Saundra

Trampoline Cardio clocks in at 29:30.  This is  a follow along the best you can type of workout.  The workout starts as soon as you hit play.  Tracy is already into the workout. There is about a 3 minute introduction where the music is turn down so that you can hear Tracy's voice over narrative. After she is done talking about the trampoline workout, the music gets louder. The set is greyed out so that all you see is Tracy jumping on the trampoline. It is hard to tell where the wall and floor intersect. This is not a big deal, just details for those of you who like those type of details. There is NO cuing at all.  I did not try to keep up with Tracy. What I did is follow a move behind. So if she starts with criss cross jacks, when she moved on to high knees, that is when I would do the criss cross jack and so on. That of course left me with one move I didn't get too because the workout just abruptly ends, but now that I  know the ending. I can plan f...

Tracy Anderson's Total Body Mini-Trampoline workout is a 50 minute workout. The workout is broken down as follows: Full Workout (51:30) Muscular Structure (26:30) Trampoline Front (12:04) Trampoline Back (12:54) The muscular structure segment includes standing and kneeling arms, abs, and thigh & buns work.  Tracy uses a pair of light dumbbells and a mat in the toning segment. She also uses the trampoline (mostly as a prop) in this segment.  Expect lots of reps for the leg exercises. The trampoline segments feature lots of kicks, jacks, mini jumps, and knee raises.  Tracy adds various arm movement throughout. This whole workout is a follow along workout.  There is absolutely no cuing what so ever. The only time Tracy talks is during the intro. I did like set and the soundtrack is awesome. Great music to workout too. There is a bit of a warm up but there is not a cool down or stretch. What do I say. It is Tracy. I have come to expect minimum cuin...

Eric Zimmer's Dance Workout is a 40 minute ballet inspired workout.  Eric takes you through a series of mini toning exercises each focused on a particular dance element. The segments are short, 2 to 3 minutes at the most. You perform the moves on one side and then you immediately switch to the other side before moving on to the next dance element. The workout does move fast and the moves are set to an up tempo rhythm that comes in and goes out as the segment ends and begins. Along with Eric, there are two other cast members in the ballet barre portion of the workout.   In the core conditioning, stretch, and cool down segments, it is only Eric. The workout is voice over and it is a really good voice over. I did not realize he was not live cuing until a quarter of the way through the workout. Some of the camera angles were a bit funky as we got several ceiling shots. Other than the ceiling shots, the set is just a bland canvas. Unless you saw the ceiling, it was ha...

Essentrics Full Body Toning is a 57 minute workout that is divided into two segments. There is a standing segment and a floor segment.  In this workout, Sahra, who is the only cast members, offer lots of form tips throughout the workout. At times I felt there were too many tips because she would stop the movement as she was giving the tip and that would interrupt my flow.  Other than that, this is a typical Essentrics workout with shoulder blast, plies, arm series and windmills for the standing segment and in the floor segment abs and quad series.  Both workouts include a nice extended stretch.  Sahra states this workout is a favorite of all students and it is the first workout instructors learn.  There is a great soundtrack in this one and the set is big and bright with lots of windows. 4 stars

November 2017 Monthly Rotation Hello All.  Here is to a good and productive November. I have been sick and I missed a couple of workouts last month. So I am moving those workouts to this month. November will feature Classical Stretch/Essentrics, Zumba, Tracy Anderson, Fitness Favorites Live workouts and Cardio Coach workouts.

Hard Body comes with two 45-minute circuit workouts.  There are six circuits per workout. Within the workout, Jillian will take you through the six circuits. After you complete the sixth circuit, you take it from the top, repeating all the circuits. The only difference is for some exercises where you focus on one side during the first go around, the second time through you work the opposite side.  Each circuit is composed of 3 to 5 exercises and includes a variety of athletic, body weight, drill-base, and yoga inspired moves. Some exercises are standing and some are floor based and a lot of the exercise are compound multi-component in nature.  Jillian adds dumbbells to certain exercises and she has a range of dumbbells - light, medium and heavy. There is a beginner modifier.  Level 1 clocks in at around 45 minutes and Level 2 clocks in at around 50 minutes. There is a DJ playing live music throughout the workout.  While I thought the music fine, I though...

MCM10K 2017 is in the books. It was a beautiful day for a run.  Lots and lots of people and lots of inspiring runners. Other than the race starting about 10 minutes late it was all good.