Saundra

December is here. Wow, this year has really flown by fast. I am starting off the month with a new workout, Max 30 by Toby Massenburg. The DVD has three workouts (Max Sculpt, Max Cardio, and Max Core /Abs). I will do Max Sculpt December 1st and Max Cardio December 2nd. The rest of the month looks like: Sunday - Fitness Favorites Rebounding/Treadmill Monday - CIA Kickbox Workouts Tuesday - Fitness Favorites Cardio Sculpt Wednesday - CIA Step Workouts Thursday - Fitness Favorites Cardio Sculpt Friday - Tracie Long Fitness 30 Minute Focus Series Saturday - Rest Looking at my rotation, I have three totally brand new to me workouts. Max 30 is one. The other two are G-Force 1 and G-Force 2.

Low Impact Challenge is a 50 minute step workout. It is part of Cathe's Low Impact Series of workout. The 50 minutes breaks down as follows: Warm up Step Combo #1 Step Combo #2 Step Combo #3 Step Combo #4 All Combos Cardio Blast Stretch If you are at all familiar with Cathe's step workouts, you should have absolutely no problem in picking up the choreography and routine in this workout. In fact, I was put off by the clip and save this workout to near last because everything in the clip look so old and reused. So I was mildly surprised that I enjoyed all the combos. I think the combos flow well. My only complaint within the combos is that there is a lot of repeaters and sculpt 7s. I was enjoying the workout up until I got to blast. The blast is about 10 minutes long, and it is mostly just lots of repetitions of various leg sculpting moves. Up to this point, this workout was on its way to being a 4 or 4 1/2 star workout. I even liked the music. Next time I do this workout I ...

This workout annoyed me. F at-Burning Cardio Toning is 30 minute workout featuring Tina Smalley as the lead. It a cardio-sculpt workout that uses the resistant cord/tubing as resistance and to sculpt the muscles. It was the resistance cord that was annoying. It kept slipping from my feet. Also many of the moves are compound in nature, so while the resistance of the cord would be fine for one part of the exercise, the next part of the exercise the resistance would be too light or too heavy. So I was constantly changing the cords depending on the exercise. The pattern of the work is: Warm up Standing Sculpting Section using the Resistance Cord. Standing Cardio Section using the Resistance Cord More standing sculpting, including work for the core. Floor Sculpting using the Resistance Cord. Ending stretch using the Resistance Cord. I did enjoy the floor sculpting and ending stretch segments. If it wasn't for those two sections I would be giving this workout 2 1/2 stars instead o...

The FIRM's Fat-Burning Sculpting Ball Workout continues my week of revisiting some older workouts. It is a 30 minute workout featuring Tina Smalley as the lead. I like Tina. I have had the opportunity to take a live class with her and found her to be an awesome instructor. This workout is a kit workout. It comes or came with a 4, 6 or 8 inch sculpting ball. The workout starts with a 6 minute warm up. The first 3 minutes is without the ball and the second 3 minutes you are doing pretty much the same exercise but this time adding the ball. After the warm up, you go into the first standing sculpting set that is broken up by a series of push ups using the ball. I felt my heart rate get up on some of the standing work. A lot of the exercises are compound in nature. Before you go into a second standing sculpting set that is broken up by a series of plank moves using the ball, you have a rather extended ball cardio section. I thought this section a tad bit long or rather it became ...

So I was over at Collage Video and someone posted about revisiting old workouts. I have plenty of workouts that I would like to do again but never seem to get to. This is usually because there is something that I want to do more. I will start off adding these workouts to the rotation, but before I finalize it, these workouts usually get kick to the side. So in the spirit of revisiting old workouts, I am going to shove a few of them in - starting with The FIRM's Slim & Sculpt Stability Ball Workout . This is a 30 minute workout featuring Allie Del Rio as the lead. I believe this workout was part of the first or second group of "Gaiam" or "Pink" FIRM workouts. The workouts were not part of a "system" and they went straight to retail. What first caught my attention about this workout was the crappy set. Or crappy by FIRM standards. It look like the inside of a storage room or warehouse, very barren looking. So the workout. It starts with you s...

Last up with the Barre workouts is Karen Voight's Ballet Bodysculpt. I have been racking my brain to see if I previously did a Karen Voight workout and nothing comes to mind. So I think Ballet Bodysculpt is my first workout from her. As an instructor, I thought she was very good. Precise cuing, excellent form, comfortable demeanor are all characteristics I would use to describe her. Ballet Bodysculpt is a barre workout. It is 40 minutes in length and contains the following segments : Warm Up Chair (barre) Exercises Abdominals Matwork 1 Matwork 2 Cool Down Along with a chair, Karen uses a mat and an inflatable ball. The segments are short but tough. I thought each section moved right along making for an efficient workout. The set is an outdoor set. It is Karen's ranch in Montana. When I first saw a clip of this workout, I remember thinking "They could have cut the grass." Karen is actually working out on what looks like hardwood floor placed over the grass. The mus...

Latin Synergy is about a 50 minute workout that feature six of the rhythms in the Core Rhythms series. The workout breaks down as follows : Warm Up - about 3 1/2 minutes Merengue - ~ 8 minutes Cha Cha - ~ 7 minutes Salsa - ~ 8 minutes Samba - ~ 6 minutes Paso Doble - ~ 6 minutes Swing - 8 minutes Cool down -~ 4 1/2 minutes (Bolero Dance) Janna and Julia each lead various segments throughout the workout. I love this workout. I really like how they include a lot of the rhythms in this workout. Most of the other workouts only include two main rhythms, along with a warm up and cool down. That sometimes can get repetitive. In Latin Synergy, not all segments include sprints. The sprints occur in the Salsa and Swing rhythms. Latin Synergy is the longest Core Rhythms workout. 4 1/2 stars

Another workout in Cathe's Low Impact Series is Cardio Supersets . The main part of this workout is under 42 minutes and then there is a Bonus Step Routine that is just over 21 minutes. When I did this workout. I did the main workout in the morning and did the bonus step premix version in the evening. I really think the Bonus Step Routine is misnamed. It is really not a routine. Cathe should have simply said "Now let's grab your step, and continue with Cardio Supersets format using the step". Knowing that would have help my impression of the sections because when I started the Bonus Step Routine, I was like "this sucks, what kind of routine is this". When I realized that she was simply continuing her format and that it was a true extension of the cardio supersets format, my opinion of that segment change. Other than a couple of the exercise that I thought killed the momentum of the workout, (most notably the puddle jumps) I like this workout. I particula...

Continuing with my barre workouts is The Booty Barre featuring Tracey Mallet. This workout is on the lengthy side, clocking in at 64 minutes. The workout uses a chair as the barre, a mat and a set of light weights. Tracey and cast used 3 to 5 lbs. I used 1 and 2lb weights. The sections in the workout are : Booty Barre Warm-up (about 9 minutes) Booty Barre Sculpted Arms (about 10 minutes - uses light weights) Booty Barre Workout (about 33 minutes - uses a chair) Booty Barre Abs & Flexibility (about 13 minutes - uses a mat) I really really like the Sculpted Arms sections. I used lighter weights than Tracey and felt the burn. I think this is a section I can really workout up too. The barre workout which is the lower body workout left with me foot fatigue. You are up on your tip toes quite a bit and I think this is why I experience the fatigue. In this section, Tracey fuses the moves with a bit of jazzy dance. I like the way the camera followed Tracey as she switch from side to s...

Another workout in Cathe's Low Impact Series is Slide & Glide . Slide & Glide features a pair of discs, a band loop and a mat. The main part of the workout is broken up into two parts. Part 1 is a Cardio Segment in which you use your Slide & Glide disk the entire time. This section is about 20 minutes. After awhile, it feels like you are doing the same thing over and over. There is not a lot of variety in this part of the workout. So I started off thinking "this isn't bad" but by the end of the segment I was ready to move on. Part 2 is Muscle Conditioning Segment . In Part two, depending on the exercise, you will use your discs and/or band loop. I really enjoyed part 2. You start off with legs. This is followed by triceps, back, biceps, chest, and then abs. I like the exercises many of which used the discs and it was challenging. The discs are also used in the warm up and the cool down. The DVD contains an Introduction is which Cathe gives...

RapidFire: Result s is the second workout by Susan Chung. The total workout is 77 minutes in length - which is about 17 minutes too long for me. The great thing about the DVD is that it is well chaptered. The chapters are: Warm up Combo 1 Drill 1 Combo 2 Drill 2 Combo 3 Drill 3 Combo 4 Drill 4 Metabolic Weights Core/Abs Stretch I did the warm up Combos/drills 1 through 4 and the stretch. So my workout was about 50 minutes. And, I like what I did. Susan advertises the workout as containing Unique Kickboxing combinations. I certainly thought the punches were unique. Within each combo Susan uses the layer approach first starting with punches and then adding kicks. The drills are pretty good too. Jumping Jacks, burpees and speed skaters show up. Even so, I still like the drills. Susan combines those athletic moves with various kickbox moves. There is a modifier (Kitty) and an advance exerciser (Chris). I like the way Susan cues. She tells you what you are doing or rather she tells...

Xtend Barre Lean & Chiseled is a 55 minute "dance and Pilates inspired workout". The workout is led by Andrea Rogers. Along with Andrea, there are two cast members - one who demonstrates beginner modification moves and one who demonstrates more advance moves. The workout is broken up into the following sections: Warm Up (6 min) Upper Body (11 min) Barre (23 min) Core (10 min) Cool Down (5 min) In the Upper Body section, Andrea uses 1 lbs weights. The Barre Section is the lower body section and Andrea uses a chair in place of a ballet barre. For the Core section as Mat is used. The set has a really clean and minimalistic look. The music is good. The workout isn't necessarily set to the music but the music has more than just a background feel to me. For the most part the music sounds like something you would hear in a "hip" clothing store. This type of workout is always challenging for me; and this workout was no different. I really felt my muscles fati...

Clocking in at 56 minutes is Athletic Training . This workout uses the club step, weights, loop, tubing, and the discs in various segments. After the warm up, there is a step cardio section. I did not care for it. It is mostly repetitive drills. That was really the only part of the workout I didn't care for. The rest of it moved along quite nicely. Most of the exercises are multi-joint compound type movement. And, most are working the upper and lower body at the same time. The core section is floor work. A few of the exercises in this section also appears in Turbo Barre. Oh, there is the music - I didn't care for that either. 3 1/2 stars

So this is my second time doing Susan Chung's Rapid Fire: Kick, Box & Core Burn and I like it a lot better this time around than the first. If you do the workout in its entirety, it is very long - about 95 minutes long. I don't have a Heavy Bag. So I didn't do that part of the workout. I also skipped the Floor Core/Abs section. There is a Standing Core Ball Work section and I did do that. There is a warm up and as warm ups go, it is okay. After the warm up, comes Shadow Boxing of which there are three rounds. Susan uses light hand weights and she also uses the layer approach, adding punches as you go a long. So for instance, in the first round, she starts off with 4 punches and by the end of the combo you are doing 14 punches. You do this several times through before moving to the other side. After Shadow Boxing, is Kickboxing. There are three segments here as well. This part of the workout requires endurance in the hip flexor area of the body. I felt the kicks...

Well I can't say that barre workouts are my favorite type of workouts, so as workouts go, Turbo Barre which is from Cathe's Low Impact Series is okay. It is a bit long. I purposely schedule this workout on Sunday, a day I knew I would have enough time to complete the whole thing - the whole thing being 74 minute long. The workout is broken down as follows : Warm Up Upper/Lower Body Muscle Endurance Ballet Barre Leg Conditioning - this section is further broken down into ......thigh focus ......Glutes/Hamstring focus .......Hip & Outer thigh focus .......Calf Raises Floor work - this section is further broken down into ......Push Ups ......Tricep Dips ......Planks ......Abs Stretch So quite a bit going on and by the ending stretch, I was ready to be done. The warm up started off good but Cathe include some barre leg conditioning drills in the warm up. I actually would have preferred that she left this to that section of the work out. The warm up is almost 11 minutes. I e...

Jumpin Jive is about 42 minutes in length and features Champion Ballroom Dancer Julia Powers and Jaana Kunitz. The sound track is awesome. I absolutely love the music in the workout. In the Core Rhythm workouts the moves are choreograph tightly with the music. Along with a warm up and Rumba cool down, the two main sections of Jumpin Jive are Salsa and Swing. Jaana leads the warm up and Swing section. Julia leads the Salsa and cool down segments. In the Salsa and Swing segments, there are about 4 mini combos that you repeat several times. As you go through each iteration of the combo you are adding a little bit each time. Both the Salsa and Swing conclude with "a sprint" which are very high energy moves. The Core Rhythm DVDs are very versatile. You can follow the workout from the front or from the back. I had fun with this one. 4 1/2 stars

Afterburn (I like the name of this workout) is a 54 minute interval workout. This workout is part of Cathe's Low Impact Series. And I will go ahead and say this here. Low Impact does not mean No Impact. There is some impact and like any other workout (in my opinion) the impact can be modified to be more or less. So Afterburn is an interval workout that features 10 intervals. Each interval consist of two exercises and after you complete the two exercises you repeat them again before moving on. The DVD chapter points list them a 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B and so forth. On my worksheet I listed them once and gave you a separate column for Interval A and Interval B. Typically one of the exercise in the interval is cardio based and one is weight based. Along with dumbbells, Cathe and crew also used Dixie cups and the Slide & Glide Exercise Discs. I am working out on hardwood floors and I didn't have any problem using the discs on my flooring. Now I did have a problem doing the disc Jac...