The FIRM Express System Cycle 2 Accelerate - Thoughts

The FIRM Express System Cycle 2 Accelerate features Master Instructor Rebekah Sturkie. It also contains three 20 minute workouts and it is build as the cycle where you "Carve and FIRM muscles while blasting calories!" It uses moderate to high impact with weights in the range of 8 to 12 lbs.

The first workout I did in this cycle was Accelerate Cardio Sculpt. I like the warm up and opening sequence in this workout. One thing I have notice is that there seems to be a lot of hinging at the waste across the board in the workouts I have done so far. This seems to be a pattern with the various FIRM systems. That a certain move will appear in all the workouts throughout at particular series. I don't know if it will turn out to be this way for The FIRM Express System because I haven't done the other cycles yet.

The burst in this Cardio Sculpt are:
Burst 1 - V Hops
Burst 2 - One Leg Vertical Jump
Burst 3 - Plie power jumps with scoop arms
Burst 4 - Speed squat shuffle

There is one move that I am starting to see appear in a lot of the recent workouts that have come out and it appears here and it is the "plank push ups into a triceps kickback". There are lots of compound exercises in this workout.
The workout has some nice moves but I didn't think it flowed well in spots.
One of the things I notice is that the music seem to take a dip when the sculpting sets came on. I could barely hear it but I could hear Rebekah fine.

The second workout I did was Accelerate Cardio. The actual cardio portion was only about 16 1/2 minutes. The workout includes about 2 minutes of core and about a 1 1/2 minutes of stretching.
It's 4 burst are:
Burst 1 - Fast feet Run
Burst 2 - Power Squats/turning
Burst 3 - Shoot the Leg Through
Burst 4 - Fast X - Jumping Jacks

Overall, I really like this workout. Rebekah includes this move call "threading the leg through" that I didn't care for and she uses the same move for Burst 3 but this time "shooting the leg through" (shooting is faster than threading).
I had a good calorie burn with this workout. My bodybugg showed 182 calories burn and my heart rate monitor showed 175. I thought that was pretty good because I didn't feel that I was working that hard.
The music fits the workout pretty good. It has energy.



Last but not least is Accelerate Sculpt.
Gripe - couldn't really hear the music unless I wanted Rebekah screaming at me.
There are push ups in the warm up.
The burst are:
Burst 1 - skaters
Burst 2 - Plank Knee Pulls
Burst 3 - Alternating Power Lunge with one weight
Burst 4 - Power Side Lunge with dumbbells.

I thought the burst were just okay but I really like the sculpting. While it is compound in nature, mostly you are performing a single move and you are holding moves (mostly the lower body) in a static contraction while you perform the upper body move.
Example 1 - Holding a static lunge while doing a shoulder press.
Example 2 - Holding a squat while doing a double row.
Most of the segments follow this pattern.

Things I am noting as I go through the workouts.
It would have been nice if the FIRM had given us a music louder option.
I didn't feel that Rebekah rushed the end of any of her workouts.
The timer - Rebekah and it are not in sync, especially in the Sculpt workout. Many times the timer had two seconds remaining and Rebekah ended the burst.
While I like much of the Accelerate workouts, I do not particularly care for the various bursts that appear in them. Although, there are a couple that are cool.

Accelerate Cardio Sculpt - 3 stars
Accelerate Cardio - 4 stars
Accelerate Sculpt - 4 stars