Tracie Long Functional Foundations - Thoughts

"Welcome to the Revolution" Tracie states at the end of each of these workouts. The Revolution being a "different" way of training or the foray into functional fitness type training.
Functional Foundations is a workout set that consist of two workouts: Core Strength and Core Cardio. They were made in 2004 and during this time it seemed like "functional fitness" was the new fitness buzz word of the day.
I thought and I think I was hoping that functional fitness was a passing fad but no, it is still around today - not always called functional fitness but certainly with the elements of functional fitness.
Well these two workouts are led by Tracie Long and definitely as far a functional fitness home DVDs workouts go, Tracie is one of the leaders, and she is superb in these workouts as well.

Core Strength is a 50 minute workouts. It uses a stability ball, mat, and various weighted dumbbells. This is a strength, balance, and posture workout. There is almost no cardio. Usually with functional fitness workouts, I usually feel the cardio on some of the exercises, but there was almost no cardio effect for me with this workout. There is some jumping but the jumps are done in a very control manner, which for me, eliminated the cardio effect.
Some of the exercises you are doing in Core Strength are:
Thread The Needle, X on the Ball, A-Frame, Crocodile Rock
.
Core Cardio is also approximately 50 minutes in length. It uses a step, band loop, and a medicine ball. This workout didn't have as much cardio as I would have like. The cardio segments are very short. Along with cardio segments, there seemed to be a lot lower body specific exercises - some used the band. I remember thinking at one point I was doing a lower body workout because there are a lot of lunge and squat variations being done throughout.
You are also doing a lot of jumping and the medicine ball is used in several combinations for added intensity.
Some of the exercises in Core Cardio are:
Rock The Baby, Side Lunge with Jumps, Side Squats & Traverse Lunges, Mountain Climbers.

Both of these workouts were filmed on the U.S.S Yorktown in Charleston South Carolina. So as far as sets go, it is pretty unique. The music is typical Tracie and the exercises are choreograph precisely with the music. Each workout comes on its own individual DVD and both DVDs are well chaptered. Love that.

Core Strength - 3 1/2 stars
Core Cardio - 3 stars