Saundra

December 2018 Monthly Rotation  Breakdown Sunday - Walking workouts with Jessica Smith and Amy Ross Monday, Tuesday, Thursday & Friday - Sculpting Workouts (Jari, Kelly, Essentrics, The Firm) Wednesday - MMA Kickboxing with Les Mills Combat and Fit By Tracey Saturday - Rest

Hi/Lo Med Ball is fun workout with a lot of personality. It features Tracey Staehle as the lead and there are two backup cast members (Jill and Barbie). The music is fairly good but this is the type of workout that just begs for vocals. Because it is instrumental, some of the moves get lost in "repetitiveness". The workout is called Hi Lo Med Ball, and it is mostly Hi Lo. There are only two Med Ball sections and one of those is an ab section done on the floor. In total there are 9 combos, plus a warm up and cool down. Combos 4 and 9 are the med ball combos. I didn't really like the med ball sections. The other combos are hi lo and feature, kickboxing, dance, athletic style moves. There's lots of jumping and plyo type moves. Tracey slows moves down to half counts and she speeds them up to double count varying the tempo throughout the workout. My biggest issue with the workout is Tracey's cuing. Sometimes I think she forgets she is leading a workout. She ...

Steady State Ste p is a great step workout but the editing is bad. And unfortunately it takes away from the workout. I have had this workout for some time and did it once before maybe even twice. And then I remember, oh this is the workout that has the bad editing. The problem is the editing is worse where transition to a new move occurs. Sometime it feels like a small, maybe 2 seconds had been edited out here and there and then you are all off count. Also there are extreme close up of the cast members for long periods of time so you have no idea of what they are performing. I did manage to get through the whole workout. There were a couple of places I was marching in place. This not only had to do with the editing but Tracey (the lead) cuing as well. There were two other cast members and sometimes they would just stop in the middle of the combo because they were lost. So even if I wasn't lost, I became lost if I happen to be focus on them. Even once Tracey stops briefly ...

Strikezone is approximately a 60 minute workouts and features Tracey Staehle and Josef Matthews as the leads. The workout features twelve strikes - see table of contents to the left. Each strike takes you through a series of kickboxing martial arts inspired moves. In the first two strikes (warm it up and warm it down), Tracey takes you through the "UP" section and here you are warming up your upper body - mostly with punches. Josef leads the "down" section and you are warming up your lower body - mostly with kicks. Overall, I like this workout. It is a workout where you can really work on your precision. My favorite strikes are 5, 6 & 8. In strike 7, I felt that Tracey forgot to cue the first 1/2 of the combination. Other than that I didn't really notice any cuing problems. There was one strike I did bypass and that was strike 9 (Spiderwebs). The spider webs were fun but the pushups that came with them were not. Between each strike, the workout comes t...

Today was a free day for me. No workout schedule. So I pulled out Cardio Kickbox Challenge and gave it another whirl. Mostly to see if I really like the workout as much as I thought I did. And I did. I like this workout alot. This is the only workout I have gotten so far in 2010. (I am trying to cut back on my DVD exercise purchases) I think if I buy other workouts they are going to have a tough time topping this one. The thing that irritated me the first time I did the workout, wasn't so irritating today. What I did pick up this time around, that I didn't notice the first time was the music goes in and out or rather it goes from loud to your straining to hear it. This happen about 3 times during the workout. Other than that loving this workout. I gave it 4 1/2 stars but it is inching closer to 5 stars.

Cardio Kickbox Challenge is a FitByTracey workout that is lead by Tracey Staehle, Jericho, and Josef. Josef was also in Tracey's Strikezone workout. The workout is a little over an hour long. I really like this workout. From start to finish I feel like this is a good solid and fun workout. It flowed really well. The combos are more drill oriented than routine oriented. Tracey, Jericho, and Josef each leads different portions of the workout. As they do,they show you various levels (from easy to hard) that you can do. Essentially they show you how you can get more power with each move. My criticism which I am sure will go away the more I do the workout and become familiar with the workout is the transitions when the leads were adding on to the combination. The person who was leading (and all three would do this) would start to show you the upcoming move before you had completed the move you were doing. So you had the lead doing something and the background people doing s...