Saundra

So I went back through my blog post to see what were some of my favorite and least favorite workouts for 2014. I have compiled a list. Favorite 2014 Workouts Zumba Max  Susan Chung Rapid Fire 4 Sweat Patrick Goudeau Body Weight Blast Essentrics Barre   Stephanie Vittorino Ultimate BodyShaper Donna Flagg Lastics Big Honorable Mention: Zumba Core Craze Zumba Glute Pursuit Patrick Goudeau Turn Up and Slimdown Kelly Coffey Meyer Muscle Up Lift 2B Fit Kelly Coffey Meyer Home Gym Intervals   Least Favorite Amy Dixon Breathless Body Tracie Long Stronger Longer Volume One P90X Core Synergistics Other Least: Zumba Gold Toning P90X Legs & Back

Athletic Cardio Workout is workout 1 on Athletic Conditioning .   This workout is part of Kelly's Young Adult Series. Workout 1 is approximately 36 minutes.  Kelly starts with a 5 minute warm up. After the warm up, Kelly takes you through 22 one minute exercises.  And yes, the minute got long on certain exercises.  The rest between each exercise varied to me. Maybe it was around 30 seconds. In the workout, Kelly really acts as the trainer. She would start the exercise and then stop on certain exercises to check out the cast members.  There are five additional cast members all who are teenagers or young adults. Kelly uses an announcer to count you into each exercise "Get Ready in four, three, two, one". The workout is set to a pretty good soundtrack. Equipment: dumbbell and mat. I like this workout 3 & 3/4 stars

Full Body Workout Volume 2 is part of Miranda Esmonde White's Vintage Collection which includes this workout and three 30 minute express workouts. In Full Body Workout Volume 2, Miranda start you off with a brisk warm up set to pretty good music.  The set is an atrium with a man made pond that has a water fall in the background. So as sets go, it is different. After the warm up which is about 4 minutes, you go into a series of deep slow tai chi inspired body stretches, stretching one side of the body and then the other. Standing upper body and lower body strength moves follow. The standing portion is approximately 25 minutes. The next segment is floor work. This segment primarily workouts the outer hips (tough) and the abdominals.  Miranda adds stretches for the spine, groin, hip and hamstrings as she moves through this segment. The floor work is around 22 minutes long.  The workout conclude with a standing stretch about 3 minutes long. Miranda is chatty and she doesn'

Plyo HiiT One is 27 minutes in length.  After a 5 minute warm up, Cathe leads you through a series of 14 exercise combinations before taking you into a 4 minute stretch. The workout builds as you move through. Cathe adjust the rest period depending on the exercise. You are doing at least two rounds of each exercise before you move to the next exercise. Too many power 7s is how I characterize Plyo HiiT Two .  It seemed as if every third exercise we were doing power 7s. This workout uses the step and a dumbbell and it is also 27 minutes. There are 13 exercises in between the warm up and cool down. Expect impact and lots of jumping. Each workout features its own introduction.  Each workout has 7 premixes associated with it. Plyo HiiT One - 3 & 1/2 stars Plyo HiiT Two - 3 & 1/4 stars

Lift It HiiT It Legs is a 40 minute lower body focused workout. Cathe combines strength with cardio.   Each set starts with a heavy weight leg exercise and then this is followed by an explosive cardio exercise.  The cardio exercise mimics the strength exercise. I really like this workout. There are 24 exercises and I thought the combination of strength and cardio exercises complimented each other and flowed really well until we got to the Woodchop Side lunge exercise. This exercise seemed out of place to me in this workout. This was your strength exercise but the tempo was fast.  The following cardio exercise was  Weighted Explosive Side Lunges.  It felt as if there were two cardio exercises back to back instead of a strength and cardio. The workout got back on track with the remaining exercises.  There are eight premixes in the workout - ranging from 22 minutes to 53 minutes. The only equipment used are dumbbells. 4 stars

Low Impact Hiit One is a 28 minute workout.  It uses a mat and Dixie cups.  Cathe uses the mat as a marker.  You are shuffling around the mat, leaping across  the mat, straddling the mat. This is suppose to be a low impact workout and Cathe reminds you of that by telling you that she "is lifting, not jumping". Generally speaking you are doing two sets of each exercise. The reps and rest vary. There are seven premixes for Low Impact HiiT One ranging from approximately 27 minutes to approximately 50 minutes. 3 & 1/2 stars Low Impact HiiT Two is a 29 minute workout.  The majority of the exercises use a dumbbell.  Again you are doing most exercises for two sets.  In this workout, you are usually doing the first set with the right emphasis and the second set emphasizing or leading with the left. Cathe explains briefly each exercise before she does it. I really like the soundtrack Cathe used for this workout. The music made the workout fun - easy to get into the e

Lift It Hit It Chest, Triceps & Shoulders clocks in at 39 and 1/2 minutes. In between the warm up and cool down, Cathe works the chest, shoulders and then the triceps. This workout followed the same pattern as the Back, Biceps and Shoulders workout. You will do a heavy weight exercise for three sets and then follow with a finisher exercise. For the chest portion of the workout, the finisher exercise are push ups.  So you are doing three sets of push ups because there are three heavy weight chest exercises. I thought the tempo of the shoulder exercise was way too fast. It seemed as if Cathe was speeding through the exercises in this segment.  It felt more endurance like than strength based. For the shoulders, there are two super sets and each super set is followed by a finisher. Triceps follow the shoulders.  There are four exercises, two heavy sets and 2 finishers. I felt this workout the next day.  If fact I am still feeling it. I did this workout on Wednesday and t

Clocking in at over 52 minutes Lift It Hit It Back, Biceps & Shoulders is the longest workout in the Ripped With HiiT workout series by Cathe. This workout starts of with a brief warm up.  After the warm up Cathe does  six exercises for the back.  This is followed by four exercise for the rear shoulders.  After shoulder work, there are six exercises for the biceps.  A stretch concludes the workout. In each of the segments, Cathe stars with a heavy weight exercise - usually twelve reps for three sets. She immediately follows this with a "finisher" exercise which uses lighter weight but higher reps. Dumbbells, a barbell, band, mat and step are used in this workout.  The step is only used as a bench. There are 11 premixes on this DVD ranging in time from 19:46 to 63:34. This was a nice workout. 3 & 1/2 stars

This is my first Classical Stretch Workout and I have to say I found it quite challenging in some areas. Full Body Workout Volume 1 is a 55 minute workout led by Miranda Esmonde-White.  The workout starts with about a 5 minute introduction to the concept of Classical Stretch.  The concept involves strengthening (holding) and elongation (lengthening) of the muscles. The workout does include a warm up.  This is followed by a standing series in which you do some intense upper body work (well I found it intense - I had to take breaks) and posture work.  The next section is barre workout.  Here you focus on the butt and legs.  Barre work is followed by floor work.  The floor work segment focuses on abdominal, hips and groin areas. The workout is a combination of toning (using your own body weight) and stretching (about 50% of the workout is stretching). The workout moves slow.  This is not a big calorie burn workout but I certainly felt the burn with some of the exercises. The wor

HiiT Circuit Lower Body is part of Cathe's Ripped with HiiT series.  This workout is just under 47 minutes in length and uses a step and heavy dumbbells and a barbell to get the job done. This workout alternates high intensity cardio training with high intensity weight sculpting for the legs.  The pattern varies slightly in that sometimes you might do two cardio exercises and then two weight exercises or one cardio move followed by one strength move. Throughout the workout, Cathe varies the tempo, rhythm, and rep count. The workout flows well but a lot of the exercises are very familiar. If you do a lot of Cathe workouts you will be able to just jump right in to this one. The music is a fast paced up beat tempo, but you are not necessarily working out to the music. There are 8 premixes included on this DVD. The workout includes subtitles that pop up and tell you which weight Cathe is using. This was a decent lower body workout. 3 & 1/2 stars

Ripped With HiiT is Cathe latest workout series.  The series contains a total of 9 workouts plus two bonus ab workouts.  The concept with this series is that Cathe is combining heavy weights with high intensity interval training. HiiT Circuit Upper Body is the first workout I did in the series.  It clocks in at just over 46 minutes.  While the title of the workout is HiiT Circuit Upper Body, I felt that  it was more total body focus than just upper body as most of the upper body exercises incorporated legs. There are 8 rounds.  Each round features a compound upper lower body exercise and a high impact cardio blast.  There are some isolation upper body exercises included as well. There are 8 premixes of various length. The DVD is very well chapter. The music is decent. Sometimes you are working to the beat of the music and at other times you are not. The set is a nighttime setting of a metropolitan city. I like HiiT Circuit Upper Body. 4 stars

FitPrime & Kickbutt Parts presents Killer Weights & Killer Cardio - two compilations workouts taken from WHFN (Women's Health & Fitness Workout) FitPrime & Kickbutt workouts.  The WHFN workouts focused on fusion and non-dominant (N/D) side training.  Non-dominant is when you work your weaker side first. Killer Weights is comprised of several of the sculpting sets in the WHFN workouts . It clocks in at 55 minutes. Killer Weights DVD Menu : Full Workout Warm-Up Pilates-Abs/Core N/D-Weights D- Weights Upper Body N/D -Weights Cardio D-Weights Upper Body Pilates-Legs Yoga Killer Cardio is comprised of the cardio and four-limb segments.  It clocks in at around 52 minutes.  Most of the cardio is kickboxing inspired and low impact.  There are two tall box climb segments. Killer Cardio DVD Menu: Full Workout Warm-Up Cardio #1 Cardio #2 Stretch Pilates-Core Yoga Cool-Down While I have done all of the FitPrime and Kickbutt workouts, I have not

Slim Sculpting is one of Kelly fall 2014 workouts. The DVD offers the following menu options: Introduction Workout One Workout Two Premixes Credits Workout One and Workout Two share the same warm up but they each have their own cool down stretch. This is a Kettlebell workout that uses a Tabata format.  There are four rounds for each exercise. I believe we were doing each exercise for 30 seconds with a 15 second rest. There was not a clock down count which was a bummer. I did both workouts.  In workout two there is one move called the Plank Hold. Two of the cast members do this move with there hands on the floor. Kelly and another cast members hold there plank holding onto the kettlebell. I tried Kelly's version and crashed to the floor twice trying this move.  Kelly does state that she "does not expect everyone to do that version, she is just showing you want you can do if you are able" . Clearly I was not able. I had DOMS in my thighs and butt after this w

Karen Voight's Sleek Essential consist of three 50 minute workouts.  In the set that I have, each 50 minute workout came on its own DVD. Sweat Effect is your cardio workout. The cardio is mostly kickboxing inspired and it takes up the first 35 minutes of the workout. The choreography in the kick box segment is easy to follow.  Karen teaches you the pattern on the right and then she repeats on the left. Following the kick box segment are a butt/thigh segment, abdominal segment and cool down stretch. When Karen went into the butt segment which is floor based, I wasn't expecting it because I knew there was another DVD focused on Strength and Toning. Plus I was enjoying the kickboxing and I would  have like to see the kick box portion extended. The different sections of the workout are: Warm up Twist & Punch Bob & Weave Lunge & Lift Jump & Kick Butt & Thighs Abs with foam roler Stretch Strength Effect is your sculpting workout.  It uses two

December 2014 Happy December to you all. No real order to this month's rotation. Most of the workouts that I have scheduled are new to me. The schedule will change or shift if I don't get the Cathe Ripped with HiiT workouts in. Hoping everyone has a great December.

Body Target 60 was included in a 4 DVD Workout Set called Total Body Slimdown. The DVD menu offers the following options: Body Target 60 Total Target 30 Arm Target 10 Butt Target 10 Core Target 10 Cool down Bonus Body:  Body Talk I did the Total Target 30 workout plus the cool down. Doing all of this clock in at around the 40 minute mark. This workout is a cardio and toning workout. For every four toning exercises you do one cardio exercise. Roughly that's the breakdown. There is a beginner modifier. Stephanie generally starts with a base move and layers on from there.  Expect lots of balance options included within or at the end of each exercise.   This is a nice workout that had great flow. The music is nice. I thought the set a bit dark. Stephanie is pleasant and cues well. The workout uses a mat and as set of light and heavy weights. Worksheet for Total Target 30 3 & 3/4 stars

I have long seen Stephanie as a background exerciser in several other videos that I owned and I was always impressed with her form. So when I saw that her two workouts were included in a 4 DVD Workout Set that was at a reduce price, I quickly picked up the set. The Ultimate Body Shaper clocks in at 70 minutes and it is a combo workout.  Combo meaning it combines cardio (in the form of Intensity Boost)  with strength training. Along with Stephanie there are two other cast members but there is not a beginner modifier. The DVD offers the following selections: Introduction Warm-up High Step Shaper Mat Shaper Full Workout Cool-Down V8 Bonus Abs What I like about the workout is the count down clock that appeared in each segment.  The warm up and cool down are 5 minutes each and the High Step Shaper and Mat Shaper are 30 minute segments. The High Step Shaper uses a high step.  During this portion you are performing moves standing and seated on the step. You also use the step a

Zumba Core Craze Awesome Core Conditioning is 29 minutes workout that uses the Zumba Rizer. Marcie Benavides leads the workout.  Along with Marcie are Nick and Kass. At the beginning of each song, the moves starts slow and small and get bigger and faster as you progress through the song. Emphasis is the core - mostly obliques and lower abs Segments: Dimelo Ya (Warm Up) Ay Doctor (Merengue) Carita (Reggaton) Extranando Tus Besos (Cumba) Celtic Country Pon De Rhythm Ena Marao Boom Boom Marcie cues very well using standard cuing. The workout flowed really well. I enjoyed this workout as well. 4 & 1/4 stars

Glute Pursuit Legs and Glute Toning is a 30 minutes workout led by Marcie Benavides. Along with Marcie, are Kass and Ricardo. There is not a beginner modifier.  Also, thankfully- there is standard cuing. No voice over or visual and Marcie did an excellent job cuing. The segments: Rock Your Body (warm up) Demasiao Apretao (Merengue) Dale Muevelo (Reggeton) Candela (Cumbia) Munto (this is your isolation lower body song - with reverse lunges, side squats, hamstring kickbacks) Hey! Barracuda (inner thigh work) Eres Tu (Cool Down) I really like this workout. It did slow down in some parts more than I like. Marcie usually introduce the moves at half time before she went at full tempo and made the moves bigger and faster. This workout also uses the Zumba Rizer. 4 & 1/4 stars

Zumba Step It UP High-Intensity Training uses the Zumba Rizer. It is led by Marcie Benavides and it is 34 minutes in length. Joining Marcie, is Nick and Ricardo.  Nick is the modifier.  He shows less intense moves throughout the workout. The segments are : Party (Everybody Dance) No Te Soporto (Merenegue) Hasta Amanecer (Cumbia) Pablito Robafaldas (Salsa) Alegria Esta No Ar (Calyspo-Samba) Rockin With the Best (Reggaton) Marcha Back In Action Bailando Te Quiero Ver I liked this workout well enough.  I felt it was more athletic base than dance based. The only thing that annoyed me was the cuing (combining the visual with voice over).  There were more than a few times when Marcie called  the move late  None of the moves were hard or moves I hadn't seen before but I was tripping all over the place. We would do a straddle with a side kick or a side tap step but she wouldn't call it until after the first rep. Other than that annoyance, it's a good workout. 4

The second Shape Pilates workout featuring Lizbeth Garcia - Makeover your abs, butt and thighs FAST!. This workout comes with a resistance band.   The resistance band is used throughout the workout to add more intensity to the moves. As Lizbeth moves through the workout, she will point out how a particular exercise resemble one of the pilates equipments such as the reformer or cadillac pilates machines. Sculpt without Bulk, is how Lizbeth describes this workout.  It is similar to the Lizbeth other workout in that she takes you through a series of flowing pilates moves that build on one another to create a challenging sequence. The difference in this workout is that there is a standing component as well as the sitting lying and kneeling that is included the first DVD. This workout is also a few years. The music is up tempo. The set - looks like another great room transformed into a dance studio. The band definitely adds an additional challenge. 3 & 1/2 stars

Shape Pilates F irm Up From Head To Toe is 30 minute workout led by Lizbeth Garcia. This workout is a few years old.   It was one of the first pilates workout that I owned. Lizbeth takes you through a series of flowing pilates moves all done on the floor. So you are either sitting, kneeling or lying. In the lying position, you may be prone, supine or on your side. Each move starts with a base move.   Lizbeth builds the base exercise into a compound exercise by adding additional components to make the exercise more challenging. Two other cast members accompany Lizbeth.   One cast member does show modifications. The music is a bit fast paced but it is background. Lizbeth is not really working out to the music.  Although on some moves it seems as if she is on beat. The set looks like some one's great room. I thought it was a decent workout. 3 & 1/2 stars

Finally got around to doing this workout. I have had the workout schedule at least three times and life kept interrupting me. So Turn Up and Slim Down is a 70 minute workout led by Patrick Geoudeau.  Along with Patrick there are two other cast members.  The workout contains a warm up and cool down plus 6 ten minute workouts. Three of the workouts are cardio based and 3 are body weight exercise based. I found the body weight workouts super challenging.  In all the workouts Patrick is layering moves – piling it on I thought. In a couple of the Body weight segments I felt the final sequence of moves quite complex.  If you look at the spread sheet I created for the exercises you will see I list the exercise as “into” or “add” and that is because Patrick makes changes or modifications as he moves through. You might get 4 shots at the base exercise before he adds on. Patrick uses a mat in all the workouts.  The only other equipment you will need is a jump rope. The Mama Said