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Elevated Total Body is a 50 minute workout that uses a variety of compound exercises to work the total body.  Cathe uses body weight and dumbbells in the various moves.  When using dumbbells sometimes you will use only one dumbbell, and sometimes you will use two exercises.  Cathe offers weigh selection throughout and she shows modifications when appropriate. 3 & 1/2 stars

 Cathe Lift, Move, & Restore 2 Elevated! Total Body Metabolic Strength is a 40 minute total body workout. In this workout, Cathe takes  you through a series of isolated, compound, and body weight movement.  This is a moderate to heavy weight workout and you are doing on average 10-reps. Cathe offers suggested weight for each of the exercises that use weights.  The warm up and cool down is about 10-minutes of the workouts combine, so the main workout is around 30-minutes. Cathe does use a set of dumbbells  in the warm up. 3 & 3/4 stars

Total Body Barbell clocks in at just under 50-minutes.  It features Cathe, of course and four other cast members. Cathe  works with the barbell or plates used on the barbell throughout the workout. She tells you that you can replace the plates with dumbbells.  Other equipment used include a mat and a step bench. The DVD Menu Equipment List Play Workout Play Weight Plate/Barbell Bonus Chapters Premixes Audio Settings Cathe starts the workout with a long warm-up. First part of the warm, you use no equipment. Second half of the warm-up, Cathe picks up the barbell.  Following the warm up, Cathe hits each muscle group starting with legs, back, biceps, shoulder, chest, triceps, and core. There is no set groupings. Exercises will repeat but with a different rep pattern. There are seven premixes ranging in time from 18-minute to 60 minutes. I like this workout and I love the new set. Super fresh looking. 4 & 1/2 stars  

  Cathe STS 2.0 Giant Sets Total Body.    In Giant Sets you do 10 exercises back-to-back.  You get a two-minute break. Then you tackle another 10 exercises, followed by a two-minute break. The workout concludes with a final 10 exercises and then a brief cool down. In the first two sets, you are doing 10 reps per exercise.  In the last set, you do 8 reps per exercise.  Giant Sets clocks in at just under 52 minutes and the DVD includes 9 premixes. 

Super Sets Total Body clocks in at 59 minutes. In this workout, there are 8 groups of exercises. Within each group, you do two exercises back-to-back and repeat the superset twice more before moving on to the next grouping.   So, you are doing three sets per grouping and 8 reps per exercise.  You get a two-minute rest between groupings.  

Boss Bands Total Body is a 57 minute low impact strength workout that uses resistance bands instead of weights to tone and sculpt the body. DVD Menu Getting Started Play Chapters Premixes  (There are 8 premixes) Audio Settings The workouts use resistance cords that are banded together. The cords are color coded as follows: Orange - easy or lightest tension Green - medium tension Blue - heaviest tension Cathe uses the bands throughout the workout including the warm up and ending stretch. She tells you which band color to grab.  On certain exercises, she will tell you that you don't have to use the band, or to grab two bands.  The only time I sat the bands down was during the biceps section. I picked up dumbbells. So clocking in at just over 57 minutes, I thought this was  a long workout. Most workouts I do nowadays are between 30 and 40 minutes. I was surprised that Cathe made the workout so long. The warm up was 10 minutes.  I will say you are doing a lot in th...

Be Empowered is disc 2 of Michelle's One on One with Michelle series. It contains the following workouts: Total Body Workout (30 min) Core Challenge Workout (19 min) Mobility Workout (10 min) Total Body Workout is a strength workout that combines upper body and lower body exercises. Michelle's takes you through a series of four circuits. Each exercise is perform for two sets.  There are three to four exercises per circuit. There is not much down time in this workout as Michelle moves from exercise to exercise at a steady pace. Two sets of dumbbells, a light set and a heavy set, as well as a single heavier dumbbell are used in this workout. Core Challenge Workout is a 360 degree core workout in that it works all areas of the core region to include back, hips, lower abs, and obliques. Some of the exercises in this workout included a beast hover, several series of planks in a variety of position, reverse crunches and traditional crunches.  Michelle also includes su...

PHA2 is a fast moving cardio-inducing total body workout. It alternates lower and upper movements.  The original PHA workout has been one of my favorite Cathe workouts. In PHA2, you are performing 8 exercises per round. There are two rounds. Each round is further subdivided into two sub-rounds or sets. There is an A round and a B round.  You will do all 8 exercises in round A and then repeat them again in round B before moving to the next grouping.  The number of reps vary by the exercise. As stated earlier this is a fast moving workout. There is really no time to write anything down.  This is one of those workouts where you want to have an idea  of your weight selection before hand. I like this workout just as much as the first PHA. The DVD Menu Getting Started Play Chapters Basic Premixes  (total 5) Timesaver Premixes (total 8) Scrambled Premixes (total 5) Bonus (6 Pack ABS #1, Pyramid Pump Biceps, Extended Stretch #2) Audio Settings ...

Total Body Trisets consist of two workout one DVD. The DVD is part of Cathe's Low Impact Series . There are a total of ten DVDs that are part of this series. Total Body Triset s is broken up into Lower Body Split - 39 minutes in length and Upper Body Split - 56 minutes in length. Both workouts share the same warm up and stretch both of which are just over 4 minutes long. The thing that caught my attention about the warm up was that there was no marching until the last 10 seconds and then you were just transitioning into the next segment. I guess I am so use to marching in a warm up, that I kept trying to add it in there. Both workout follow the same pattern. You are doing three Trisets for each muscle grouping. Within each Triset, you are doing three exercises rotating through for two sets. For the Upper Body Split workout, the first muscle grouping is Chest, Shoulders, and Triceps. The second is Back, Biceps, and Core. For the Lower Body Split workout, you just have one ...

Maximum Intensity Strength is a Cathe Total Body Workout that can be found on the Power Hour Plus DVD. It clocks in at a whopping 75minutes. In the intro, Cathe states that MIS is a strength and endurance muscular workout. I do like this workout. I don't do it very often because of the time. The DVD that this workout comes on is very well chaptered and each exercise in this workout has its own chapter point. You can click to the left for a larger view of the exercise worksheet. The exercises are very traditional and on average you are doing two sets of every exercise. Equipment used: Step, Barbell, Dumbbells, Barbell Pad, Push up bars. 4 stars

The FIRM Super Sculpting is a 48 minute workout and it features Jennifer Carman, Nancy Tucker, Dale Brabham, and Carissa Fosters as leads. Jennifer and Dale focus primarily on the upper body and Nancy and Carissa focus primarily on the lower body. While this workout gets the job done, it is not my favorite FIRM total body workout. Normally, I only include this workout when I am looking for a fifth total body workout from the "Benson" era to add to my rotation. It usually comes down to between Super Sculpting and Bust & Butt; and I like Bust&Butt even less than I like Super Sculpting. It is hard to pinpoint what exactly I don't like about. I didn't care for the music very much. The sequence of the exercises seemed repetitive. I included the exercise break down for this workout, but truthfully the workout moves too quickly to record your weight and rep count. The workout almost moves too quickly to change out your weights on some of the exercises. There is...

Tough Tape 2 is a 45 minute compilation workout. The workout is compiled with segments from the following FIRM workouts - StrongBody aka FIRM Cardio, StrongHeart aka FIRM Strength, Better Body & Buns, and Maximum Body Shaping, This is one of my favorite compilation and total body workouts. The workout flows really well but it moves fast. ( Click on the worksheet to left for a larger view of the exercises included in the workout). Because the workout moves quickly from one exercise to the next, you are getting an aerobic benefit as well. You can go heavy with certain exercises. Within each segment there are various tempo changes. All exercises are performed to the beat of the music. This workout it taught in the "Live Class" format. There isn't much that I don't like about this workout. Equipment used: dumbbells, tall step, dowel, and 2X4. 4 1/2 out of 5 stars.