In my never ending search for different exercises to do, I have quite the collection of exercise dvd's and I thought I'd just share my thoughts on them as I do them.
Now, this is a disclaimer: consult your doctor before trying this or any exercise regimen. I am not a doctor and the only advice I give is based on my own experience.
First, I want to give God the glory for any exercise that I can accomplish. If you have read my blog at all, you'll know that I have epstein barr and pernicious anemia which makes it difficult at times to even get out of bed, let alone exercise. Through God's power and strength, and not of my own do I do anything. That being said, today I'm going to talk about the Biggest Loser Last Chance Workout with Jillian Michaels. It's a good, solid, calisthenics based workout. You can buy it at Walmart for about $10. I've been doing it now for three days and I'm quite sore, so it is doing its job.
Pros: anyone could do it. The only equipment needed is dumbells and a dvd player. If you're not that coordinated, don't worry about it, because neither is Jillian Michaels. They use the contestants from the Biggest Loser, so when you get a little tired, you motivate yourself by thinking, "If they can do it, so can I." There are 5 parts to the workout: warm up, the last chance workout, upper body conditioning, lower body conditioning, and cool down. You can do each part separately or you can go to the menu and choose a workout regimen that goes from 1-8 weeks. Week one is six days of alternating doing the last chance workout with doing the conditioning exercises and then goes up to doing all of the parts of the workout for six days during the 6th, 7th and 8th weeks. It works all parts of the body well, and you can change the intensity of the workout by changing your phsyical intensity and changing your dumbells that you use.
Cons: it's not that exciting. I can't see being that motivated for 8 weeks, six days a week, doing this. The music is superfluous. Jillian has no rhythm and it would be better if there were no music at all because it just gets in the way. I like the dancey dancey types of workouts because they're a little more fun for me. She says that she doesn't work out abs because you should have your core tight throughout the exercises and that will build your abs. That doesn't seem to work that well for me, so I follow up with The Firm 5 Day Abs workout.
Which brings me to The Firm, 5 Day Abs. This is a joke. The ab exercises are fine, but they have this guy that is total eye candy and completely useless in the dvd. He's on the front cover with his shirt off and he's actually not the instructor. It's 5 different ab workouts led by other Firm instructors. The dvd quality is fairly poor (sound and picture). I got it for $2 at Ocean State Job Lots. I wish the guy wasn't in the dvd, that would make it a little bit better. The dvd opens up with him with his shirt off telling you to lie in the supine position (like, how many times did he have to practice saying 'supine' before he got it right and how many times did someone have to explain to him what it means) and then it goes into the workouts. It would be a better dvd if it just went straight to a menu where you could choose the ab workout you want. The workouts range from 6-9 minutes and are fine ab workouts when you're using them in conjunction with another exercise program.
Happy exercising!
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