Michelle Dozois Peak 10 Cardio Strength - Thoughts
59 minutes in length, Peak 10 Cardio Strength is a cardio sculpt workout.This workout follows the same format at Peak 10 Cardio Interval Burn in that you have a series (five) blocks. In this workout they are called Peak Training Blocks. Each block consist of 2 rounds that are about 5 minutes each.
So you have:
Base camp - rest/recovery
Ascent - sculpting sets. Michelle has two pair of dumbbells (light & heavy).
Climb - cardio
Peak - jumps (each Peak featured some sort of jumping move).
My complaint with this workout is that there is really no warm up. Michelle incorporates the warm up in the First Training Block. Quoting her, she states "the warm up is a workout". I didn't like this at all. She uses the Base camp in this block to introduce her crew and then she grabs weights and you are into the Ascent phase doing squats and functional fitness sculpting.
Now, the first training block does not include a Peak phase because she states "this is the warm up" and she did not do a Peak Level in the first training block.
However it wasn't the Peak phase that concern me, it was the Ascent phase. I felt there needed to be a warm up to do some of the sculpting moves she had us do with the dumbbells.
Now with that aside, the sculpting sets (Ascent Level) are pretty good. They are mostly compound in nature with a great bit of functional fitness thrown in. The cardio sets (Climb Level) are athletic in nature with a combination of power moves, kickboxing moves and explosive moves. Burpees, mountains climbers, knee pulls, quarter jumps, ski hops are just some of the moves used in the Climb level. The jumping sets (Peak Level) - you are jumping. Michelle doesn't call them this but seriously, in this workout this level can be renamed to that because that is all you are doing -pogo jumps, ski jumps etc.
The workout does conclude with a cool down and stretch.
I don't like this workout as much as I like Cardio Interval Burn. I will say that after I got over the no warm up and all the jumping in the Peak level, I think it is a better than solid workout.
3 1/2 stars
Hi Saundra
ReplyDeleteFirstly I'd like to say I think your blog is brilliant. I live in Northern Ireland and just discovered Collage about 6 months ago. In the UK we don't have anything like the number of fitness pros you have across the pond so I'm playing catch-up with all the brilliant dvds available to you.
To comment on your thoughts on Michelle's Cardio Strength I do agree about the lack of warm-up but I compensate by using very light weights (1.5kg) in the first part of the first block then move on to 3kg in the second part and I think this is an excellent advanced work-out with no dread factor for me. I now have quite a collection of dvds ranging from Patrick Goudeau's Lean Hot Body (o my gosh!!) through Paul Katami (4 x 4 bootcamp & burn & Build) to several Cathe, Jari, Amy Bento, Bob Harper, The Firm - you've commented on most of them. If I had to choose just 2 out of all of these I would pick Michelles Peak Cardio & Cardio Strength mainly because they get the job done in an hour, I burn quite a few calories (more than with Cathe and Jari actually, which I quite dread lol) and the time flies.
Once again thanks for your blog I'm so impressed with the amount of detail you give.
Sylvia
Hi Sylvia.
ReplyDeleteThank you
I have several Patrick workouts. I like him a lot.
I also have a couple of Paul Katami workouts that I have yet to do. So sometime this year, I need to take them off the shelf and do them.
With Michelle workouts, I just recently went through all of her Peak Fit Challenge workouts. What I did when I got to the Cardio Strength workouts is that the first 1/2 of the block I used no weights and then second 1/2 I used light weights. It still annoys me, but I won't let it stop me from doing the workout.