Workout DVD #37: Leslie Sansone’s Walk Away the Pounds – High Calorie Burn 2 Miles

See the DVD cover | 30 minutes

Day 86

I kept seeing Leslie Sansone walking workouts in Wal-Mart & Target so when the opportunity arose at a yard sale I picked one up for next to nothing. I’m glad I didn’t pay much for it because I don’t think I will ever bother doing it again. Why? I found it pretty boring.

Don’t get me wrong, Leslie was very pleasant and enthusiastic and I loved the array of body types and ages in her workout group – but the walking in place for 2 miles just bored me sheeeetless.

There was one lady in the group called Adrian who was totally ripped – amazing arms and abs, I mean abs that looked fake they were so hard and flat. And to top that she looked like she was in her late forties, though she could have been older but because of her lifestyle looked a lot better than her peers. Anyway, she looked so amazing and was stuck in the back – barely visible. I kept thinking, “move over Leslie – I want to know what Adrian does to work out, because she didn’t get that body from walking away the pounds!”

I started my cardio day today with 25 minutes of Karen Voight – interval training from her awesome Energy Sprint DVD [that I love] and I just got to the point where after 3 sprints of about 3.5 minutes each I realized that my muscles were failing me. My stamina was low. [Note: my poor stamina was due to poor eating yesterday.] I wanted to do all the sprints but couldn’t. That’s when I remembered the walking workout and thought it would be low impact and ‘easy.’

It was easy – I had to keep my heart rate up by kicking high when Leslie kicked, doing deep squats when Leslie did shallow ones, and by walking about my living room while Leslie marched in place. The only way I think it would be a challenging enough workout is if you have never worked out before, or need a very simplistic workout because you are not very coordinated, or suffer from Fibromyalgia or are recuperating from surgery, illness… you get the idea. There are not many lateral, side to side moves, it’s mainly front and back, and it can be done in very small, or large movements.

I would much rather get my butt outside and walk than do this kind of workout again, but it was effective enough, when modified, to keep my heart rate up and I managed to burn over 400 calories in total for my workout today.

Here are the stats:

5/2/08

58:57 [workout time]
27:48 [in aerobic zone 60% -80% Target Heart Rate]
135bpm [average heart rate]
173 bpm [highest heart rate] – the energy sprints
418 [cals burned]

Still Going Strong: Interval Training With Karen Voight

See the DVD cover and video clip | step, mat, fan

Day 76

Energy Sprint is such an amazing workout – it uses your large muscles groups over and over ensuring a real sweatfest calorie burner!

Yesterday I did the Jillian Michaels Back DVD and that kicks butt, but it doesn’t work your butt very much. So today, being cardio day I thought I would incorporate a great butt workout in there too.

Karen Voight’s Energy Sprint is a great butt and leg workout. Your inner thighs will burn during the inner thigh segment – with one foot raised on the step you do plie squats, on and off the bench, which absolutely works those muscles way more than just standard plie squats. But that’s not all, because you spend most of the workout squatting on and off the bench, doing side leg raises, rear leg lefts [for more butt shaping] as well as lunges. All in all you legs will get very tired!

Because I did a vigorous workout yesterday this one was more challenging. My legs felt spent much more quickly than they had on previous times doing the sprints. I was sucking in wind a lot earlier too. This is a great interval workout and the sprints get anaerobic for longer, as they get longer throughout the workout. The first interval is short but by number seven it’s loooooong!

The whole DVD is an 80+ minute workout but I used the menu selector to pick and choose what I wanted which was just the leg work and sprints, with warm up and cool down too.

I was truly thankful for the cool down! If you like stepping and you like interval training this DVD is definitely worth doing.

4/22/08

55:00 [workout time]
20:16 [in aerobic zone 60% -80% Target Heart Rate]
150 bpm [average heart rate]
178 bpm [highest heart rate]
479 [cals burned] – Awesome!

High Intensity Interval Training on the Step

See the DVD cover and video clip | step, mat, fan

Day 69

I first reviewed this awesome interval workout by Karen Voight [Energy Sprint] on day 6 of my ‘get fit and lose weight plan’ and my thoughts are basically the same 63 days later: it’s a great calorie burner and leg and glute workout.

The first time I did it I burned 450 calories which I thought was very good for 54 minutes, but today I did a little extra and burned an amazing [for me anyway] 572 calories in 64 minutes!!!!

The DVD is broken down into sections so I jumped around the menu picking what I wanted to do and the order to do them in. I didn’t do the abs or the upper body strength training as today was my cardio day. If I had, the workout would have lasted 83 minutes!

I have to say that I was feeling really spent by the end of an hour and I kept my heart rate monitor running through to the end of my stretches and cool down which lasted about 5 minutes. I got a real buzz from doing this workout too. 🙂 You can see by my stats that my heart rate was way up there – my average HR was 153! I was a little out of breath in sections where the sprints went on for 4 or 5 minutes, but I wasn’t sucking in wind or feeling light headed.

I didn’t do much leg strength yesterday so this worked out nicely – I got to do tons of squats and lunges with Karen that really hit my glutes and inner thighs big time. There is an inner thigh sprint section that makes your adductors burn like crazy!

All in all I can’t recommend this workout highly enough for someone who wants to get a real high intensity workout with the added benefit of intervals thrown in – it’s great. Buy it.

4/15/08

1:03:40 [workout time]
17:29 [in aerobic zone 60% -80% Target Heart Rate]
153 bpm [average heart rate] – told you my HR was high!
176 bpm [highest heart rate]
572 [cals burned] – AMAZING!

Workout DVD #31: Reebok Core Board – Hard Core Training

See the DVD [well video actually!] | Reebok core board, towel, fan

Day 62

This workout is not available through Netflix but it’s listed on here, like several others, that are from my collection while I await the arrival of new workouts from the movie rental giant.  My queue has been stagnant for a couple of weeks now because I have been holding on to DVDs! But I couldn’t not do a workout today so I dug deep into my collection because I wanted to do something different that would interest me.

I bought a Reebok Core Board [RCB] a few years ago and loved it. But it has sat sadly in the corner for about a year now. Well there are very few workouts in circulation for the core board but I would use it a lot with my functional training and Mark Verstegen’s Core Performance workouts – although Mark does not use the RCB, I improvised. You can actually do some amazing balance work with this thing, and it can be made more stable than the $30 wobble boards you see at Dick’s or other sports stores.

So I dusted off this video [man, they make me feel old!] which had come with the RCB when I got it. It came with two other workouts, but they were more strength training oriented, and this one was supposed to be cardio interval training. It had tricep dips and push ups in the routine which I had to fast forward through as I worked those areas yesterday with Jari Love.

All in all this is a good way to spend 30 minutes or so and your heart rate does jump up, BUT the setting for this workout is pretty strange in my opinion. It is very dark and some of the participants are decked out in some bizarre workout clothes. One lady looks like she’s wearing leather pants – I know she isn’t but the fabric looks leathery, and another has a series of dots stuck to her arms. That’s not so bad – what is are the glum expressions on everyone’s faces! I guess it is just in such contrast to every other workout DVD where everyone has permanent grins. No one smiles in this workout!

The whole thing is shot in what is supposed to look like a cellar, or [good grief!] dungeon. There are light holes above each person so that they have eerie shadows about them. Have I put you off ever doing this workout? 🙂 I half expected the Terminator to show up. Oh, and the weirdest part is that Gin Miller is the ‘front person’ for the workout yet she is nowhere to be seen – it’s all voice over! That, to me, is the most distracting thing. Was Gin physically unable to join in for the three videos Reebok made for their product? It’s all pretty unusual.

So, that being said, it’s a lot of fun to wobble about on the board. A lot of the moves could be done on a Step, but with the RCB you wobble front to back and side to side. I burned 250 calories in half an hour so that is a good result indeed.

After 30 minutes I popped in my favorite quickie: Turbo Jam’s 20 minute workout. I was really pumped and relished every minute – gave it my all! I just felt like my muscles had so much power. I think Jari Love’s Ripped workouts are starting to pay off. I did back kicks with a lot more force and height than previously.

A great workout combo, and here are the stats:

4/8/08

57:14 [workout time]
27:14 [in aerobic zone 60% -80% Target Heart Rate]
143 bpm [average heart rate}
179 bpm [highest heart rate]
450 [cals burned]

Repeat Workout: Jari Love’s Get Ripped 1000

See the DVD cover | step, hand weights

Netflix writes:

With workouts that let you burn up to 1,000 calories per session, you’ll be shedding pounds and reshaping your body fast as certified trainer Jari Love takes you through her famous Ripped regimen. By combining weight training with cardio bursts, Love keeps all muscle groups working and the heart rate high so that you burn maximum calories. In addition to high- and low-impact variations, the program includes recipes and weight management tips.

Day 41

I first tried this workout on day 30/March 7th but wasn’t feeling too great so I only managed about 20 minutes of this killer workout from the Get Ripped series. Today I was pumped because I was going to complete it. What I didn’t know was how hard it still would be! This workout is intense – you are warned!

This is an interval training workout, but because you do lots of reps with weights in between the cardio bursts, your heart rate doesn’t get much of a break. My HR barely shifted before it was time to go at it again. And, while Jari and the others stretched after their cardio, I could barely get my breath back. This meant, as per Jari’s instruction, that I shouldn’t spend time stretching, but keep moving. Therefore, at the end I made sure I stretched plenty.

I would love the music to have been better on this DVD, but not every workout can have Turbo Jam-type music. I just felt if the music had been a little ‘nicer’ on my ears I would have been motivated to crank out a few more reps. It’s not bad, just a little vanilla. I prefer the tracks on her other DVDs. As it was, at pushup time I was ready to quit after 16 pushups [modified, on my knees]. The total was 70!!!! Not all at once mind you, you get like a 15 second break in between sets. 😉 Jari stresses that it took them a year to build up to 70 on their toes. Good – I have that to look forward to!

What this workout revealed to me was that I am seriously out of shape when it comes to doing a gazillion reps. I will now strive to do a bit more endurance-type workouts every now and then to try and remedy that. Jari says not to do the workout more than three times a week as it is so intense. I think I would want to do no more than two at my level.

Even if you do not have a step or hand weights you could use the squat sections for a great burn. There is one segment where you do one legged squats with a leg abduction and tricep extension at the same time. I quickly just focused on the squat/abduction as I was wobbling all over the place. My stability was definitely challenged!

All in all a wickedly good workout! Here are my stats:

3/18/08

58:48 [workout time]
32:20 [in aerobic zone 60% -80% Target Heart Rate]
138 bpm [average heart rate] – high intensity!
173 bpm [highest heart rate]
422 [cals burned] – nice!

Repeat Workout: Karen Voight’s Energy Sprint

See the DVD cover and video clip | step, mat, fan

Day 19

Today I had a doc’s appointment before work so I had to really rush in a workout. I thought about what DVD I could slap in that was customizable and would really give me bang for the buck. The answer was pretty obvious – Karen Voight’s Energy Sprint [read my initial review of this DVD].

So I mixed and matched segments from this classic video production turned DVD mega cal burner, and felt a great buzz for several hours afterwards – I was energized A LOT! The idea behind this workout, which uses The Step, but is not a traditional step workout, is interval training. Karen takes you through a routine, building nicely on the movements – once you have mastered those it is time to go at them with a ‘sprint’. This is a boosted version which means you might add jumps, squats, different arm movements, to up your heart rate for a specified interval. You know how long the interval is by looking at the bottom of your screen – which helps when you are just dying for it to end!!!!

The sprints start off short – 1.5 mins – and then as the workout progresses so do the sprints – up to several minutes in fact. To me this truly is a great interval workout DVD. My beloved Turbo Jam is supposedly interval training but I have never seen my heart rate go down enough to really have those discernible peaks and valleys. And I think because this is such a good interval workout – like doing HIIT [High Intensity Interval Training] on an elliptical, for instance, you get great results in a short amount of time: I did not do the whole workout and felt amazing all day. You can read more about HIIT at Bill Phillips’ Body for Life web site which has a good illustration of the concept. At the gym this was by far my favorite way to workout on more intense cardio days – why work out for an hour when 20 minutes will do?

Here are the stats:

2/25/08

43:25 [workout time]
18:37 [in aerobic zone 60% -80% Target Heart Rate]
137 bpm [average heart rate]
167 bpm [highest heart rate]
309 [cals burned]

Bottom line: you do not need a step for this workout to be effective, but the more advanced you are, the higher you can raise your step to keep giving your heart a challenge. Get this workout if you love to interval train. 🙂

Workout DVD #3: Karen Voight’s Energy Sprint

step, fan

Day 6

OK, so I was still waiting for Netflix to deliver my latest DVD. Bad Netflix – you took too long! I couldn’t wait, I had to workout this morning as my schedule wouldn’t allow anything later in the day, and I had no cardio workout via mail. Into my stash of DVDs… and out I came with an oldie but a goodie: Karen Voight’s Energy Sprint – interval training gone nuts!

This workout is from 1993 and the look is dated, but the routine fabulous. I had this workout on VHS and then when that died I replaced it with the DVD. I used to find this one pretty easy cardio-wise as my lung capacity used to be great. Now, sadly, it was tough. What was interesting was that I was huffing and puffing and my heart rate was really high but my leg muscles were not particularly tired – until I got near the end. And in actual fact I didn’t go all the way to the end – that’s a whopping 83 minutes! Who has time for that? I used the ‘ala carte’ menu and picked out the items I needed – I opted out of the abs segment as I did abs with Jari Love yesterday, as well as the legs and upper body sculpting.

And now for the stats:

2/12/08

53:53 [workout time]
18:15 [in aerobic zone 60% -80% Target Heart Rate]
150 bpm [average heart rate] – told you my HR was high!
188 bpm [highest heart rate]
450 [cals burned] – yeah baby!!!