Saundra

Atletica 3 clocks in at 48 minutes.  It consist of a warm up, three rounds of ten exercises and a stretch. Ilaria describes Atletica as a fitness program that trains the whole body with high intensity exercises. In Atletica 3, you are doing an up (or standing base) exercise and a down (floor base) exercise. In round 1, you are alternating up and down exercises for 1 minute each.  In round 2, you are doing the up exercise for 2 minutes and the down exercise for 1 minute. In round 3, you are doing the 5 up exercises back to back and then you do the 5 down exercises in a row. So expect lots of reps or as many as you can do in the 1 to 2 minutes given per exercise.  And for the most part you are doing all the exercises back to back; with only a real break coming between each round. Most of the exercises use a pair of dumbbells. The DVD menu offers the following options: Play All Introduction Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 credits I didn't like this workout as much as Atle

 Discount Workouts Advanced Strength Training Volume 2 workouts come with two 60 minute strength workouts.  The first workout is led by Ashlyn and the second workout is led by Ashley. Both workouts are similar to volume one.  You will do a barbell warm up and then you will hit each muscle group for about 5 minutes.  The exercises are the same for the most part with only the rep count being the only real variation within each set of workouts. Ashlyn and Ashley are okay as instructors. They demonstrated the moves and gave form pointers and encouragement as the workouts went on.  I thought Ashley (she led workout 2) could have cued better. Overall, I have liked the Discount Workouts Strength Training DVDs both the Beginner and Advance series. I give these two workout 3 & 1/2 stars .

Atlectica Vol 4 Body Weight Training.  This workout is 30 minutes in length and includes the following components: Core Work in the form of planks, sit ups, crunches, and oblique work Shoulder and chest in the form of planks and variety of push ups Lot of Burpees.  For the burpees you are doing a total of 5 minutes worth of burpees There are three rounds of burpees.  The first round is 1 minute in length.  The second round is 2 minutes of sumo burpees.  The third round is another 2 minutes but this time you are doing one legged burpees. I didn't find the workout too difficult.  It was doable.  This workout is really similar to an older Ilaria workout called Abs & Pushups Plus. Along with Ilaria there are 4 other cast members.  From time to time, Ilaria would demonstrate a modification but there is not a designated modifier.  This is not a workout that I would readily grab again but with that said, it was okay. 3 stars.

Balance Flow Vinyasa Yoga is Jennifer's Intermediate Level workout. I could definitely tell the difference between this workout and the Beginner Energy Flow that I did last week. The postures were more demanding and Jennifer included different breathing techniques. The intermediate workouts really builds on the beginner workouts by adding to the sun salutations series, the warrior series and bow series; and each time as you go through the series the posture or positions become more challenging. Another challenging pose was the standing balance front and side. This pose built on the tree pose that Jennifer had us do in the beginner disk. This workout also contain great stretching. While challenging, I found the workout very easy to follow and I enjoyed this practice. The workout clocks in at just over 26 minutes. 4 stars

 Ilaria's Atletica Volume 2 is approximately 45 minutes in length. It consist of doing two rounds of total body (compound) exercises.  There are lots of repetition in this workout.  For example, the first non-warm up exercise you are doing for two minutes straight.  The exercise that follows that, you do for six sets of 8 reps. Because the moves are compound in nature working both the lower and upper body, expect there to be a cardio effect with some exercises. Essentially you are doing the same exercises from round 1 to round 2.  Ilaria slightly alters the exercises in the second round. When I first started out, I thought it was going to be really hard. But after round 1, I was like yeah bring on round 2.  If you want a shorter workout you could just skip round 2 and move to the snatches and core segments. The DVD menu offers the following options: Play All introduction round 1 round 2 snatches abs credits I thought the workout was good. 3 & 1/2 stars

The second workout on Discounts Workouts Advanced Strength Training Volume 1 Workout 2 clocks in at just under 60 minutes. It is lead by Jen and follows a similar pattern as workout 1. Many of the exercises are the same and Jen may very the rep pattern and number of sets as you proceed through the workout. This workouts uses mostly the barbell, but a pair of dumbbells, a step, and mat are also used. A little bit more about the DVD. You can select either workout 1 or workout 2.  That's it for your selection. The workouts themselves have 5 minute chapter points built in.  So you can jump around within the workout. However, doing so may land you right in the middle of a track. In other words each chapter point doesn't necessarily start at the beginning of each exercise. I like these workouts.  Solid sculpting, decent background music and Jen is pretty good. 3 & 3/4 stars

 Discount Workouts Advanced Strength Training Volume 1 Workout 1 is a 60 minute total body sculpting workout and it is led by an instructor name Jen.  Jen doesn't say what her last name is and she is the only cast member. Jen also lead one of the Discount Workouts Beginner Strength Training workouts. The only real difference that I can see between the beginner and advanced workouts are that the beginner workouts are 30 minutes and the advance workouts are 60 minutes. The workout is really decent.  It starts with a barbell warm up which I typically don't like. I don't like warming up with weights. Each muscle group is set to a particular track. Often the music to the track would end and Jen would still be doing reps.  Speaking of reps; expect a lot of them. You have a decent rest period as you move from one muscle group to the next.  During this time Jen is  setting up the equipment and explaining the next exercise.   Jen uses a barbell with adjustable weights,

Energy Flow Vinyasa Yoga is a beginner level yoga workout led by Jennifer Kries. The DVD comes with a 6 minute introduction. During the introduction, Jennifer introduces you to some of the poses in yoga showing proper body alignment. The Energy Flow workout clocks in at under 23 minutes.  I think parts of this workout was taken from Jennifer's Hot Body Cool Mind series. As Jennifer takes you through a series of postures she has you hold the pose anywhere from one to three breaths.  I thought the pace and sequencing that Jennifer used in this workout was perfect Some of the poses you will be doing are the Sun Salutation, warrior series, boat, cobra, triangle, tree and chair. I love Jennifer as an instructor.  In this workout she leads and she teaches.  So from time to time, she will break from the pose to highlight a particular move using a cast member. I like this one.  Thus far, this is probably my favorite yoga workout of the ones I have done this year. 4 stars

February 2014 Monthly Rotation This month I will be doing Les Mills Body Combat, Combat, and Pump workouts. I also have Ilaria's Atletica workouts as well as Discount Workouts  Advanced Strength Training DVDs scheduled. This rotations is similar to last months.  Last month it was 4 cardio and 2 strength a week.  Plus I tagged on some Yoga.  This month it is 3 cardio, 2 strength, and 1 cardio/sculpt a week.  I will also be tagging on some yoga.  The yoga I have schedule for this month are the Jennifer Kries Vinyasa Yoga workouts and the Les Mills Pump Flow workout.