hi/Lo is another workout I have had for awhile and I that I just got around to doing. It features classic Amy Bento Hi/Lo followed by classic Amy Bento sculpting. . The Hi/Lo portion is sadly too short - only about 13 or 14 minutes or so. It is athletic in nature and I didn't find the steps difficult to pick up at all. I want to say there are two combinations but I really felt there was one combination and then some add-on moves to that. . The sculpting portion is about 20 minutes and it features lots of equipment - club step, tubing, weights, stability ball and mat. The sculpting portion has some unique and traditional exercises. . The workout flew by. Amy is full of energy and the music is motivating. There is a lot of counting down the reps - something that I don't always like. So at times I found this annoying but other than that I love the workout especially the Hi/Lo portion. . The whole workout clocks in around 46 minutes. 4 stars

Get Up and Dance ! is an aerobic dance workout. The workout is roughly 50 minutes in length and features Paula Abdul, two assistant instructors and a huge cast of background dancers. The set is a stage - looks like something you would find in a club atmosphere and the music is mostly by Paula. There are three dance combinations. Within each combination, there are three dance moves that Paula breaks down for you in a slow count tempo. She then picks up the tempo the more you do the move until you are doing the dance move at full speed. Paula then either layers on to what you have already learned or goes on to teach you the next step in the combo. After learning all the steps you run through the combo at full speed. After learning all three combos, you run through the whole routine for several passes at full tempo. In between the end of the combos and the cool down, there is a bit of comedy where the camera crew comes out to do a routine for Paula. I could have done without this

Tracy Anderson's Beginner Dance Cardio is approximately 45 minutes in length, maybe a little shorter and it features a warm up and four dance combinations but no cool down. The warm up is about 5 minutes and each combinations is between 9 and 10 minutes. The workout itself is different. The warm up threw me for a bit because Tracy does not cue through it. At first I thought maybe I hit a music only option (which the DVD does not have) but no - she introduces the warm up and then you are basically just following what she is doing on the screen. It is not complicated and I have to say for the most part the camera did a decent job with the camera angles in the warm up and in the whole video. Either we have full body shots or we have camera shots showing what the feet are doing. So no complaints there. Tracy leads the warm up and the first combinations and then she has her master instructors/trainers each lead a combination; and apparently, we (including Tracy and her trainers)

Cardio Pump Step is another workout that I have had for awhile and I am just now getting around to doing it. It is a 49 minute workout that features two step combos and a sculpting weight segment. The step portion includes a warm up and a cool down and the step combinations are classic Amy Bento - fun, athletic and full of energy. Amy does not have a break down for the combinations but I found them easy to pick. The step portion is about 22 minutes long. The second part of the workout is the sculpting section. This section uses an 8 inch step height, a weighted barbell, and dumbbells to sculpt the body. Amy works each muscle group except shoulders. For the legs, Amy does leg press, lunges, and dead lifts. Push ups work the chest. Barbell rows work the back. Curls, hammer curls and cross body curls work the biceps. Dips and french press work the triceps. There is plank work that works the core. I like this workout - especially the step section, but the sculpting section is pre

Target Toning Zero-in-Ten is a FIRM workout(s) and it is led by Rebekah Sturkie and Emily Welsh. It consist of five 10-minute workouts. The workouts are Lean Legs (Rebekah), Fearless Arms (Rebekah), Bikini Body Blaze (Emily), ABS-olute Core (Rebekah) and Bun Burn (Emily). Each of the 10 minutes consist of a brief warm up in the beginning and a cool down/stretch at the end. Rebekah uses weights in her three workouts and her three workouts are interval based (cardio burst and strength training). The workouts include the standards interval style exercises (including the burpee - appears in Abs-solute Core). Emily does not use weights in her workouts. Bikini Body Blaze is basically a multi-level cardio workouts. By multi-level, Emily starts at level one (easiest) and goes up to level three (hardest) by adding more intense moves. Bun Burn works the lower body using your own body resistance. You can use each 10 minute workout on its own or you can choose to do all 5 sections in the P

A-Team Boot Camp is a 60 minute plus circuit style workout. It consist of 6 circuits or drills as Amy calls them. Each drill is broken down into 4 parts that include 2 minutes of cardio, 1 minute of lower body, 1 minute of upper body and 1 minute of core. The 2 minutes of cardio in some of the drills is very very long. That is because in some of the drills, you are doing the same move for the whole two minute. Over kill. I actually got bored a couple of times wondering when this was going to be over. A couple of the cardio drills do have more variety and thus were more fun to do. The rest of the workout uses a lot of equipment. Weights (dumbbells and barbell), stability ball, tubing and the step bench are all used to added intensity to the lower body, upper body and core exercises. During the lower body sets, where you work each leg separately, the minute is further broken down to doing 30 seconds on each leg. Amy does give you a lot of rest between each drill and a couple of

CIA 2903 Stepping Up with Seasun Zieger is approximately a 55 minute step workout. It does contain an additional core section but I did not do that portion of the workout. . I believe this workout came out in the Spring of 2009. I bought the workout when it came out. I even think I pre-ordered it, but I haven't gotten around to doing the whole workout until this year. . I had actually scheduled the workout in my rotation several times but always chose something else because I didn't want to put in the time it would was probably going to take me to learn the combinations. I think in 2009, I got as far as learning the warm up and maybe part of the first combination. . So in October of this year, when I pull the workout back out I was really starting from scratch. This was a difficult step workout to master. By far, out of all my step workouts, this was the most challenging. The step workout contains a warm up, 3 step combinations and a cool down. Even the warm up and cool down h

Dance with Julianne: Just Dance is approximately 45 minutes in length and features ex Dancing with the Stars Professional Dancer Julianne Hough. The DVD has a tutorial that breaks down the moves. There are four moves that Julianne breaks down. I will tell you that I didn't do the tutorial until after I did the workout; and only then because I was checking out what features were on the DVD. The workout contains a warm up, three dance combinations and a cool down. The warm up is dance based. Meaning it contains, head rolls, shoulder rolls, ribcage and hip isolation moves as well as dynamic stretching. The combinations are Work It, Flaunt It and Pump It. The dances are really contemporary with a leaning towards jazz. I found the routines really easy to pick up. Julianne breaks down each move before she adds complexity to it and even the complexity isn't that complex. However the workout does have a modifier who modifies approximately 6 of the moves and that includes some of the s

Weighted Cardio Gloves Workout is a FIRM 20 minute DVD that comes with a pair of 1lb weighted gloves. Rebekah Sturkie is the instructor. The weighted gloves felt big on my hands and my hands aren't small. When I first saw that this kit was coming out, I thought the workout was going to be primarily kickboxing, but it is not. There is actually very little kickboxing in the workout. Instead, Weighted Cardio Gloves is a power cardio (athletic style) workout. It features traditional high impact athletic style moves that Rebekah first teaches the low impact version and then she bumps it up to high intensity. I had a good little sweat going. You are jogging, hopping, jacking, lunging, squatting, and jumping throughout the whole workout. I thought it was a good solid 20 minute cardio workout and I happy to report that through all that, no BURPEES were included and I was waiting for them to show up. She does have a set of planks at the end, but they were done as a set of plank crunches an

The DVD, Cardio Knockout , actually contains three workouts. One workout features Michael Olajide and is called Aerobox Workout. The second workout, the one I did, is named Kickboxing workout and it features Keith Cook and Keli Roberts. The third workout is Tai Chi and it is led by Keli Roberts and Keith Cooke. Of course the main star of the workout is Kathy Smith. It is her workout. The Kickboxing Workout is approximately 50 minutes in length. It features what I thought a rather long warm up and then drill style kickboxing. Even though Kathy called them combos, I really didn't think of them as combos. There are two sets at the end of the Kickboxing segment that I would call combo. One is led by Keli Roberts and the other by Keith Cooke. They are really brief though. After the kickboxing portion, there is a leg conditioning segment where you work the Buns and Thighs. A stretch and cool down follows and then ab and back work. I thought the sequence of this was odd. I guess Kat

It seems that many retail stores are reducing their fitness selection to just a few DVDs or a few brands of DVDs or retail stores are only stocking their shelves with workouts DVDs just prior to a New Year beginning. It also seems like everyday there is another website popping up that sells exercise videos. I think the latter is great for the buyer. There are so many choices available and the consumer can really shop around for great deals. Also of benefit is the information and services that one can get from these sites. Some sites offer forums, some video clips of the workouts, and some a review page. I personally like the sites where I can see a video clip. The following is a list of sites that I know about and/or shop at. www.amazon.com - reviews, some video footage, www.collagevideo.com - reviews, star rating, video clips, forum, www.totalfitnessdvds.com - video clips www.advancedworkouts.com - blog www.fitnessorganica.com - video clips, outside of mainstream, small &

Not Your Momma's Step . I have had this workout for a long time, probably going on two years now. I think I tried or had the workout schedule to do back in the spring but I got sick. This is a workout that you know you will like it once you get the choreography down, but having the patience to learn the choreography is the key. I don't want to say the moves are difficult but they are dance based with a lot of flair and directional changes. So I really had to watch Patrick execute the moves as well as listen to what he was saying. This annoyed me once because Patrick demonstrated a move - which was a "cross to the front (towards the TV) and then a cross to the back (towards the step) move". Later he calls the move a grapevine. So I am thinking, "why didn't you just call it a grapevine to begin with?" Although when he first executed it, it didn't look like a grapevine to me. Patrick does do a decent job of cuing the move once you know what